Fallon Fox - Male to Female Transgender MMA

Great Debates
1

I have just finished reading the excellent thread on transgendered issues and information etc. that is further down the page. I felt that this might deserve its own thread (mostly as didn’t want to hijack the other thread).

What I am wondering is what everyones opinion is on the current Fallon Fox controversy.

As a back grounder (please feel free to correct me if I am wrong):

Fallen Fox is a male to female transgender woman who began her transition roughly 10 years ago. She is an aspiring professional MMA fighter and thus far has dominated her opponents (knockouts/submissions etc.).

Apparently she did not disclose any of her medical history on her application for her fighter licensing and she has since revealed the fact that she is transgendered. Her license is currently being reviewed and there now seems to be some controversy as to whether she was ever actually approved.

What I am truly curious about is everyone thoughts on a Male to Female transgender woman competing in combat sports against other women.

In this case, while Fallon has an impressive physique, she is similar in size and weight to her opponents (as is the case in most fighting leagues). What seems to be the primary issue in the MMA world is whether or not having gone through puberty as a man has imparted some inherent advantages (namely bone structure and density, residual muscle mass, composition of fast and slow twitch muscle fibres etc.).

What has come up in real world discussions is the stigma of a man (i know that is no longer what she is) hitting a women and the interesting point that no one would care at all if she wasn’t absolutely crushing her opponents.

What also comes up is the idea that if she disclosed her medical history her previous fights would have been fine (seeing as her opponents would have to have consented).

One last thing that has come up is the slightly less realistic chance that a very large man (6’8 280lb beast) decides to transition to the female gender and becomes an MMA fighter. Should they be allowed to fight? If so, how far into their transition must they be?

I don’t mean to offend anyone, I apologize in advance if my terminology is mixed up.

2

If there’s informed consent for the fights than it shouldn’t be a problem. But you could have a situation where someone is demanding a title fight based on their record, and no one consents to the fight. The MMA promotion could start transgender divisions if they want to, but there might not be enough entrants to make it worth while. So in that case it’s just too bad. They don’t have an old men with bad knees division either.

3

This is going to lead to a whole new field of law…

I suspect that one cop-out people will use, at first, until things get codified more rationally, is that “biological enhancements” and “surgical supplements” will be banned. Having a sex change is a little like taking hormones and other chemicals for an advantage, and that’s already banned. The woman in question had the advantage of many years of “androgen supplements,” and that wouldn’t be permitted as an artificial adjunct.

Very, very messy. One has great sympathy for anyone eliminated from a sport simply for trying to be who they really believe they are.

4

Well, a pre-op (is Fallon a pre-op?) probably still has a male’s extra upper-bod strength. Not entirely fair for such to fight females-born. Same reason it’s not entirely fair for a male heavyweight boxer to fight a male middleweight boxer.

5

Similar to the controversy about a South African sprinter a few years ago.

In this case, I think she should probably have to fight men.

6

In the surgical sense? :wink:

7

haha :slight_smile:

8

Well there’s reasons that male and female are split into different division and if allowing transgender fighters to cross that division goes against the reason for the split then they shouldn’t be allowed to cross divisions. The outcome could be that female fighters became at risk due to being mismatched against transgender fighters or that transgender fighters could end up dominating the female division due to their residual male attributes.

The simple test should therefore be do transgender fighters have a advantage and if so would allowing them to compete in different divisions to their biological sex nullify splitting the divisions?

9

It’s not the surgery which reduces muscle mass, strength, and stamina, it’s the hormones. But everyone reacts differently to them, and over different time scales. Being a competitive fencer, I found it only took one month on estradiol and spironolactone before I was struggling to perform at my usual levels, and it took me half a year of hard work just to get back to about 90% (roughly) of where I was. There have been only a couple of studies on trans athletes and their change in performance, unfortunately.

10

The purpose of separating men from women in many sports is the physical superiority of men (generally strength). This is a genetic quality. If people are transgendered the surgery doesn’t change the core reason behind the sport division. Any legal recognition of a change in sex is based on personal preference and not genetics. Maybe that will change as science advances.

