As a Liberty-Minded guy I try to be tolerant of many alternative lifestyles that don’t harm me. I must say the whole Transgender thing is a bit alien to me. Mostly because I get being straight, and through that I get being gay, and knowing many gay people and hearing the struggles with family and relationships they go through, I know its not a “Choice” as many say. Further I’ve known several gay people who REALLY fought the good fight to live the straight lifestyle before finally realizing they are who they are, and there’s nothing they can do to change that.
I also understand body dysmorphic disorder, and have seen several cases of transgendered people who were sad and unhappy people as one gender, and elected to change their gender to be sad and unhappy people of another gender.
Still like most groups there are many types within each, and I’ve heard many stories from well-adjusted transgendered people. I’ve also been told in confidence from some friends that while they aren’t terribly interested in changing their gender, that they fall into the transgendered spectrum, and while I may have never considered them a man living in a woman’s body, or a woman living in a man’s body, when they confessed that to me it suddenly clicked.
Still this story is very different from all of that:
Born a man, Fallon Fox became a woman through surgery and then trained to fight in mixed martial arts.
Now that she has won her first two bouts — both in the first round — she has gone public as a transgender fighter, the first on record in a popular sport that some consider as the successor to boxing.
“The reaction has been positive,” said Fox, 37, who revealed her story recently to Sports Illustrated after a journalist with another publication began to investigate her private surgery. “It’s just some people, some of society doesn’t get it yet. And this is what we’re trying to do now is to inform people and let them know about transgender athletes.”
When asked if it’s fair for a man-turned-woman fighter to face another woman in the ring, Fox said there was “no unfair competitive advantages.”
What was unfair, her last opponent and her manager say, is how Fox didn’t disclose until after the fight that Fox had a sex change operation.
I think this really pushes the lines on the gender separation in professional sports a bit too far. We have rules where athletes cannot take steroids or other hormones to give them an advantage, and we have bodies of rules to verify that people competing in sports are indeed the gender they claim.
While this case may not be as sinister as an athlete juicing up on illegal drugs to enhance their bodies, or a man posing as a woman to compete in what is biologically a less competitive field of sports, this person biologically speaking is neither a man nor a woman, and depending on the biological time of the the reassignment she may posses some body morphology closer to that of a man than a woman.
Frankly I don’t see this as something that needs too much regulation as gender reassignment right now is VERY rare, and of that group, most don’t elect to enter professional competitive sports.
Still I think the complaints about lack of disclosure to be VERY valid.
