Fallon Fox - Is This Legalised Hate Crime?

Seven, I saw that. The intersex (is she even intersex? Or just a woman with high testosterone?) are completely forgotten once MtoTrans thunder into a space it seems.

I am proud (or something similar given I have no connection other than a shared sex) she's standing up and saying that there's no way she's being medicated or having surgery.

*AIS condition, sorry

Is this the case you mean Seven? www.advocate.com/sports/2014/07/23/top-indian-athlete-banned-competing-over-failed-gender-test

So woman are now being judged on criteria of a trans*womans lowered testosterone level?? Many women specific syndromes cause raised testosterone i.e. PCOS - what then?

Brings to mind too the case of Caster Semanya - it was deemed she ran too fast to be female so was forced to undergo "gender tests" where it was discovered she has AIS and undesended testes. Shameful that a woman was subjected to intrusive medical examinations and her condition publicised to the world. I think Caster was unaware of her AIA condition if I remember rightly?

Something I found incredibly shocking in the article which I don't think anyone else has mentioned is that the international sporting community is judging whether someone is a woman or not based on how much testosterone she has, and if she has too much testosterone, she is deemed not a woman in terms of being able to compete and told to have hormone therapy and/or surgery

WTAF kind of parallel universe have we entered here? So a woman born female with a female reproductive system who has maybe had children, can be deemed not female by the international sporting community and barred from competition? That's appalling, I'm really genuinely shocked.

At first I thought, maybe it's because they're worried about doping. And the I thought - if male sports people have "too much testosterone" do they tell them to have a bollock chopped off? I'm betting the answer to that is a big fat NO.

So now we have more than one definition of what a woman is, both of which are legally enforceable, and neither of which take into account in any way the actual biological fact of when a baby is born the vast majority of the time it has a clear sex which then results in a whole bunch of biological stuff and a whole bunch of socialisation stuff and often worse.

Meanwhile men just carry on getting to be men don't they. No-one impinges on their space, they continue to marginalise those they don't want, and outsiders aren't about to get in.

The point about trans-men not leaping into the world of male sport and dominating it is pretty salient isn't it.

Fucking hell that made my jaw drop. So a woman is not a woman because she has xyz you know the usual stuff, it's based purely on her testosterone level.

And incidentally and OF COURSE the judgement of it based on testosterone - the manly hormone that is all manly and strong and manly - is just another way of saying "man" = standard and anyone outside that = "not man".

God am livid.

I've just spent some time browsing on this issue, and I am very heartened and surprised at the level of sensible discourse on the matter from MMA fans.

I get so used to seeing MRAs and Daily Mail reader comments that I forget that there's a whole world of other men out there quietly going about their hobbies not even thinking about the nasty feminists, and intelligently discussing the matter solely in reference to their preferred sport.

Even down to raising the point that there are certainly MMA fighters for whom being hit by someone they might view as a man could be hugely triggering. Something I hadn't thought about, but is absolutely true.

I said on the boxing thread that I was looking forward to the new weight class and the growth of women's MMA because I'm interested to see how the fighting style develops for a woman's muscle/skeletal structure - logically I feel that the different hip shapes (for instance) will influence the holds that fighters can create/escape from for instance.

There are some awesome women fighters in the UFC, a couple of the very best have come out saying that they wouldn't fight Fallon and Dana White has said that whilst a fighter's eligibility is a matter for the commission, Fallon just doesn't have a good enough track record for a UFC fight.

Personally I wouldn't want to watch any more Fallon fights (as I wouldn't watch other fighters I consider overly brutal), but I know that other people enjoy the spectacle more than the sport, and I know that there are always desperate fighters hoping to gain publicity.

Nick, I agree with you that getting rid of gender is the ideal solution to many of the problems faced by women, by transexuals and even by men. I agree that surgically altering people to enable them to conform to stereotypes feels wrong at a fundamental level. I understand and agree with the feminist viewpoint that it is unhelpful to our attempts to deconstruct gender to see gender so rigidly enforced and performed by transexuals. I understand that transexuals will always carry the chain of their socialisation around their necks.

But, you don't have to threaten violence to be transphobic, only to refuse to acknowledge their perceived reality when it is in conflict with your own. It is also unhelpful to point fingers and say "but they do worse things to us" in defence of your position. Yes, some of them do. That may give you the moral high ground in terms of behaviour, but it doesn't mean you're right either.

To someone who asked earlier on if this kind of trash talk was normal in MMA, I can only talk as someone who watches some UFC, but I'd say that whilst it happens, it isn't usual, and I definitely have the feeling that it's not encouraged or really approved of (in the UFC). The fighters are encouraged to have a more martial arts/honourable ethos rather than a WWF grudge-match style.

Also, injuries this bad aren't common - I don't know who they were fighting for, but I'm surprised the referee didn't stop them. People do, sometimes get bad injuries, but generally it's just cuts and bruises, not fractures.

Ah. Fair enough.

However, knowing transsexuals doesn't make me believe that transwomen are women or transmen are men. You can change genitals, change gender performance, but you can't change sex. Sex is innate at the chromosome level, gender is socialisation.

Foxx is an example of a transwomen who wants to beat women into a pulp.

