{"id":3173,"date":"2021-03-02T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=3173"},"modified":"2021-03-08T13:39:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-08T19:39:27","slug":"a-womans-place-is-in-the-octagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2021\/03\/02\/a-womans-place-is-in-the-octagon\/","title":{"rendered":"A Woman’s Place is in the Octagon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image: A black female fighter braces for a tackle, a white female fighter wrapped around her center. Image courtesy of Matt Brouse, Porrada Photography. <\/a><\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On a recent podcast<\/a>, ESPN commentator, Stephen A. Smith, expressed his dislike for women\u2019s participation in combat sports. He said, \u201c… I don\u2019t want to see women punching each other in the face. I don\u2019t want to see women fighting in the octagon and stuff like that, but that\u2019s just me.\u201d  Female fighters like Kaitlin Young<\/a> have expressed outrage at his comments, as they often do when men question the validity of their participation in combat sports. This public exchange highlights the contentious balancing act between female fighters and the masculine combat sports in which they partake — shedding light on the intricate ways women navigate gender norms in hyper-masculine spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Female fighters in mixed martial arts transgress patriarchal gender norms by merely participating in violence, which often elicits responses like those from Smith. Men and women with essentialist views of gender difference, such as the belief that women are weak, often struggle to view women as capable of violence. Although sociologists and those studying gender have rebuked these essentialist claims, arguing instead that gender is socially constructed and continuously performed, society struggles to conceptualize women not only as fighters but as physically powerful.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n