Boxer Amanda Serrano Demands Equality for Women in Her Sport

Have we forgotten that advocacy for women in sports can challenge patriarchy?

by Evan Urquhart

Donald Trump has a pantomime he does on the stump, in state after state, when he talks about his plan to ban trans women from women’s athletic competition. He mimes a generic female weightlifter, grunting and groaning in an attempt to break a weightlifting record, then failing and dropping the imaginary barbell. Then, the punchline, a trans woman who has never lifted weights lifts the record breaking amount easily. Trump tells the story as if it were a true anecdote, but of course it never happened (it might be loosely based on a male weightlifter who entered a Canadian women’s lifting competition as a troll). While ostensibly about trans women, the real point of Trump’s performance, with all the grunting and dropping heavy weights in failure, is how weak cis women are.

Conservative advocacy that presets itself as a defense of women in sports has long been synonymous with conservatives pointing out how much weaker than men cis women are. Trump is particularly blatant in this, of course, but the Daily Wire satire Lady Ballers has also been incredibly transparent about making cis women athletes their real target. That’s why it’s such a breath of fresh air to read about a woman in athletics who is standing up for women the old-fashioned way: By demanding that women in her sport be treated the same way men are.

screenshot from ESPN.com

Amanda Serrano, a top women’s boxer, wants to prove to the world that women can fight. The 35-year-old has risen to the top of the sport, becoming the undisputed featherweight world champion in a fight where she beat her opponent bloody, and recently defending the title in a match played by men’s rules, with 12 3-minute rounds. That last part is controversial, with the governing body of one of the titles she won to unify the featherweight championship, the WBC, refusing to recognize the match. The WBC insists that women fight the standard 10 2 minute matches. Serrano insists she will only fight in 12 3 minute rounds going forward.

By defying the idea that a woman’s competitions needs special rules, Serrano is standing up for women’s strength and toughness, for the right to be respected as a boxer rather than put into a special category with an asterisk. It represents pride in herelf as an athlete and a refusal to be considered second-class based on her gender.

Serrano, to my knowledge, has never weighed in on whether trans women should be included in women’s boxing. But regardless of her views on that specific issue, her advocacy should be understood as the opposite of women like Riley Gaines, who are fighting to exclude transgender women. Gaines, who tied for fifth place in a swimming race with Lia Thomas and more recently appeared in Lady Ballers, is fighting for women’s sports to be demeaned and lessened, and for women athletes to be mocked as weaklings by the likes of former presidents and two-bit conservative commentators.

The pugilistic spirit of Serrano provides a refreshing contrast to the politics of cis women as less-than promoted by Gaines and others. It’s a great reminder of how the fight for women’s rights is a fight for equality, not for seperation based on women’s subservient status.