When cage fighter Fallon Fox knocked out Ericka Newsome with a
well-placed knee to the mug last week, the Marquis of Queensberry
couldn’t have approved. The Scotsman regarded knee strikes as
ungentlemanly; fighting, unladylike. Alas, the marquis can rest
easy. Ms. Fox isn’t really a lady but a post-op transsexual
nicknamed “the Queen of Swords.”
The words “courageous” and “brave” generally don’t come to mind
to describe men who beat up women. The adjectives appear in
Bleacher Report and Sports Illustrated,
respectively, to characterize Fox’s fight to fight women.
“In a perfect world, Fallon would not have been obligated to
reveal her transsexuality beyond the state athletic commissions who
license her,” Sports Illustrated’s Loretta Hunt opines.
“What happens to Fallon next will set the groundwork for others to
follow, a small consolation as she wades through the misconceptions
and misnomers and rises to tackle the discriminatory reactions
she’ll get in the coming weeks.”
Might those “discriminatory reactions” come from women who don’t
wish to take on a man? Two women, both knocked senseless by Fox,
entered the cage not knowing the true sex of their opponent. They
probably thought a lot about “misnomers” and “misconceptions” after
taking their beatings from a dude who looked like a lady. Does
their right to know not supersede Fox’s right to remain hidden?
Barroom MMA fans, as likely to implore female combatants to
“make love, not war” as they are to shout “kill ’em” at male
fighters, perhaps fall under Ms. Hunt’s cast of troglodytes itching
to persecute Fallon Fox. Winning them over may prove harder than
winning against the chromosome-Y deprived competition.
Mixed martial artists go to extreme lengths—jogging in rubber
suits, popping diuretics, sleeping in the sauna—to cut weight. But
amputation has not been heretofore included in the arsenal of
tricks to delude the scales. While the fledgling sport struggles to
curtail elevated testosterone levels among competitors, it has only
now encountered the performance inhibiting drug estrogen.
Fox, according to Hunt, is a “trailblazer.” Andy Kaufman begs to
differ.
Intergender fistfights have a long if not proud tradition.
Surely any woman who made the mistake of burning Jake LaMotta’s
steak, at least in the movies, understands this. According to Keith
Richards’ autobiography, Brian Jones by no means boasted an
undefeated record in his unsanctioned matches against Anita
Pallenberg and other members of the fairer sex. Chris Brown hit
number one on Billboard’s album charts twice after he hit
Rihanna. Even Obama’s half-brother runs for governor of his section
of Kenya amid allegations that he beat two of his twelve wives.
Reputations can survive such ignominious behavior. Civilization,
once such ignominious behavior becomes accepted, can’t. The strong
protecting rather than preying upon the weak separates civilization
from barbarism.
Intergender prizefights, like the current drive in Massachusetts
to integrate women’s restrooms with men who have surgically removed
their genitals, should evoke a conflict between feminists and
sexual anarchists. But both groups remain too blinded by ideology
to realize it.
Acknowledging the humanity we share with those suffering from
gender dysphoria doesn’t require us to share their delusion. That
makes society as crazy as them. Fallon Fox is as much a woman as
the bag lady you pass by is the Queen of England. Their crazy
becomes contagious once we decide that politeness obligates us to
indulge it.
The Marquis of Queensberry, despite his fondness for bloody
brawls, was no Marquis de Sade. In fact, when John Douglas referred
to Oscar Wilde as a “posing sodomite,” a defamation suit ensued
that backfired on the novelist and led to his demise. Douglas
nevertheless gained a reputation as a freethinker in his day.
Undoubtedly, he wouldn’t be able to speak his thoughts very freely
in ours. Common sense, such as the notion that it’s wrong for men
to punch women, now goes by the name “bigotry.” The word shuts up
the opposition as much as Fallon Fox’s knee does.
Tolerance, nay, acceptance of antisocial behavior now passes for
progress, enlightenment, civilization. It’s later than you think.
We are so civilized that we have become barbarous.
