Nancy Hass profiles Fallon Fox, the first openly transgender mixed martial artist:
It’s facile to compare her to Jason Collins of the NBA and soccer star Robbie Rogers, both of whom came out in 2013 as gay. There really is no parallel. Gay athletes? The response at this point has been mild and civilized in most quarters, at least on the record. So brave of you! It’s about time! But when you are a transgender athlete, a lesbian transgender athlete, a lesbian transgender athlete who fights women in a cage, a lesbian transgender athlete who fights women in a cage and fathered a daughter, a lesbian transgender athlete who fights women in a cage and fathered a daughter and served as a man in the Navy, you are not just scaling the barricades but throwing yourself against them full force. …
“MMA is the most dangerous sport there is for a transgender, with all the body contact, I know that,” she says. “But it just turned out that I was good at it, you know? You pursue what you’re good at…. I realize that it’s kind of amazing that I hit girls. You’re brought up not to hit girls, that it’s the worst sin, and that’s what I do. But you know, gender is the last thing I think about when I’m fighting. It’s the one situation where I don’t think of gender at all.”
Fox was forced out of the closet in March, after reporters questioned her gender history. Update from several readers:
I support equal rights for all people in almost all situations. However, fighting sports are one area of society in which I do not approve of the idea of letting a transgendered person fight women.
The fact that Fox did not disclose her transgendered status for her first few fights was highly immoral. Cage fighting is a sport where people can die. I’ve been a fan for a long time, but make no mistake: It’s people trying to kill each other for money. People can talk about bone density and estrogen/testosterone levels and other things, but the bottom line is that someone who lived as a man through puberty, and received military training as a man after that, has leverage and strength that significantly advantage that person over a cis-gender woman in a fight.
I’m happy to call Fallon Fox a woman. She can dress like one, and talk and act like one. She has all the rights of any other person – except inside a cage, trying to take an opponent’s head off. The howls of the left must fall on deaf ears on this issue.
Another:
You might want to take a look at what Joe Rogan has said of this topic. He provides commentary for the UFC, is a jiujitsu practitioner, and was a Tae Kwon Do national champion. In his podcast, he had a lengthy conversation with Buck Angel – a FTM adult film star – about the physical advantages he believes a transgendered woman would have because she was born (more) male – regardless of the effects of hormone therapy after puberty. Rogan’s beef was Fallon Fox’s lack of disclosure to her competitors about her gender reassignment because he believes she possesses an unfair physical advantage.
And another:
I watched the trailer, and Fallon’s situation is an interesting one. Does the science really say that she has no physical advantage over her opponents? This article referenced that it is at least not settled. I think Fallon should be competing in male MMA fighting, as inherit differences between males/females that remain after hormone therapy do exist (referenced in the linked article). I would be interested to hear why Fallon thinks men and women should compete separately. And interestingly, the better Fallon does, the more she proves her detractors’ point.
Previous Dish on transgender breakthroughs here.
The Dish 