Game-changing news make me stop to evaluate them. Last week, there were two news developments that I found worth bringing up this Sunday. I am intrigued by the transgenders and their role in beauty pageants, and by Myanmar’s transformation to a possible democratic state.

I got used to watching the telecast of Miss Universe beauty pageants, totally engrossed in female pulchritude. I become keenly aware that a woman’s beauty is composed of a beautiful face, shapely legs and wit, all rolled into one. The intrusion of transgenders will bother me with a new criteria: the authenticity of the contestant’s sex organ.

Together with many ordinary women, I am puzzled. Why can’t they leave a good thing alone? Why complicate our lives with one more puzzle to solve the insecurity and over-acting of gay people?

There are really no sex-related biases. Gays and transgenders in our society are a fact of life. I assume that men are the first sex, women the second sex, gays and lesbians the third sex. The androgynous are the possible fourth sex.

So what’s the beef? We can have an international beauty contest for transgenders, and I’m sure it would be sensational.

Why violate the rules of beauty contests meant for women (the second sex)? If a transgender wins, most men and women would feel that the Miss Universe pageant is a hoax.

I can understand that transgenders will fight for women’s equality. “Women equality” is a confused term. Women now enjoy equality. They even surpass men in social, political and corporate arenas. The transgenders are welcome to excel in many career paths. But beauty contests? No way, José!

What most men like me presume, honor and expect in a Miss Universe contest is that all contestants have authentic child-bearing organs, such as a womb to produce ovum and breasts to lactate with baby’s milk.

The womb is the ultimate physiological determinant of womanhood. The womb is the organ of femininity and maternal instinct. Without an ovum-producing organ, we have no woman to love, marry and have babies with.

C’mon fellas, leave the Miss Universe contest alone! We like you the way you are—ambitious, adventurous, loveable and honest. You can have all the features of gorgeous pulchritude displayed in a public square. But please, do not justify a phony Miss Universe winner. A hoax is a hoax. I can’t fool myself.

Myanmar’s junta blinked

It is not farfetched that Myanmar’s military junta probably learned from the mistakes of our own martial law ruler, the late Ferdinand Marcos.

The assassination of Ninoy Aquino, our icon for democracy, was a blatant blunder. The Myanmar junta, famous for its ruthlessness, spared the life of their democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, by keeping her under house arrest for 20 years.

Ninoy Aquino, with his Mandela-type imprisonment, his freedom activism in Boston, his inborn political savvy and his populist support from the people was the best successor for Marcos. He was Marcos’ best bet for putting the squeezed-out toothpaste back into the tube.

Contemporary geopolitics, the globalization of business and the spread of information technology have posed to dictators and autocrats of the world the problem of dismounting the tiger without being eaten alive. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Moammar Gaddhafi of Libya are bloody examples of failed rulers eaten alive by the tiger.

The unfinished people power rebellions raging in the Arab states reveal the mess dictator governments get into when transforming their nations into democratic states. The biggest problem is the absence of a genuine, charismatic and populist takeover leader who can unify the military clique and all rival sectors of an Arab state.

We had Ninoy, but he was killed in a dastardly assassination carried out behind Marcos’ back.

The Myanmar generals are luckier. They had the common sense to keep Aung San Suu Kyi alive, the heroine of transformation who enjoys the people’s confidence and backing for the ongoing transformation of Myanmar.

Asean strongmen have a better chance of dismounting tigers alive. General Suharto of Indonesia was relegated to private exile in his suburban villa after the revolution. Many Thai generals in the early ’50s and ’70s were allowed by the winning counter-coup leaders to simply go into exile to Thai-friendly countries like Taiwan and the former Red China.

I visited Yangoon, Myanmar, in the early ’90s in order to explore business opportunities in telenovela export and advertising services. Yangoon was caught in a 50-year time warp. Under an oppressive military rule, life stood still. There were visible signs of a retarded economy: consumer product obsolescence and mass poverty. No luck for my business exploration.

The Burmese people are beautiful. Just like most Asians, they are charming, patient, family-oriented and religious. They deserve a better future. They deserve progress that’s possible only in a free society.

Again, no phony reforms in the current political exercise. Just patriotic intentions for the newly reinvented bureaucrats inspired by the patriotic sacrifices of that delicate but steely lady, Aung San Suu Kyi.

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