MMA’s first openly trans athlete still encounters prejudice inside and outside the sport and says media are partly to blame: ‘We don’t tell people to write stories in respectful ways’

An athlete and a transgender person – that both identities could be conceivable fascinates our media landscape, from the New York Post all the way up to the New York Times. This is perhaps why speculation about Bruce Jenner’s gender identity has been disappointingly rife in recent weeks, even though the athlete has not spoken out about it.

Fallon Fox knows what it’s like to be the focus of rumours and hearsay. She is a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter – and the first openly trans athlete in the sport’s history.

Fox is intimately familiar with our culture’s treatment of trans athletes. She was not out publicly when she began competing, although licensing commissions knew she was trans. But after Fox began winning, a reporter called her and made it clear he knew she was trans. Fox understood she had to get ahead of the story, so she came out in an Outsports article in March 2013.

When I ask Fox about the obsessive interest in an athlete’s transition, she brings up the retrogressive idea that, despite the fact that there are actually many female athletes, sports are men’s domain. This leads people to see Jenner’s athletic abilities as a sign of maleness, making the possibility that Jenner might be trans a contradiction to gawk at.

Fallon Fox: ‘I want to bring my people with me.’ Photograph: Rhys Harper

I ask Fox about being put in the position of having to come out publicly so early in her career. “That sucked. I expected that someone was going to out me; you just can’t go through life with a microscope on your career without someone delving into your past a little bit,” she says. “But it’s something you really can’t prepare yourself for.” Her face grows serious. “The scope of anger and vitriol that I received initially ... That was disheartening, tragic. It was mind-blowing.”

This is not how Fox wanted her career to go. Her dream narrative would have been for her to go in there just like any other fighter would, collecting wins, hopefully ending up the best female fighter on the face of the planet. “I suppose I’d like all of that still,” she says pensively. “But in addition to that, I want to bring my people with me.”

Fox’s interest in MMA stemmed from the fact that women competing in the sport were breaking the strict male/female rules associated with combat sport. She discovered the discipline when a trainer told her that if she really wanted to get in shape, she should go with him to an MMA gym. “There, women were doing things that other women weren’t doing for the most part. They were aggressive. I needed to see that in my evolution as a woman. Transgender women especially feel like we have to fit the binary system to a T in order to not be recognized as trans.”



Fox would like to see the media obsession with the idea that Jenner might be trans go away. “I think that they should leave him alone and just let Bruce Jenner live Bruce Jenner’s life, because if it is what everyone thinks it is, if Bruce Jenner is actually a woman by a different name, putting her through this right now is the worst thing they could do. I don’t know if they think it’s a joke or a game they’re playing, but this is a real person.”

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The dangers of setting up trans women as the punchline of a joke are very real – as many as seven trans women have already been reported murdered this year in the US, the majority of them women of color. In most cases, prejudice and bigotry play a part in such violence. The issue of how trans women are represented in the media truly is a matter of life and death.

“People can speculate all they want,” Fox continues, “but for journalists it’s gone far more than speculation. They snicker, pointing out certain aspects of Bruce’s jaw, face or whatever in order for people to gawk at and laugh at.”

Fox has also experienced this obsession, particularly as an athlete. Pseudo-scientific arguments have been used, including by potential opponents, to argue that Fox has an unfair advantage. UFC fighter Ronda Rousey has been repeatedly quoted arguing that Fox has greater bone density and developed a bone structure that gives her an advantage. It’s hard not to see these arguments as a strategic move. “They just want me out of the way, which is tragic,” says Fox.

Medical experts have refuted these arguments multiple times. Dr Eric Vilain, director of the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA, who helped the Association of Boxing Commissions write its transgender policy and also examined Fox’s medical records, told Time that “male to female transsexuals have significantly less muscle strength and bone density, and higher fat mass, than males”. Indeed, transition could mean a hormonal disadvantage for Fox because of her low testosterone levels.

