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.