(IN 2016, THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE RULED THAT
(TRANSGENDER ATHLETES COULD COMPETE
(WITHOUT UNDERGOING SURGERY.
(THIS POLICY MADE HISTORY IN THE SPORTS WORLD, WELCOMING
(A NEW GENERATION OF ATHLETES INTO THE OLYMPIC FAMILY.
(PAT MANUEL, A HIGHLY DECORATED AMATEUR BOXER,
(MISSED THIS RULING BY FOUR YEARS.
(THIS IS HIS STORY.)
In a boxing match,
it's like everything is right with my world.
When I have my gloves on, I feel connected to...
to my ancestors.
When I hear boxing, I hear the rhythm of the people...
..and when I smell boxing, that's my favourite scent,
smelling the gym and the hard work...
..smelling the old leather - that's always a scent
that brings nostalgia
and excitement for the future for me.
When I see boxing itself, I really see myself reflected.
(IDENTIFY)
I knew it before I knew words that I wasn't...
I wasn't a girl,
and for a lot of trans people I talk to
it's something they knew as a kid.
I grew up in Gardena, California.
It's a small city in south LA.
It's near, like, Compton, Carson, Torrance area.
I mean, it's hard to say, like, what's a typical childhood.
I grew up with my mom, my grandma, my older sister,
and two of my uncles.
I think we get used to what normal is.
You get into school
and people start reinforcing what is a boy and a girl,
that it really felt like I was somewhere
in between all of that.
"Why do you keep labelling me as a girl?"
Eventually, over time, that gets beaten into you,
so you finally submit to it,
and you're like, "OK, I am a girl."
When puberty started hitting, suddenly my body
was doing all the things
that I didn't feel comfortable with at all.
Periods - I don't want any part of that.
Like, I remember crying when I first got my period.
It was like a mark of, like, whether you want it or not,
you're being labelled a woman for the rest of your life.
I definitely kind of withdrew within myself
when I was in high school.
I think there was this sensing,
the sensing that I was masculine, I was different.
My friend group got a lot smaller,
and I really kind of pulled away from everyone,
would just stop caring about everything.
So I tried to do the only thing I could
to kind of pull myself together,
and it was actually during this period
that I found the sport.
The right first? You're going to go throw the right first?
I'm going to throw the right first. Step.
Hands up high.
It's an individual sport, but actually it's a team sport also
because all the kids push each other.
A lot of them were in trouble,
but the discipline is the number one thing.
It's changed a lot of these kids' lives.
(COACH VIC)
I'd seen Pat box in a tournament
I'm going to say about ten years ago or so
at Lincoln Heights.
I'd just started training female fighters,
so I was kind of looking at the females,
and I'd seen Pat fight. Pat had a lot of raw talent.
Two more on top.
Pat's a very aggressive fighter.
Great condition, and doesn't fight like a girl.
Pat's stronger, more physical,
learned how to punch a lot harder
and just is aggressive.
Boxes like a man.
Is now a man.
I knew that I had to make my body look like a fighter's,
and the only way I knew how to do that
was to actually start fighting.
It was first time in a long time
that I felt comfortable being me,
because I was learning how to move my body
and be present in a way that I never had,
and was able to do something that made me feel good.
It was really actually the confidence from boxing
that made me start exploring my queer identity.
Honestly, probably more than half of the boxers
don't even know that Pat was a female.
(COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO)
My name is Lynette Smith.
I'm the Assistant Executive Director of USA Boxing.
I work with athletes, coaches, officials
to promote Olympic boxing across the country.
(PAT MANUEL VS TIARA BROWN,
(2008 USA NATIONAL BOXING - WOMEN'S 132LB)
Get low, Patricia.
Oh, sure I'm happy to talk about
Patricia Manuel as a boxer.
Excellent boxer. She was formidable...
I think would be the word.
I mean, absolutely Olympic trials-quality athlete.
The Olympic dream...
The Olympic dream, I guess,
was attached to me being a female athlete.
Back in 2010,
the IOC announced that they would include women's boxing
in the Olympics.
So we were like, "Let's make history,
"let's go to the Olympics."
That was the thing that kept me back from transitioning
for a long time - was my fear of losing eligibility
to compete. I wanted to go to the Olympics.
I wanted to represent.
I wanted to represent as an out queer athlete
It really took, though,
losing the 2012 Olympic boxing trials
for me to really grab on that I was trans.
In sport, there are obviously serious ramifications
with regard to gender classification,
and, with us, weight class and so forth,
but my first real interactions with Pat
were when he had questions about
changing his designation as an athlete from female to male.
Lynette helped me switch everything over
and kind of actually created a policy for USA Boxing.
I don't think they ever dealt with a trans athlete
who had been established as a female athlete
and was transitioning over to the male division.
I needed to be true to myself.
This whole, like, female stuff is bullshit.
I don't believe in it.
There's life outside of sports.
There's life outside of just boxing,
so I decided, "Let's do it.
"Let's go full in and actually medically transition
"rather than just socially transitioning."
So I took those questions to the USOC.
They helped me with that,
and they actually take their direction
from the International Olympic Committee, the IOC.
So we worked together
and got all of that information together,
and then I passed it back to Pat.
And then the next step was like,
what did I want to do about that?
Did I want to still compete in the female division
as a trans man?
Or did I want to go for competing in the male division,
which is something in boxing I never knew anyone had done?
