Any Boxing fans on here

[fanzone]

WBC to introduce a transgender category into their ranks.......my thoughts are the world has gone absolutely mad.

This is the last sport I thought would do something like this due to its dangerous nature.

[Shaggy]

It’ll never happen. Just MS blowing his own trumpet for a bit of traction. There’s barely enough decent quality females at the moment let alone Trans gender.

[Spiral]

I'm glad they're beginning a consultation process; the first thing they should do is consult an actual transgender person and have them work on their communications protocols, because the statements put out by the WBC have come from a person who doesn't appear to understand the nuance. Forgivable for your mate Alan down the pub who's trying his best not to come across as clueless but still uses awkward terms, like "a transgender", but you'd expect a global sporting body to be a bit more professional. For instance, "in boxing, a man fighting a woman must never be accepted regardless of gender change". Okay fine, I can see where you're coming from: owing to safety concerns you don't want to someone who went through a male puberty, with the strength advantages that come with said male puberty, to get in a ring with a woman who went through a female puberty. Nothing too controversial there. But you didn't say that, you said "a man fighting a woman must never be accepted". Problem with this kind of clumsy language is you're basically calling transgender women 'men'. They aren't 'men', they are transgender women — biologically male/assigned male at birth — a 'man' is a different thing to a 'transgender woman'. If they'd have ran all this past a trans person to proof read before making the announcement they could have got their point across without sounding clueless.

Anyway, a separate division makes the sport less dangerous, not more. Four divisions: Transgender women fighting transgender women, transgender men fighting trans men (though there's the possibility that this one might not be needed — if a trans man wants to get himself killed fighting a cis man, let him go for it I say), cisgender women fight cisgender women, cisgender men fight cisgender men.

[Spiral]

It’ll never happen. Just MS blowing his own trumpet for a bit of traction. There’s barely enough decent quality females at the moment let alone Trans gender.

Creating the division, even if it only exists theoretically and without participants, is the WBC's way of addressing safety concerns while actually providing tangible and practical inclusion beyond participation initiatives and empty slogans. At the minute you either have trans women fighting cis women, which, some people argue with some merit, could be dangerous, or you stick trans women in the men's division, which, if the trans woman has undergone hormone replacement therapy, means they'd be killed, and is also offensive to trans women by effectively telling them, "you're a man, compete as one." Clarifying the criteria to enter a division is a good idea because simply saying 'men' and 'women' is too blunt and unsophisticated to be compatible with transgender participation.

[Damo]

I like the idea.
It's much better than the progressive option of letting blokes beat up women because they have undergone 12 months of hormone therapy or whatever.
Obviously this will upset people who wouldn't normally watch boxing, but im all in favour of that too

[Stanbill05]

I like the idea.
It's much better than the progressive option of letting blokes beat up women because they have undergone 12 months of hormone therapy or whatever.
Obviously this will upset people who wouldn't normally watch boxing, but im all in favour of that too

Why would you want to upset anyone? Empathy and tolerance isn't hard if you try and will make you less unhappy.