There are the favoured groups that receive kid-glove treatment, there are the career choices that are praised for taking women into unchartered territory, and there is reality. Recently, all three collided to the detriment of female mixed-martial arts competitor Tamikka Brents:
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. ”
His “grip was different,” she added. “I could usually move around in the clinch against...females but couldn’t move at all in Fox’s clinch.”
Ms. Brents had the trauma of fighting Fallon Fox and didn't last three minutes. Fox who was transgendered in 2006 now pretends to be a woman. But he's not, and now the league is wondering how to proceed when anyone can say "I'm a woman, and I want to fight." One way to draw a line, they think, is to consider the time of transgendering (before or after puberty) but no matter what, there are certain realities to deal with:
[L]ast year, UFC announcer Joe Rogan made his opinion unambiguously and graphically clear, saying on his podcast that a transgendered man would "have all the bone structure that comes with” being a man. “You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints."
Speaking to LifeSiteNews, military veteran Jeff Nader, who has fought for UFC competitor Bellator, said that “Fallon Fox has had the benefits of being a man for most of his life. [He has] bone density, muscle mass, and other physical benefits that one gets from being a man. You can't have that, and then make a minor adjustment -- basically, a cosmetic adjustment -- and suddenly claim to be a woman."
"Nothing can take away from the fact that you are physically a man. Mentally and emotionally, who knows -- but physically, he's a man."
While the MMA community deals with this challenge, I would like to turn our attention to warfare, where no such rules exist. We cannot choose whom we fight, nor establish parameters within battles. To put women in theatres where they very well may encounter hand-to-hand combat with men is to set them up for failure -- even death. And those who depend on them (men and women) may also die because bone density and muscle mass matter. Saying that we live in a push-button world is a fantasy, because war is chaos and depends on brute strength at various -- unscheduled -- moments.
Just to show what we're dealing with, though, we'll take one last look at Fallon Fox, to understand the mentality of how one fighter sees his opponents.
In an interview with "Inside MMA," Fallon said that "I don’t believe that a transgender fighter should have to disclose her personal medical history to other female fighters before they fight. It’s simply for the reason the medical community and the scientific community have come to the consensus that post-operative transsexual fighters who have been on hormone-replacement therapy and testosterone suppression, when they’re going from male to female, haven’t been found to have any physiological advantages over other women.”
Fox also said that some women who don't want to fight him may choose that path because they "might be a hate-filled person" or "have a bias." He said that "I don't want to fight those people, anyways, because they're scared.” He wants to fight someone who will fight "aggressively."
Having swallowed more than his share of lies throughout his life, he concludes that anyone opposes his charade is a hater or a coward (while skipping over the fact that he would find lots of aggression if he chose to fight men!)
While I don't expect to find rocket surgeons within the MMA ranks, this reveals quite a bit about his lack of self-awareness or his ability to process the concerns of others. What a shame that so many people have failed him along the way -- but perhaps the MMA authorities will remind him that natural law has some boundaries that cannot be ignored.
Comments
“People have realized that the complete removal of the feminine element from the Christian message is a shortcoming from an anthropological viewpoint. It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity."
This is just another of the unintended consequences of the cultural acceptance of contraception and abortion! Men's sexuality has been robbed of its creative essence. It is now viewed as something that imposes a burden on women (when conception happens to occur), something used to control women or something that is purely recreational. Why would men bother?? In taking away their responsibility, we've also robbed them of their significance! In the big picture of humanity, men have been made into nothing more than a nuisance women have to figure out how to control in order to bring about the next generation. Men don't see it as their task to protect the vulnerable because they see themselves as the vulnerable ones. A few well preserved vials of sperm would make men entirely obsolete in the world's ethos today!!
That is astounding Robin, and good for you for standing up. At the heart of that matter, I think, is even worse than a gender mixing message. There is an increased sharper and sharper focus on the "self." Solid Catholic teaching returns our focus away from ourselves to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The original sin, Eve denied her womanhood when she desired to be like "gods." Since the only god she knew was the Father. Where was Adam? He stood impotent... in other words, they were divorced. There's a young girl at Robin's son's high school who was just told that she is the center of the universe and it's a tragic disservice to her.
Ditto what Mary said! A lot of high schools have very poor math and science depts, for boys and girls. I also am educated as a chemical engineer, but chose to teach the two years before we had children because its hours were more suited to spending time with children. (I was looking ahead). When it came time and I was pregnant with our first, I realized that I did not want to leave him with someone else, and was able to stay home full time. I am not sure it would have been that easy if we were used to another engineering income and not just a private school teacher income. Also some of my first job offers were out on oil rigs - I had no interest in that at all even though I enjoyed my engineering classes and did well in them. No one discouraged me from an engineering job, on the contrary I got a lot of flack for my decision not to pursue an engineering career.
I've been lurking, but this is one that irritates me. Beats the heck out of me what these "barriers" are. I was educated as a chemical engineer, where 1/3 of our class was women. However, in electrical engineering, only 1 or 2 out of 30 were women. Is it possible that women are Just Not Interested in some areas? Nah, it must be The Man keeping us down so we must legislate (and, I agree -- when they say "legistlate", I hear "quota"). And actually, I have a friend that was also a chemical engineer. When she lost her job, she decided not to go back into engineering and started working from home so she could spend more time with her 3 kids. Also, if nothing else, there are all kinds of incentives for women to enter science and engineering -- scholarships not available to men, guaranteed housing on campuses that do not guarantee housing to the general population, etc. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that schools in general are not preparing students for the hard sciences. It is truly a sad state of affairs, the lack of science education these days.