It was aimed at Nick really, I assumed he/she didn't know any because of the way he/she talks about transgender people. Maybe if he/she met some he/she would realise they're not all ogres out to beat the shit out of us women.

Yes flabber. Why does that make a difference?

Apologies for the double posting. You say you can't change sex, I think you can, we'll have to agree to disagree. Do you actually know any transsexuals?

And so you make it clear that you are transphobic, Nick, and that makes reasoned debate more tricky. There are huge issues where the rights of biological women and trans women clash. There are opinions currently being circulated by transactivists that are dangerous to biological women. But sweeping the entire trans debate aside with "I don't agree with it so it's not true" is as pointless as transwomen insisting they are as fully women as biological women. There is no point in even attempting to engage with someone so closed to the opposing viewpoint. But sticking your fingers in your ears and going "lalalalalala transwomen aren't women lalalalala" isn't going to make them or their cause go away.

Woah, people are taking my words out of context...I couldn't read the first article because of the pronoun issue. It's not a case of worrying about Foxx's sensibilities, but by using the wrong pronouns you are offending every transsexual & that is wrong.

I have read the second article and it is shocking what happened. The MMA should instigate procedures to ensure this doesn't happen again.

I also think the PP who said a male to female sex change doesn't make you a female is wrong. If you feel you've been born in the wrong body you have every right to be called a woman after going through gender reassignment. Same goes for female to male transsexuals.

Woah, people are taking my words out of context...I couldn't read the first article because of the pronoun issue. It's not a case of worrying about Foxx's sensibilities, but by using the wrong pronouns you are offending every transsexual & that is wrong.

I have read the second article and it is shocking what happened. The MMA should instigate procedures to ensure this doesn't happen again.

I also think the PP who said a male to female sex change doesn't make you a female is wrong. If you feel you've been born in the wrong body you have every right to be called a woman after going through gender reassignment. Same goes for female to male transsexuals.

I agree with you, the rules allowing transwomen to fight biological women in a violent sport certainly need revisiting. The same goes for other sports too, where male physiology would mean an advantage over a female physiology, but this is perhaps less urgent in sports where it's just a matter of losing rather than sustaining actual life-threatening injury.

If the issue isn't simple enough to work out if she is a woman or not, then she shouldn't be allowed to fight women, surely?

Nothing is ever as simple as black/white, yes/no, man/woman.

In this context I think it is that simple. We are not talking about a trans person who may be applying for an academic position reserved for women, or using femal changing facilities. We are talking about a biological man using superior muscle mass and strength to beat up women under the guise of trans rights.

Nick - if you read what I actually said instead of jumping all over the pronoun issue, my argument is not actually about pronouns but about questioning the reliability of an article with a very obvious anti-trans agenda.

I'm not going to start a debate with you here on whether or not I believe trans women are women and have full right to be known by female pronouns. As it is, I'm not 100% decided myself as there are compelling arguments for both sides of the debate. However, I am not anti-trans, only anti-trans-people-using-their-supposed-position-as-oppressed-to-in-fact-oppress-women. Which isn't the same thing.

If you don't believe trans women to be women, that's your right. But it doesn't mean you're necessarily correct. I'd agree that they're not biologically women. But that doesn't begin to cover the whole issue. Nothing is ever as simple as black/white, yes/no, man/woman.

I'm possibly too angry to post at the moment, but actually am beyond the point of giving a fuck

Once again, the rights of women are trampled by a man in a bikini calling himself a woman.
I am not anti trans. I absolutely stand for the rights of others to live as they choose. You want to live as a woman, your choice.
I will not ever recognise you as a woman in terms of work, sporting contest, sexual relationships or education. Because surgery and hormones do not make you a woman. They simply adapt your male body to make you more passable as one.

It's the emperor's new clothes.
And we must all accept this for fear of being labelled trans phobic? That you are a woman despite your biological sex?
Bollocks.

Nick, regardless of pronouns, that was an article coming very clearly from one perspective.

That's fine, so do plenty of articles, but it will impact how they are received.

Did Foxx tweet things similar to "make her bleed" or was it supporters of Foxx who did?

gincamparidryvermouth - you misunderstand my misgiving about the use of the male pronouns for Fox. I couldn't give a shiny shit about her/his feelings. For me it was entirely a question of how much confidence I could place in the accuracy of an article which obviously had such a vehement anti-trans agenda. As it is, I agree with the questions raised in the article, and I agree with everything other posters have said about it being appalling that someone with a typically male physiology and a significant size/weight advantage was allowed to fight in a female category, going on to inflict such awful injuries. BUT, I won't allow myself to blindly believe everything written in an article with a very obvious slant just because it happens to align with my own (possibly justified) prejudices.

For example, is it common for the female followers of female competitors to trash talk their opponents and hope for "blood" in the same way as the trans women quoted? How often do fights between two born women end in these kinds of injuries? How do the categories work with regards matching weight, strength and ability? How much thought has been given by the governing body to trans women competing in physical sports where injuries inflicted on each other are expected and common? Or did they use Tamikka as a guinea pig to see what would happen?

There's just too much emotive language and too little objective fact for me to draw any meaningful message from this particular article.