USA Boxing New Transgender policy

yeah, I think your option (b) is very plausible, this being the work of a decision maker who'd like to see women's boxing go away.

I wonder if they are trying to remove specific men with this ruling - all the men who want to compete no have had no surgery or lowered testosterone? And this is a way to remove them without going through the risk of a blanket ban? I know sex based rights are different in the states.

Everyone is assuming the 'surgery and hrt' men wont want to box? And if they do theyll cross that bridge once a woman is hurt, or women exclude themselves from competition?

Its why i think the argument about separate female services and opportunities should have been about womens rights to organise without men, not based on strength or vulnerability.

Thanks for your perspective. I've never been punched by a man but I've seen the aftermath more than I'd have liked. Men and women are evolved categories and there are good reasons why men's first instinct to a furious women is that it is funny or cute, but women's first instinct to a furious man is generally de escalation by being extremely friendly or freezing.

It's just too horrible to contemplate, that it's almost certain to take that route.

So little to no protection against concussion and a greater chance of broken necks (which, IIRC, are already a greater risk for women)?

The US has corporate manslaughter/murder laws, doesn't it? I hope they apply to sports regulators, because these people will need to be held accountable.

NoBinturongsHereMate · Yesterday 14:23

At least in amateur boxing I think there's mandatory head protection and more rules about KOs, so if we're lucky it will be reconsidered after 'only' some serious injuries rather than deaths.

Headguards only really protected somewhat against cuts. The concussive force is still transmitted directly through, which affects the brain. They also increase the torsional effect of glancing blows, which can turn the head more quickly, with better leverage.

This is a disaster in the offing, if women are coerced into fighting these people, serious injuries and death are significantly likely to be the result.

Even if a woman isn't seriously injured in such a scenario, she is very, very unlikely to be able to win, because of the disparity in strength and as we all know, differences in skeletal geometry allow males to deliver more force, even if their weights are matched.

I used to box and am a (lapsed) ABA coach. I used to spar with everyone from young boys, women and girls to bigger men. We had one female middleweight, who had a few competitive bouts and when I sparred with her, it didn't hurt, even though I encouraged her to hit me as hard as she liked (and she did).

13 and 14 year old boys, weighing less than 8 stone could hit harder.

It's a bloody travesty.

yeah ikr. I swear to God there are guys typing one handed on twitter excited at the upset women having to try to explain to them how when a guy starts punching a woman the chances of us dying or ending up with life changing injuries are genuinely non-trivial.

Mostly institutionally I think it's habit. When men really want something women have, the obvious 'fair' compromise is to get women to share it with them. It's the knee jerk lazy reaction that we don't matter.

They (the USA female boxers) should all follow Lynne Pinches' example and forfeit their matches before a single punch is thrown every single time they are drawn against a TW.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but when I look at something like the boxing decision, I start to wonder if there are people involved who actively want to see women get hurt, or want women not to compete at all in the sport. You don't have to spend very long on the internet to find plenty of men with those opinions.

I dont think the 6 of us can fix the China thing if it's even true. But we can try to fix men beating the shit out of women in the name of inclusivity.

@Truthlikeness You certainly get the impression that for a lot of men in decision making positions women's sports are an optional extra, a trivial sideshow not important enough to be protected or nurtured.

You do have to start wondering whether its a feature, not a bug...

well what's going to happen immediately is a lot less mums and dads saying yes when their daughter wants to go to a boxing class.

I wonder why some men might want that.

Rules don’t even make sense and are probably just being used as a proxy for commitment. A man having completed surgery doesn’t have more impact on his upper body strength than hormone suppression.

my face

Its either this, or there are people within the sport who want womens boxing to end.

Itll either be a large audience, or because safety cannot be guaranteed, the matches abandoned.

Yet another sport where women had made huge strides recently, now sent back to the stone age. Who the hell would want to watch a magnificent boxer like Katie Taylor or prime Nicola Adams being pummelled by some bloke with ladyfeelz? Sarah Jane Baker must be planning their new sporting career as we speak.

Has anybody asked Steve Bunce for his opinion? I suspect that it would be golden.

So they should cut this crap and stick to the simple rules of single sex sport, yes?

absolutely mind-boggling

Less like boxing more like trans Roulette.

They know that there are plenty of people who will gladly pay for the opportunity to see a woman being battered by a man in a public arena, and it's all about the money. Humans are shit sometimes.

I was expecting something about climate change.

WTF?! This is insane.

A woman will die in the ring and these fucking idiots will cheer. It's monstrous.

How have USA Boxing got insurance to go ahead with this? I don't understand.

Well, that post took an unexpected turn.