For Pat to change from female designation to male,
you had to be recognised in your state
by a government agency
of your new designation, your new gender.
We had to get reports. You had to have medical clearance
with regard to if surgery was performed,
to levels of different hormones in your body,
and he sought information from me
so that we could take care of it
and he could actually participate
as a new gender in USA Boxing.
It's like, "BLEEP it. I've done a lot in life.
"I'm going to start the hormones
"and I'm just going to go for it
"I'm going to see what happens."
(AFTER DECIDING TO MEDICALLY TRANSITION,
(PAT TOOK TWO YEARS OFF TO UNDERGO HORMONE THERAPY
(IN ORDER TO COMPLY WITH USA BOXING REGULATION.
(IN 2016, PAT IS OFFICIALLY ABLE TO COMPETE
(IN THE MALE DIVISION.)
(PAT'S HOME, LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA)
Currently I'm just training
to kind of get back in the swing of things,
get back to doing a couple more amateur fights.
My coach, Vic, is the one that makes the decision
if I turn pro or not.
I'm hoping to sway him with really good performances
in my amateur bouts.
I know he'll tell me I'm ready when he knows
that I'm actually ready.
Today is my boxing club,
Duarte Boxing, annual boxing show.
If I get a fight today,
this would be my second time fighting
in the male division,
but I've also had
over 50 sanctioned amateur bouts previously,
so this isn't my first rodeo, that's for sure.
Definitely had some issues before
that hints at there may have been people
not wanting to engage with me in a match
because of transphobia, but, you know,
it's never fully verified.
It's just suddenly someone lost interest
in competing against me.
So, you know, we just take it...
we take it one fight at a time
and just try to just keep trying
until we get... we get the match done.
I think a couple of times that we've had some bouts fall out
is because they found out.
Honestly, I think that...
..they were just afraid that they were going to lose,
and...
to a former female fighter.
And we go to these shows not saying anything. We just...
put Pat up as a male fighter, and that's it on the board.
(PAT'S OPPONENT WAS A NO-SHOW.
(THERE WAS NO REASON GIVEN FOR HIS ABSENCE.)
It shouldn't matter what I identify as,
if I'm transgender or cisgender.
If I'm in the male division,
I am open for you to compete, and that should be it.
(BOYLE HEIGHTS, CA)
How long of a walk do you want to do?
Probably like 15.
We did 30 last time so...
OK, so we don't have to be there until, like, 11.
Well, I'm going to get ready.
Amita is my girlfriend of a year and a half.
She's been definitely one of my biggest supporters,
not just in boxing, but in kind of every aspect of my life.
I actually met Pat at a community mixer
for LGBTQ people of colour here in Los Angeles.
I was trying to expand my own network,
and we were in a small discussion group together,
and I was just like realising
that I was starting to have feelings for him.
It was very unexpected.
Are you sure you don't want some?
No, I'm good, thanks.
It's actually been a lot trickier than I expected,
being able to date post-medically transitioning,
but, luckily, I have a queer girlfriend,
so I don't have to worry about that as much.
I guess I don't think of it as significantly different
than dating anyone else,
because everyone is a different person,
so it's hard for me to think about
some experience or something
of dating a transgender man as opposed to anyone else
that I've dated.
Ginko, come, come.
She is not having it today.
As I've grown up,
and when I also was presenting gender nonconforming,
there were instances in Long Beach
where I was mistaken as a feminine man
and attempted to be gay-bashed.
Fortunately for myself, I could fight,
so anyone that made that mistake ended up
finding themselves laid out.
Sit. Good girl.
Because he passes nowadays more and more as a cisgender man
and is seen as someone who can fight,
even if people don't know that he's a boxer,
just how he moves through the world and through spaces,
what I've noticed most of all is that the level of harassment
from cisgender men has significantly decreased
when I'm standing next to Pat.
Come, Ginko.
What's he doing?
Honestly, I'll say right now, I'm not satisfied until
all of my other comrades are also like,
"Yup, that's good, we're good. We feel represented.
"We feel that it's actually equal and fair for us."
You look at the demographics of boxing -
it's people who are struggling in one way or the other.
You come into the sport usually because something's going on
that's driving you to want to fight.
Boxing represents me in so many ways
that nothing else ever have I ever seen does.
If someone could sum me up with one word,
it would be a fighter.
(DUARTE BOXING GYM)
You've got five pounds to lose by Friday.
That's easy.
So since we didn't get the fight Saturday,
what's going to be next on the agenda?
We're going to try and get a fight this Friday in Pasadena.
I talked to Fausto, who's putting on the show,
and he's going to try to see about getting you a match,
so there's a good chance we're going to get a fight.
- OK. - Hopefully we get a fight,
and we start getting ready for our next big tournament.
I'm hoping we just stay busy the rest of this year,
and then keep moving forward to the next step on in 2017.
Hopefully next year we turn professional.
That's what I wanted to hear.
Gosh, it gives me chills just to talk about it now,
but for Pat to think or to feel that I had a role
in his being able to continue boxing, it makes me so joyful.
He's a great guy,
and that's what I've told Pat from the beginning.
"You're just one of the guys.
"You belong up there."
I know boxing is Pat's first love.
It's just my role as someone who loves him to support him,
and to help him in whatever way I can to achieve his dreams.
My name is Patricio Manuel.
And I'm just getting started.