The next front in the war on women’s sports opened up with the arrival of the new year. The United States governing body for amateur and Olympic boxing is USA Boxing. They have just released their updated rules for 2024 and you can probably already guess the direction they are taking. Starting this year, they will allow men who “identify” as women to compete against actual women. Like other groups before them, they claim to be putting some restrictions on the “transition” status of the men before they are allowed to compete, but we’ve seen this movie before and we know how that works out. However, unlike swimming, bicycling, or even weightlifting, this sport poses even greater dangers to female competitors.  (National Review)

The national governing body for amateur/Olympic-style boxing recently codified a rule permitting male participation in the women’s division in its 2024 rulebook.

USA Boxing added a ‘Transgender Policy,” written in August 2022, into its 2024 rulebook, declaring that male boxers who transition to female are eligible to compete in the female category under certain conditions. To qualify for the female division, a man must declare his gender identity as female, have undergone gender reassignment surgery, have done hormone testing for a minimum of four years after such procedures, and have met testosterone limits set by USA Boxing.

“The athlete’s total testosterone level in serum must remain below 5 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category,” the 2022 rule said.

Unsurprisingly, Riley Gaines was not happy

USA boxing @USABoxing to allow men who merely say they are women to fight against women.

Mark my words, it will take a woman getting killed before these misogynistic fools wake up. https://t.co/GSNKgqtMd2

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) December 30, 2023

As usual, Gaines is absolutely correct and she’s not being hyperbolic here. It’s bad enough when we have men beating women in noncontact sports, but boxing is another matter entirely. In fact, even in supposedly noncontact sports, we’ve seen injuries caused by overpowered males going up against women and girls. One high school girl suffered a concussion during a volleyball game after a boy spiked the ball into her head. The same thing happened to a female soccer player in Australia.

Women and girls are already being injured in the sports listed above, but boxing should never have even been on the table for consideration. This is a sport where the entire premise is based on the idea of punching your opponent in the head and the body. What do you think is going to happen when you allow a stampede of males into the ring with these women and girls? We don’t need to wait to find out. One transgender MMA fighter has already fractured the skulls of two female opponents. One female boxer in Canada recently withdrew from a tournament after being given only one hour’s notice that her opponent was transgender. The match was awarded to the man by default.

USA Boxing apparently believes they have addressed the problem by insisting that trans boxers first undergo surgery and then submit to hormone testing for four years. That may knock all of the recent converts out of the running for now, but some will still qualify and that number is only likely to grow in the future. As Gaines and others have correctly pointed out repeatedly, those types of “transitional” precautions do not address the underlying problem. Unless a boy begins “transitioning” before they reach puberty (which should be considered child abuse and medical malpractice), it’s too late. They go through a massive growth spurt at that point and leave the girls behind in athletic development. Chopping a few bits off and reducing their testosterone levels later on doesn’t change that.

Injuries happen in boxing on a regular basis and that’s just when we’re talking about men fighting men. The gloves that are worn do provide a certain level of protection and reduce injuries as compared to the era of bare-knuckle brawling. But those fighters still hit very hard. The most definitive victories are still considered knockouts, where the loser is sometimes literally beaten to the point of being unconscious. Do we really want an American sports authority to allow men to go into a ring and beat a woman unconscious? In any other setting, such an event would demand a domestic violence call to the police.