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.”