The multi-hyphenated Joe Rogan, actor-comedian-UFC commentator, voiced a strong opinion on the issue of transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox during his March 7 podcast featuring David Lee Roth as special guest.
Rogan sounded off on the subject that has taken the sport by surprise since Fox revealed her 2006 surgery to Sports Illustrated. Fox won two professional fights in the first round. Her license is currently under investigation with Florida's Dept. of Business and Professional Regulation.
SB Nation's Bloody Elbow takes an in-depth look at the real issue: disclosure of medical history. Not the circus drummed up during The Joe Rogan Experience, when the subject jumped from performance enhancing supplements, gene therapy and genetics to Fox when co-host Brian Redban asked Rogan what he thought about "that tranny.”
“She calls herself a woman, but I tend to disagree,” Rogan said. “She used to be a man, but now she’s a transgender, which is the official term. She wants to fight women in the MMA, but I say no f*cking way. If you had a d*ck at one point in time you also have all the bone structure that comes with having a d*ck.”
Rogan took it a step further suggesting Fox is supplementing testosterone asking, “If your body is not producing testosterone anymore why are your arms so big? What’s going on here? There’s a lot of sh*t going on here.
"The real issue comes with violent competition with women and the reality of the physical structure of your body. You can’t say that a 145 pound woman and a 145 pound man are even. [Fox] won two fights by brutal knockout. She crushed two women inside the first round. [The two fights were won by] knockout in 45 seconds with a vicious knee to the head. She’s huge.”
Rogan continued his rant, "I support 100 percent anyone’s right to be transgender. This is not where it lies with me. I am not a prejudice person. If you want to be a woman in the bedroom, you want to play house and all that other sh*t, you feel like your body is a woman trapped inside a man’s frame, that’s all good in the hood. Go for it if that’s what makes you happy. I would not try to stop that at all. But you can’t fight chicks. You’re out of your mind. You need to fight men. Period."
Rogan goes on to say, "Men are built for smashing sh*t. Women are built for getting held down by the stronger male monkey. Women are built for carrying babies, they are not built for hyper-explosive physical violence. They have more dainty frames and their hands are smaller."
His views are now being repeated on multiple discussion boards as fact even though medical and scientific communities have yet to conclude whether post-operative transsexual fighters receiving hormone-replacement therapy and testosterone suppression are linked to physiological advantages.
As Sports Illustrated reminds us, “Fallon would not have been obligated to reveal her transsexuality beyond the state athletic commissions that license her. In 2012 the Association of Boxing Commissions drafted a transgender policy for the sport. It just hasn't been needed until now.”
Fox, who fights in the Featherweight division, can play on a women’s team after a year of testosterone suppression therapy based on NCAA guidelines. As Salon reports, Fox has been hormonally female for a decade.
“I'm technically, legally, physically and mentally female. Everything about me is female,” Fox tells Outsports.
"I consider myself a woman. I happen to fall into the transgender category, but I rather describe myself as a woman first, transsexual woman second."
Comments