Monday, March 25, 2013
Wesley Hall - Fallon Fox Fighting to Fight
Florida State Boxing Commission officials are reviewing the MMA license of Fallon Fox who is a 37 year old intersexed female MMA fighter who competed at a featherweight tournament. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding this issue among fellow MMA fighters and even Hulk Hogan who said he would fight her and beat her. In her most recent fight that I am aware of, she knocked out Ericka Newsome in 39 seconds with a kick to the chin. She had sexual reassignment surgery in 2006 but it was just recently brought to the public. Her Illinois driver's license states her as being female as well. Fox claimed to be licensed in California but her license but her application is still being reviewed (as far as I know from this article). Her next fight was supposed to be April 20th but that has been postponed due to this controversy. Some MMA fighter see her as a male who is just beating up on females and shouldn't be allowed to fight and others believe that since she is listed as female that she should be allowed to. What do you think? If anyone has any further details to this situation feel free to comment below.
McNeil, F., & Isaacson, M. (2013, March 06). Fsbc reviewing fox's mma license. Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/mma/story/_/id/9023730/transgender-fighter-fallon-fox-faces-review- mma-license
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
ReplyDeleteWesley,
This is definitely an interesting topic. Biggest thing is how does the Florida State Boxing Commission respond? I think one thing to be considered is Title IX one of the main points is to not permit different genders to compete in physical competition. Although MMA is not a school and is not state funded entity I think it is a good reference. I do not think that the commission should allow Fallon to fight against opponents. Yes she identifies as a female and has had a sex change but her body make up is that of a man’s. For over 30 years of her life she was a male and I assume that she also trained and competed with males. It is not fair for her competition and that was obvious when she knocked out Erica Newsome in only 39 seconds. How the Florida State Boxing Commission responds will be hard but I do think for the future they will enact some type of policy to prevent or allow this. One thing I would like to see is how Fallon responds, would she go head to head with a male? And if she does should this be a basis of a new policy. Like I have said I do not think it is fair and feel that Fallon needs to compete with males.
Greg Gantt
Greg, I see where you are coming from and understand your argument but I disagree. She may have been born a male biologically but if we have learned anything in this class, it is that we all "do gender" differently. She may have been born intersexed and had the surgery performed because she felt more like a female like some of the athletes we have studied previously. I think that if she had the sexual reassignment surgery in order to dominate in the sport of Women's MMA then she may deserve the criticism and controversy and have to fight males. However, we do not know the whole story so I am going to have to assume she is a reasonable person and that she did not have the surgery for that purpose. Also, if she had to fight in men's MMA, I do not think it would fair to her. She is a female now and that is all that matters.
ReplyDeleteWesley Hall
Wes,
ReplyDeleteThis topic is a very grey-area problem. It seems to me that since it is so ambiguous as to whether she is a male or female that she almost needs a license with her just to say she is female. I think it is disappointing that the fight has to be postponed just because there is questioning around her sexual identity. Fighters involved in the fight have to be training a long time before the fight and to find out it is postponed has to be aggravating. If she did in fact do the sexual reassignment surgery to gain a more competitive edge then it would seem unethical and mysterious to other fighters and the commission.
-Jeff Kravetz