As a TS woman do I stand a chance against men?

Hey so iv been training for a little bit now and in the gym we fight anyone. I hard spar every now and again and can hold my own against teenage boys. So was wondering if I stand a chance against men in my weight class.

I obviously have the 25% less muscle mass from hormones. But am fairly tall and have a good range. My weight class is bantamweight it would be a few classes higher if I was a man. My height is 5ft 10 giving me good range.

I pass very well have for years and like the idea of demasculinising men by beating them but not sure if I can compensate for the disadvantages.

I train hard like 12 hours a week and never plan to go pro as I'm 27 but wanna fight in a cage for fun.

 

As a TS women, as long as you passed through puberty as a man, then you'll keep much of the genetic benefits of being a man throughout that time (obviously any genetic intersex conditions can change that). Competition wise, you might find it difficult getting matches with other women as you have some advantage of other women.

Rosi sexton has a good blog about this here:

My take on the Fallon Fox controversy

 

I agree with you totally, however:

I regularly make a point of wearing Hello Kitty t shirts/patches purely because it's feminine and nobody wants to get their button whooped by a guy wearing Hello Kitty.

I also used to wear my Build-A-Bear t-shirt to MMA classes because I thought it was really funny (still do think it's funny). Shirt ripped now tho

 

Yes! That's how I'd want to put it. Someone asked me before why I wear them and I couldn't quite word it correctly. That's how I'll respond next time I'm asked, thank you!

 

You do realise sparring isn't fighting don't you?

They have different aims, and as you've only been training eight odd weeks, people are probably going extra light with you.

You shouldn't bring outside gender politics onto the mat, just turn up, treat training partners with respect, hard/safely and go home, rinse and repeat.

If you don't treat your partners with respect, you'll soon find how reciprocal training is.

 

I regularly train with my toe nails painted because my (9/10 y.o.) daughter went/is going through a phase of wanting to open her own nail salon and so I became a "customer". File, buff, varnish, etc.
I've had tiger stripes, taekwondo coloured belt colours (yellow, green, blue, red), british army camo, black with a yellow dan stripe. All sorts.
I like to playfully kick people in the head with a foot that looks FABULOUS.

But yeah...sparring with the intent of "demasculizing men" is very strange. I'd look into why you're motivated to do that.

I can see the intent in taking down some overly cocky idiot a peg or two but most guys training are just in it to improve themselves, test themselves, gain some confidence, get fitter, etc. Much the same reasons gay, lesbian, trans or whatever people train.

And what's to say that that "demasculized man" hasn't previously suffered an assault, bullying, anxiety issues and is training to address them.
Hell...they could even be gay or a trans person themselves right?

 

As a woman being able to beat men in any sport is empowering. I just wonder if im able to do it with the disadvantages I face against them in this sport.

 

This has actually popped up again as a wider topic as Henry Cejudo and Valentina Shevchenko are having some back and forth (none of it serious from either side) on fighting to be the "intergender" flyweight champion as they both are the respective -125lb champions for their genders.
I am fully in support of trans rights and acceptance, gender equality, gender identity, feminism and all that.
Put simply Cejudo would win about 99 fights out of a 100 against Valentina in sanctioned sporting bouts imho.
Social forms of violence are a little different as there is much more additional context and variables at play that the outcome is not so certain.

The main message for ANYONE in martial arts should be to be able to beat the YOU of yesterday and not worry about how you do against others. Improve yourself. There will always be people of both genders you can beat and be beaten by. The only constant is comparing your self now to your self in the past. Be better than that person for as long as you can.

 

Im posting this mainly because im not sure if im even allowed to fight women, so can I fight men ? Whats the options for me? I live in the UK and not found any info on the rules around TG fighters. UFC has a policy but thats in the US. Ill still train anyway cos its fun, just wondering if theres any chance of eventually getting into proper fights.

 

Quit honestly if you choose to explore these options you'd be on the cutting edge of the issue and breaking new ground. I'd applaud you for that but no doubt you'd get some abuse and stick for it sadly.
There's been Fallon Fox in MMA and at least one (maybe more?) trans competitors in Thai boxing (Parinya Charoenphol - Wikipedia for example) but it's still an unknown subject really.
There are lots of people on both sides of the argument adamant they know the facts (this is the case! No this is the case!) when really no one really knows. There's just not enough data on it imho.
Clearly there's a change in a person when they transition from one gender to the other but exactly how much of the effects of the previous gender "linger" is probably highly variable.
Good luck to you whatever you decide to do.

 

Plenty of cis women used compete used to compete against men in Nogi maybe that is something you can look at in the short term? I think there was a competition being set up, for all women, aimed at including TS women who might be put off a regular competition.
More info is here IIRC:

Episode 18 - Chloe Moore

But yes, like anything informed consent is key, otherwise people may get hurt, and it would look bad if you didn't do things in an open way.

A good start is talking to your coach about this, when you feel you are able too.

 

It's a grey area. The UK is the wild west when it comes to MMA. Best bet is to be as honest as possible and hope someone will let you fight.

 

There's a good legal argument that if you hide your gender history, and the opponent gets hurt, it can be argued that's it's GBH/Assault, and it looks really bad for TS as a whole, Fallon fox still gets used to beat the TS community because of this.

 

I dunno if I agree with that. People get caught on performance enhancers all the time and nothing of legal note comes of it.

 

Mark Hunt is suing Brock Lesnar and the UFC over former champion's failed drugs test

I've definitely seen it brought up about Fallon fox as well, but it wasn't where I thought I'd seen it.

Edit:

Bulk of Mark Hunt’s lawsuit against the UFC dismissed

Although that's in the states not the UK

 

Yeah Mark Hunt is the only case so far and it didn't set a precedent.

 

But aside from the legal angle, doing it without informed consent just looks really bad, the amount of flack Fallon fox took was bad enough, but if she had done it without her opponents knowing her history, although I've just realised I've never checked that, did her opponents know she was a post op TS?

IIRC there was a pre op TS competing in BJJ a few years ago without hurt a telling anyone, who hurt a few people, and definitely didn't help their cause.