Once upon a time, when a guy beat up a woman he was socially ostracized if not arrested outright (this does not apply to parts of New Jersey, obviously). Thanks to the transgender movement which is striving to make us all believe that men can become women and women become men and that there are more than two sexes/genders, those days are rapidly receding into the rear view mirror of our cultural memory. Now if you are a man who undergoes a sex change operation and become a mixed martial arts fighter, you can not only kick ass on girls to your heart’s content, you can be applauded for doing so.

In a story titled Fallon Fox is still the bravest athlete in history, Outsports, the LGBPTTQQIIAA+ [hope I didn’t miss any letters/symbols…] sports outlet sees a guy who hid his being transgender from his teammates until a reporter was going reveal it as a hero and a role model.

In 2013, when Fallon Fox came out publicly as trans in professional mixed martial arts, she was the target of a torrent of hatred I have literally never seen targeting an LGBTQ athlete. While certainly some writers took thoughtful approaches to understanding this emerging dynamic of trans athletes in women’s sports, still many more, like Joe Rogan, were vicious for the sake of being vicious.

Yet Fox stood strong and continued to push for, and earn, her right to compete. Except for one fateful match, she also won every time she stepped into the professional ring.

When I wrote my book, Fair Play: How LGBT Athletes Are Claiming Their Rightful Place In Sports, the final chapter was titled, “Fallon Fox Is The Bravest Athlete In History.”

That remains true for me now, four years later.

Here are some videos of his fights.

In this fight, Fallon actually crushed his opponent’s orbital that required seven surgical to repair.

I posted on this guy five years ago in Women’s sports: the next victim of tolerance

…For every hulking “Gabrielle Ludwig” on a team there is an actual woman being cut from the squad. With the standard being set as a “consistent and genuine expression” of gender identity rather than, say, a homone test, it is easy to see how women’s athletics could disappear because women are simply not competitive in most sports. Take, for instance, something like the 100 meters. In the 2012 London Olympics these are the results from the finals of the women’s 100 meters:

If you look at the men’s 100 meter high school championships from California you see:

The 18th place finisher was faster than the women’s Olympic Gold Medal winner.

Where the actual physical difference between male and female, between men and women, comes to the fore is in combatives. For instance, Mixed Martial Arts has a transgender fighter named “Fallon Fox” (or as his birth certificate says, Boyd Burton). Last weekend, he squared off with a woman fighter named Tamikka Brent, no slouch herself in the masculine features category. Prior to the fight she had this to say:

“I am tired of Fox getting all this publicity just for being a transgender fighter rather than having great skills. I think it’s unfair anyway but as long as the opponent knows and accepts the fight then go ahead… She’s using all that attention as a good publicity tactic – go ahead and ride that free publicity train as long as you can. I’ll gladly derail that s*** quickly so the world can go back to giving the publicity and notice to the female fighters who earn it. It just pisses me off that Women’s MMA has fought to get away from being seen as a side show. She’s using that to further her career while setting Women’s MMA back in the process.”

How did that work out?

On Saturday, Fox defeated Tamikka Brents by TKO at 2:17 of the first round of their match. In addition to the damaged orbital bone that required seven staples, Brents received a concussion. In a post-fight interview this week, she told Whoa TV that “I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life.”

“I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night. I can’t answer whether it’s because [he] was born a man or not, because I’m not a doctor,” she stated. “I can only say, I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life, and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right.

Hardly an unexpected outcome given the advantage that men have over women in muscle mass, body composition, and bone structure that is the product of nature and not a social construct.

This physical advantage is not unnoticed by others in the sport. Rhonda Rousey, for instance

This goes back to the point that we on the right have made over and over. If you want to get that operation that Rush Limbaugh used to refer to as either an addadictomy or takadicfromy, and go on an extensive hormone regimen to change some of your external features, that’s your business. That is your right. But your right to be left alone in your self-delusion end when they touch the rights of others. Don’t expect me to pay for it. Don’t expect a non-gay person to want to date you. Don’t expect to be a man competing in women’s athletics and be taken seriously as an athlete or as a person of honor. Don’t expect to beat up women and be admired. And no, you’re not the bravest athlete in history and no number of fawning magazine articles can ever change that.