And yes, there are genetic gray areas which compounds the issue.

11

I would assume she would still have an advantage in that her reach and skeletal structure are the same. I have no doubt that she is at a disadvantage against men because of the hormones, but she might still be at an advantage against biological women. I just don’t see how her competing against biological women is fair.

12

No, it’s hormonal quality. Women with complete androgen insensitivity have XY genes but female strength and stamina.

How much advantage would be retained by a MtF athlete is really impossible to say. They certainly do lose muscle mass and strength (unless they really ramp up their exercise routine and even then I’d guess they’d lose ground). Anecdotely their performance suffers (as related by Una, but she’s not the only one I’ve heard that from). On top of that, most women athletes who are serious competitors have more muscle, strength, and stamina than the average woman so perhaps it would even out after sufficient time. How much time is sufficient? No one knows.

13

Well, Hulk Hogan says he’d be willing to fight her.

14

What if the middleweight suffers from anorexia nervosa?

15

That wouldn’t be fair. She actually knows how to fight.

16

You’re somewhat correct. Intersex and transgender persons vary greatly in their body morphology. Transgender males tend to be more of a male form and skeletal development, intersex people (such as myself) tend to be smaller and seem to lie in-between the two genders in terms of their physical shape. But note I say “tend”; among my transwomen friends there are adults who are 5’3" and petite, and 6’2" and huge.

This…is not an easy subject. My immediate reaction is to say “screw it, transpeople have so many other disadvantages that it’s silly to focus on one individual who happens to stand out in terms of physical prowess or skill.” At the same time, being XY and having testosterone for a large part of you life undeniably changes a lot of things about a person’s body which could give them an advantage. There are a few ways I try to rationalize the inclusion of XY transwomen in XX sports.

  1. The massive amounts of female hormones taken does lead to a serious and significant sandbagging of the athlete, and this effect manifests itself in matter of a couple of months. As a result, someone who can overcome that sandbagging and still compete well must have some innate or inborn athletic skill to begin with which should be recognized. Now on the flip side, it’s also possible that a transwoman might start out on hormones, then forgo them for training - even taking testosterone if they have had SRS or an orchiectomy. That possibility complicates things, but it could also be tested for like any other drug test for women who take testosterone.

1a) Let’s not forget that in some sports at least, XX women will likely have an advantage. XX women tend to have better balance and more flexibility, for example, and in some uncommon events they appear to benefit from greater endurance.

  1. XY transwomen athletes are so vanishingly rare that to focus on the one or two people who do rise to at least the mid-levels of a sport is meaningless.

  2. If we want to focus on physical differences being unfair, it harkens back a bit to when black athletes began to really enter and dominate certain sports, such as basketball and some track and field events. It’s difficult to argue that black athletes, due to having a greater height and longer reach statistically than white athletes, don’t enjoy advantages in certain sports. And let’s talk about Chinese gymnasts, or any country which tends to produce a greater number of incredibly petite and athletic girls. Rather than create a “negro league” or “Asian league” of athletes, everyone competes in the same sport and events. So since transpeople are born that way, why can’t they compete, even though some may have a natural advantage?

3a) The flip side of this is expressed by those, several on this message board here in fact, who believe that transpeople are insane, no different than a person who thinks they are Napoleon or Rum Tum Tugger. Medical evidence strongly indicates that it is not merely mental differences, but physical ones in several different ways.

  1. And then we get to the intersex people, who while uncommon are not rare. What do we do with people like me? Where do we compete, if not with the group we are medically closest to? Dare anyone suggest creating an “Intersex Olympics?” Again, the cases are uncommon enough such that people worrying over it, I feel, have a solution which is looking for a problem.

