In Boxing Hitting Women Outside the Ring is More Accepted Than Trans Women Competing

The ethos “never hit a woman” comes out of a worldview of male dominance and supremacy trans people threaten.

“Never hit a woman.” The phrase is sold to boys in childhood as a pillar of masculine virtue. It implies that a real man will hit some people, that violence is rightfully part of manhood, but that a line should be drawn at hitting girls or women. The sentiment also forms the core of an opinion column in the Gainsville Sun, David Whitley, opposing rules allowing transgender women to compete with other women in the sport of boxing, provided they follow a very restrictive set of rules requiring both genital surgery and long-term hormone suppression. (It should be added, also, that boxing already divides itself by weight classes, so all size-based advantages are rendered irrelevant.)

However, in the world of boxing, domestic violence scandals are frequent. “Never hit a woman” is a convenient trope to trot out to defend the idea of male superiority, not a principle men in boxing genuinely adhere to.

In the Sun column, Whitley quotes 15-year-old boy repeating the sentiment that a man shouldn’t hit a woman. It also quotes Senator Marco Rubio, a 52-year-old boy, who voiced the same sentiment writing, “Allowing men to hit women is reprehensible, even under the guise of athletic competition", in a letter he sent to USA Boxing.

In theory, the idea that a man shouldn’t hit a woman is about discouraging and stigmatizing domestic violence, not controlled sporting events. However, Whitley never mentions violence against women outside the boxing ring. It’s a particularly glaring omission because boxing has a long history of having elevated and celebrated domestic abusers.

Whitley steers clear of boxing’s many domestic violence scandals, so let’s run through a few of them. In his own state of Florida, the boxing world has seen repeated arrests of Gervonta Davis for hitting women. Whitley’s column includes references and a photograph of one of boxing’s biggest celebrities, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, but Whitley neglects to mention Tyson’s incidents of domestic violence against his then-wife, Robin Givens. Floyd Mayweather also has an extensive history of domestic violence, as have many other well-known boxers. While most sports have a few male abusers, boxing stands out as one of the least likely to regulate or condemn domestic abuse by its participants.

For the column Whitley canvassed a boxing gym. He doesn’t say explicitly that there were no women present, but he doesn’t mention seeing any, and doesn’t quote a single woman’s opinion. He found men training for the boxing ring didn’t like the idea of a trans women boxing with other women, but he didn’t ask them to weigh in on stars of their own sports who have repeatedly beaten the women who were their partners.

It may seem as though the thrust of my point is to point out the hypocrisy of men in boxing declaring how wrong it is to hit a woman, but this isn’t about hypocrisy. Hypocrisy would only be involved if these men genuinely believed that men shouldn’t hit women. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

“Never hit a woman” isn’t really a condemnation of men who hit women. Instead it is a statement of male supremacy. Boxers despise the idea of trans women competing equally with women because it makes women their equals, able to take a hit in the ring, but also able to fight back, able to win a fight, able to dominate their opponents. This is what these boxers, and Whitley, and Senator Rubio, all have in common. They don’t object to men hitting women, how could they if they can’t even be bothered to remember the many, many boxers who have been arrested and sometimes even gone to jail for hitting women.

What they object to, really, is the concept of women’s equality and their gut feeling (which is probably correct) that acceptance and integration of transgender people into public life is an example of that equality in practice.