USA Boxing, which governs the sport nationwide, recently announced they would allow transgender women would be able to participate in women's boxing matches. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote a letter to USA Boxing's CEO Mike McAtee, calling out the danger of the new policy and demanding its reversal, saying, "Allowing men to hit women is reprehensible, even under the guise of athletic competition."
NBC noted that transgender boxers must have undergone sex reassignment surgery and hormone levels are strictly monitored, with transgender women (male-to-female) required to be within range of biological women at under five nanomoles of testosterone per liter, as the average for women is 3.1. Similarly, transgender men (female-to-male) must have testosterone levels over ten nanomoles per liter, as this is the average for biological men.
While this guideline is meant to keep boxing matches fair, Sen. Rubio said in his letter that "Your transgender policy denies the scientific reality of sex, endangers women, upends fairness in athletics, and diminishes womanhood by pretending it is only a matter of surgery and hormone levels."
Moreover, Sen. Rubio pointed out that even with these hormone requirements, biological men still retain advantages over women, such as greater muscle mass, bone density, and lung capacity, making the hormone issue effectively pointless.
"These advantages allow men to overpower and endanger women past the point of fair competition. Hormone injections and monitoring cannot remove these innate, biological advantages. Even if they could, that would not change the fundamental principle that it is wrong for men to hit women," Rubio continued.
Furthermore, the hormone and sex reassignment surgery requirement harms the transgender boxers just as much as the biological ones, with Rubio calling the latter "dangerous and irreversible."
To further drive the point home, Rubio cited the controversy surrounding Fallon Fox, a transgender mixed martial artist who fractured the skull of Tamika Brents in a 2014 match, among other controversies.
"Undoubtedly, your organization is under tremendous pressure from activists to promote transgenderism in the name of “inclusion,” but that is no excuse to disregard and endanger athletes," Rubio concluded.
In May, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) similarly ripped the Biden Administration's proposed changes to Title IX, which would allow transgender women to compete in women's college athletics, calling it "a monumental setback for the generations of women who have benefited from Title IX’s enactment over the last fifty years."