  2. Then there is the issue of “does it matter?” Yeah, it may matter if you’re a petite XX female fighter who goes up against Fallon Fox and loses. But on the grand scheme of things, are trans (not intersex) athletes dominating any sport? Are any of them even in the top 10? The top 100? I’m really uncertain. History has found that some Olympic-calibre women were likely intersex, and in a couple of cases possibly transgender, but since 1970 I do not think any transperson or intersex person has dominated any sport whatsoever. So the argument here is, where is the overall threat? How did it change the sport? At all?

  3. I wonder how much of the concern is legitimate, and how much is just transphobia with a veneer upon it.

That being said, I found a month or so ago a statistical analysis of Fallon Fox done by a trans-friendly researcher, who admitted that yes, they did seem to stand out as having a disproportionately successful record taking into account their age and other factors. While this was by no means proof (and I searched and cannot find the link, dammit), it made me wonder a bit more about what’s really happening here, and what the right answer is.

However, based upon these points, my gut feel is to let the transpeople and intersex people compete, and just don’t worry about it. Verify that they are diagnosed trans, and not an XY male who is just playing dress-up to get some wins. The International Olympic Committee already has some good guidelines in place; Cecil wrote about them some time ago, so why not use those? If it’s good enough for the IOC, why not the MMA?

17

The reminds me of the basketball player, can’t remember her name, who dominates in height over her competitors. Something doesn’t seem right since she attained that height as a male.

18

And yet, height is not the only factor in a successful basketball career. Not everyone in the NBA is 7 feet tall, or even 6.5 feet tall.

I think it’s something that needs to be discussed, but lets face it, if you’re talking world champions or Olympic-level in any sport most men in the world aren’t going to be able to keep up with the elite women (elite men, of course, are in their own league). You need more than XY genes and a childhood/adolescence soaked in male hormones to be that level of athlete.

It reminds me somewhat of the Oscar Pistorius debate, whether his artificial limbs gave him an unfair advantage or not over runner with wholly organically grown feet.

19

This is an interesting issue, but I don’t think that there’s an answer that will make everyone happy. In a sport where men have a natural advantage, particularly from a difference in strength and leverage, I don’t think that even longterm female hormone usage will undo all of that.

As mentioned, going through puberty as a man means that she is going to have a different skeletal structure than if she were a genetic woman. This means she’s going to have some leverage advantages. However, there’s also going to be some genetic women who have naturally greater leverage advantage than the vast majority of women. Is it fair to separate two people from being allowed to compete based on whether that particular advantage is just extremely uncommon for women, or natural for men and transitioned to a woman?

As an anecdote, I’ve never used steroids, but I’ve known a few people who have. In a couple of cases, I’ve known them before and after using them. In each case, they made huge gains in strength, mass, endurance, while on steroids. While they did lose a lot of their gains when they stopped, even a few years later, they maintained a non-trivial amount of it. So, I’d be inclined to believe that there is probably some strength advantage to having lived a significant portion of one’s life with higher testosterone. But at the same time, some genetic women have naturally higher strength or testosterone. Is it fair for one of them to be allowed to compete and the other not?

It really comes down to how much these factors actually contribute and where the people who participate in, manage, and follow th sport on where that line should be drawn. In this case, the athlete is dominating, so many inclined to believe that these advantages may be significant and unfair. Would we be having this discussion if she were perhaps good but not dominant? Maybe these advantages in her case are negligible and her natural athletic talent is enough that she’d still be dominant; afterall, there’s plenty of examples of athletes that dominate even without any of this.

So, sadly, I think this whole discussion about the supposed advantages is missing the larger point. If people consent fight her, if the fans still watch, is it really an issue? Even in cases where there’s no real unfair advantage for a player, they’ve made rule changes because it affected the game. Isn’t that how goaltending became a rule in basketbal, various pitching mound changes in baseball, etc.?

20

You ruined a perfectly defensible post with this stupid nonsense. First, Blacks are not taller on average than Whites, so even if Black athletes are indeed taller than White ones, it has nothing to do with their race; only their desire to play a given sport. Your comments about gymnastics are equal unfounded. Please just stick to the topic at hand instead of making absurd analogies.