Fallon Fox - Is This Legalised Hate Crime?

[NickAndNora]

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/fallon-fox-why-hormones-dont-make-a-woman/

(Warning - The link contains descriptions and images of violence inflicted upon a woman)

Is it right that a transwoman with a history of homophobia towards lesbian women is given a forum in which to inflict violence upon those women? Reading this article I am left with the following thoughts -

1 - It is never fair for a transwoman to compete against women in sport.
2 - Fallon Fox is the transactivist threat of violence towards women come to life.
3 - The law and the media are putting transwomen's rights above women's safety. Transwomen need separate rights that do not infringe upon women's safety.
4 - Nicola Adams, a fabulous role model for women and lesbian and bisexual women, manages to be a boxer and maintain a cheery and friendly disposition. Does Fallon Fox's aggressive, threatening attitude reveal male socialisation?
5 - For some men is transgenderism a refuge from their failure to succeed amongst men - beta male to alpha female?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

You cannot change sex. Gender is a social construct it is not innate. Being a woman is not a feeling. Transactivists are indistinguishable from MRAs.

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.

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.

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?

Yes flabber. Why does that make a difference?

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.

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.

Gender as a social construct that is harmful to women is pretty much the basis of feminism. If knowing that makes me some kind of phobe then I'll have to accept that label. Bear in mind that I've never actually threatened anyone or physically attacked them or called them a bigot for not wanting sex with me.

I have known transgendered people in the past and witnessed some of the discrimination and ill-treatment they received at the hands of men. The transgender people I knew were sexually attracted to men and had/wanted full surgical gender re-assignment. However, even as transwomen, they had very clearly been socialised as men. Knowing them as people and knowing their sexual orientation I had no problem sharing facilities with them. At the time it never crossed my mind how other women, who didn't know them, might feel about sharing these facilities.

I believe we need to get rid of gender, rather than physically alter people until they conform to gender. Calling people who don't worship at the altar of gender conformity 'phobes' is the typical MRA flip-reverse, ie it is feminists who are the haters merely for recognising the harms done by men.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

*AIS condition, sorry

But isn't that the problem with the very postmodern notion of gender? It's all about a 'perceived reality', there are no truths or common experiences. Being a woman is just a perceived reality. There is no such thing as the class of women, there is no shared experience. Being a woman is whatever you want it to mean.

If this was true all our problems would be solved.

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.

Flabber, you said "I also think the PP who said a male to female sex change doesn't make you a female is wrong."

I wonder at what point in the process of transition you believe a male becomes a female? Breast implants? Artificial hormones? Penis removal?
Because as the law currently stands you can have a penis, no breasts and no female hormones, and as long as you dress as a woman and tell others you're a woman, as far as the law is concerned you are one.
It's absurd.

These examples being highlighted though do shine a light on how a gender binary in sport is as inherently flawed as it is anywhere else - Fox used to be a man, but has undergone hormonal treatment which would render her a woman by testosterone testing. OTOH she still has superior strength over other women. A woman with PCOS may have "male" testosterone levels but be a woman in every other way measurable. And a women with AIS, well, is technically a man by genetics and the possession of testes, even if undescended. So since a woman with AIS has the same biological sex as a transwoman, surely it's a case of allow both or ban both in women's sports?

Either way, to use your superior strength, no matter how it was gained, to inflict brutal and unnecessary injury on another person to make a political point, even within the framework of a violent sport, is well, unsporting, and makes you a shit person no matter which gender you choose to wear.

So what we end up with it:

Male sporting competitions competed in by men born and raised men
Women's sporting competitions competed in by trans-women

Sport for women born women (+ transmen presumably) = cancelled.

Nice work.

I don't think there is any question that the Indian woman who has been banned has any kind of intersex / or other condition. AFAI can see her sex is female no question but for whatever reason she has higher than usual levels of testosterone. That is enough to get her deemed "not female" and banned.

Meanwhile someone who has the bone structure etc etc of a sportsman who has trained hard all his life can get his testosterone down to a certain level then he is fine to compete in women's competitions.

It's all cock-eyed isn't it.