Dr Marci Bowers, an OB-GYN specialist and a leader in the field of transition-related surgeries, told me that Fox is, physically speaking, not in a superior position to all other women. “There are taller women than her, there are bigger women than her, there are stronger women than her,” Bowers says. She notes that the International Olympic Committee found chromosomal differences among cisgender athletes – and the IOC has ruled that transgender athletes can compete in the Olympics.

“Sexual dimorphism refers to the amount of physical difference between the sexes,” Bowers explains. “The fact is, human beings actually differ very little in their sexual dimorphism, much less so than other species. In society we use things like how we wear our hair and clothes to differentiate. The difference is not very great. We all have estrogen and we all have testosterone . So when you get an incredibly conditioned athlete who is at the top of their game and is successful, I understand the angst. But it would trouble me more if it was a natal female taking anabolic steroids.”

Fox has pointed out that there are bone density differences across race – black women have, on average, the same bone density as white men, while Asian women have the lowest bone density across racial or ethnic groups. “People have used those arguments to feed bigotry in the past: they would say, for example, that black people have larger heel bones, bone structure, maybe they can stand in the sun longer than caucasians ... That’s an unfair advantage! What they’re doing is using people’s ignorance of biology and their hatred of a particular group, mushing that all together in one big ball, and it has the effect of convincing the most gullible.”

Fox in 2013. Photograph: Rhys Harper

Even more vexing to Fox is people who bring up mental advantages. “They don’t ask me, ‘Were you a physically strong person when you were male?’ They ask, ‘Did you learn technique as a man? Because if you did, that’s prank.’ What are they really saying? They’re saying that men are smarter than women, that’s what. If you were male-bodied, that makes you learn better. That’s incredibly misogynistic; it’s mind-boggling how they get away with it.”

Fox thinks that some people don’t understand transgender people partially because they don’t understand themselves, and what makes them a man or a woman: “It’s not about the genitals they have between their legs, it’s not the chromosomes they can’t see. It’s the thing located inside their cranium.”

This refusal to listen to reason has had an impact on Fox’s career, and not just because of potential opponents. The Ultimate Fighting Championship, the largest MMA promotion organization in the world, has not returned Fox’s calls. UFC president Dana White told reporters: “Bone structure is different, hands are bigger, jaw is bigger, everything is bigger. I don’t believe in it. I don’t think someone who used to be a man and became a woman should be able to fight a woman.”

The Unified Women’s MMA rankings are widely regarded in the sport, and Fox is not listed. When she reached out to ask them why, Tim Peterson, one of two people who determines the rankings, responded: “It is our opinion that you may have an unfair advantage over natural women in combat sports.” When Fox asked if this was based on any scientific evidence, pointing out that the medical commissioners had cleared her to compete, Peterson responded, “again, all rankings are subjective and opinion based.”

Despite repeated explanations from medical experts, arguments about bone density are routinely brought up. This perpetuation of false information by the media brings us back to the reporting of rumors about Jenner.

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“Media is set up to give information to the people – at least that’s what it says,” Fox points out. “But we all know in the US that media is a capitalistic system, people are getting paid to write things, they have bosses and editors, and they have bosses, and they put pressure on people to write intriguing stories that catch the eye. So in this unrestrained capitalism, we don’t tell people to write stories in respectful ways. Entities like TMZ and tabloids are the worst of this; they’re the canary in the coal mine. They’re tearing away at a minority group until people get fed up enough that there’s enough outrage and it stops.”

I ask Fox how this negative attention has impacted her. “It used to bother me a lot, and I think it had an effect of tampering my ability in the cage. People call you ‘fucking faggot’, or make transphobic comments like ‘Kick him in the nuts!’ It was sucking the love of the sport from me.

“It took me about a year to understand and to feel the support from the transgender community. Because heck, they’re scared. Some of them support me, but they’re scared of showing up at my fights because of this. But I did have a fight where people came to support me and that’s all I needed. I needed to know for certain that I had someone I was fighting for besides myself.”