Boxing is asking for trouble by allowing transwomen into the ring against females

Ayden Fant is only 15 years old, but he sees the world changing. He wonders if it’s changing too fast.

“We were always taught not to hit a woman,” he said.

Fant’s classroom is Gladden Boxing Club in Gainesville. He’s one of the gym’s rising stars, ranking No. 3 in USA Boxing’s 145-pound junior division. That governing body has a new teaching plan.

It will allow transgender women 18 and older to compete in female divisions. They must have undergone gender reassignment surgery and undergo regular hormone testing.

That doesn’t make anybody at the gym feel much better about the new policy.

“You just hit on a crazy topic,” Lee Gladden said.

He’s been training boxers for 20 years. I dropped by his place the other night, looking for expert opinions on transgender participation in boxing. There’s been no shortage of other voices chiming in.

“Allowing men to hit women is reprehensible, even under the guise of athletic competition,” Sen. Marco Rubio said in a statement. “It is a behavior no civilized country would tolerate, much less encourage.”

The inflammatory word there, of course, is “men.”

The transgender bible decrees transwomen are full-fledged women. They deserve all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.

I agree, except when it comes to sports. Being born a male has indisputable advantages.

The sane trans activists acknowledge that but say that’s the price society must pay to be inclusive and tolerant.

We can debate that when it comes to track or swimming or rock climbing, but boxing is different.

It’s not a race. It’s not a game.

It’s a fight.

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The whole point is to damage your opponent. And men are better at that than women. About 2,000 recorded deaths in the ring since records began 300 years ago would attest to that.

Sure, the MMA women’s heavyweight champ could beat up the average male psychology professor, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Boxing has weight classes to keep things fair. There’s no way to ensure fairness when someone born a male fights someone born a female. That’s why the World Boxing Council is starting a separate transgender category.

Amateur boxing isn’t quite as dangerous. Competitors wear headgear and the emphasis is on scoring points, not breaking ribs. Still…

“All it takes is one shot to hurt you,” Gladden said.

USA Boxing says its medical requirements will make such risks acceptable. But surgery and testosterone suppressants won’t erase skeletal differences. Transwomen will still be taller, have more bone density, greater lung capacity.

“If you put LeBron James in the WNBA after he had sexual reassignment surgery, he’d still dominate,” Sean Rodriguez said. “So I definitely think it’s unfair to women.”

Oops, there they go again differentiating boxers born female with those who became females later in life.

Rodriguez is 17, nicknamed “Turbo” and ranked No. 6 in the 165-pound junior division. He doesn’t want to come off as intolerant, but the thought of punching any version of a woman bothers him.

The concern here, however, isn’t that a guy like Turbo would have to fight a trans male. It’s that a guy like Turbo would discover he’s a woman and start fighting as one.

Imagine if a young Mike Tyson had such a revelation.

Would a civilized country allow the carnage that would have followed?

Proponents of USA Boxing’s new policy will say that’s hyperbole. Of course, they also downplayed Lia Thomas dominating the NCAA 500-meter freestyle and Laurel Hubbard making New Zealand’s Olympic weightlifting team and Jaycee Cooper winning the U.S. superheavyweight bench press championship.

The difference is none of their opponents were literally harmed in the process.

“Be who you are,” Fant said. “But there are certain areas where you have to draw the line.”

With boxing, all it takes is one shot.

If accepting that danger is now considered tolerance, society really needs to have some sense knocked into it.

David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidEWhitley

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: USA Boxing has lost its transgender mind