The Wheel and Axle

The 2017 SEA Games ended two weeks ago on 30 August 2017, and while the Philippines did not become over-all champion, we did get to have a fairly good showing in bagging 24 gold medals (not to mention 33 silvers and 64 bronzes).

Trenten Beram, for example, dashed his way into our hearts.

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Credits: Reuters/David Gray

Did you know that there is a Refugee Olympic Team in Rio this year?

That’s right.

From a pool of 43 candidates, the IOC selected ten athletes (five from South Sudan, two from Congo, two from Syria, and one from Ethiopia) to compete under the Olympic flag with country code Refugee Olympic Team.

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Out Tongan Olympic swimmer Amini Fonua rightfully gave The Daily Beast the #burn.

There is absolutely no excuse to The Daily Beast’s stunt of an “article” – an article that ultimately served no true journalistic purpose.

Their faux-journalist – a straight white privileged male named Nico Hines – wrote an article that was, as The Slate perfectly put it, “sleazy, dangerous, and wildly unethical.” In it, Hines wrote about going on Tinder and Grindr as he wandered through the Olympic Village in Rio; he zero’ed in on Grindr (because, you know, gays are more promiscuous), then proceeded to out several gay athletes he met through the dating app.

Oh, he didn’t name them directly. No, that would be wrong. He only proceeded to describe them in detail, including their statistics, their events, and their goddamn nationalities. Because, you know, Google doesn’t exist, and no one would ever figure out who these people are.

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Photo credits: Rappler

Hidilyn Diaz, Filipina weightlifter from Mindanao, just brought us a silver medal in the Rio Olympics. This is our first medal since 1996 and the first from a woman, the first for someone from Mindanao, and the first for a non-boxer since 1936.

This is what we call #PinoyPride.

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Photo credits: Gay Times

Thank you, Gay Times, for this wonderful feature on LGBT athletes heading over to Rio for the 2016 Olympics. This year, we apparently have a record number of LGBT participants in the event.

Or perhaps, this might just be a year where we have a record number of out and proud participants, for I cannot imagine all prior events have had no (secretly) LGBTs amongst the athletes.

And so this year still marks a pretty good milestone for our community – for now we are diving headfirst into the pool outly and proudly without qualms.

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