Most of the guys who complain of women participating in the sport do so for superficial reasons. It is not, in fact, the quality of the bouts that is the issue, as anyone whose seen female fights would know.

Their reasons against are simple and clear, if not bizarre and ominous:

For them, and many like them, the word woman is equated with sex. Be it sex appeal, motherhood, 'loving', etc, it can all be pigeonholed into that one slot. The 'caring' guise, that women are not made for a brutal sport, is the same culture of repression and morality that saw other human beings as inferior and less than human (i.e. leading to slavery, racism, genocide). To see a woman who is able to access her aggression and channel it into skills that are brutal and effective is, on some unconscious level, a challenge to the submissive roles they believe women are in. It's a societal thing. 'Women are meant for loving' not fighting. But anyone who has seen an two-year-old little girl (raised in a family that does not hit, smack and rarely shouts)angrily lash out and scratch the everliving sh*t out of her sibling knows that aggression and the urge to fight is in us all. Many men don't mind women training, but draw the line at ring competition: Don't get UGly! As if! It's okay for men to get ugly? Fighting, in their minds, means injury and disfigurement to the sexual appeal of a woman. This is valued above and beyond the benefits of fighting: self-esteem, discipline, stress relief, glory, money, etc (the reasons you all fight). The nobler aspects of our human character are subsumed and relegated to lower status under the almighty sex appeal.

To some, women are the last bastions of what should be in our culture. If they are allowed to compete freely and equally in the last bastion of male culture - fighting - this would call into question the very nature of fighting itself. Why do we fight?!?!

The human culture has not always been this way (about women fighting) and will not continue to be so. There is so much historic documentation of not only women in pugilistic sporting, but as leaders, warlords, warriors, etc. But in the recent past, the 'woman's' role has been disallowed the aggressive emotions to the point that some men fetishize a poweful woman (i.e. dominatrixs, women fightters, etc).

This would explain many of the viewpoints of misguided, yet generally benign arguments against women fighting (i.e. "it's okay, i guess, but I wouldn't want my sister/girlfriend/ child etc to do it).

Yet there is a rare, more malevolent contigent of men who see women fighting as a challenge to their dominate role. Women who can fight are not so easy to rape, brutalise, murder. Women who know how to fight are equal! Yikes!


Watch out!

Thank you to the many men who have defended the right of women to fight, those of you who have trained muay thai, and some of the other most brutal sports to women when, 'technically' it has not been legal (in the case of boxing at least), until a handful of years ago. You have no idea how awesome you are or how you have actually, in doing so, changed the shape of the future.

Sorry to bang on, but, being a woman and all, I can't help but speak up on this.

Looking forward to fighting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!