Mike Williams on why women's boxing is making men put on their gloves

Women's boxing is causing a hell of a stir right now… in male circles of course. This has all resulted from Jane Couch, Britain's world champion female boxer winning a landmark sex discrimination case against the British Board of Boxing for refusing to allow her professional status. The boxing fraternity's indignant response to the idea of professional women boxing made a reality by Couch's victory, has been somewhat predictable. They have made it clear that they see it as utterly immoral for a sport based on gambling, beer drinking, smoking, making money, aggression and sometimes death to be participated in by people whose midrift lacks a dangling penis. Boxing promoter Frank Warren has already announced his intention to stay out of promoting women boxers. Meanwhile, ex-heavy weight champion Henry Cooper also gave his penneth worth, throwing a verbal punch that ended up landing wide of the mark claiming that, 'Women are made differently from men. They are made for loving not hitting'. This was a remark similar to the one made by the British Board of Boxing who justified their decision to deny Couch professional status by arguing that PMT makes women more prone to injury, more liable to accidents and more emotional and unstable.

Such comments obviously reek of double standards. For example, the British Board of Control would do well to find many women more unstable, emotional and liable to accidents than Mike Tyson. And what have organisations like Women Against Violence ever received from the likes of Henry Cooper who all of a sudden have a burning passion to prevent women from being subject to physical violence? Allegations of Frank Bruno beating up his wife never caused as much outrage as the prospect of two women fighting each other in a ring.

And as with all double standards a closer analysis of the situation usually unveils disturbing social attitudes underlying the moral rhetoric. The real concerns underlying the protestations run something on the lines of, it's not so much violence against women that is bad, but violence from women. A violent woman is anathema for the boxing industry, for her very existence removes the veil of respectability from boxing and brings to the surface unresolved conflicts about the moral acceptability of the industry's existence.

However, it's best not to get too Freudian about these things. Besides, there is another reason for why males have seen fit to air their grievances with professional female pugilism, an explication of which warrants a rephrasing of my starting comment. Women's boxing is in fact, not causing a stir in male circles. Or should I say underpants? Reality bites. The major cognitive dissonance experienced by men when considering the concept of women fighting is one over sexual attractiveness. There are of course exceptions, but success and sexual attractiveness are never too far apart in the lives of prestigious women. The most famous women in the world are either exceptions to the rule or heterosexual sex symbols. The image of the woman boxer: foul mouthed, hard, up for it and wanting to make her million doesn't appeal to the media men's ideals of skinny permissive blushing belles. If sexual domination is the neo-Marxist fuel of capitalism then it is no surprise that women's boxing is the revolution that the powers that be are keen to crush. Icons like the tough talking, bone crunching, eleven stone muscle packet Jane Slouch are not going to bring you closer to a Magnum ice-cream, unless you want it stuffed in your face.

Further support for this argument comes when one considers that there has always been a role for women in boxing - as prize calves tiptoeing round the ring in skimpy Daily Mirror leotards to the delight of a nation full of testosterone charged couch potatoes. Women in boxing has always been acceptable as long as the role has befitted women, whether it be for loving as Cooper so romantically posits, or whether it be for an act men often conflate with loving: 'shagging'. Women in boxing is thus OK for certain purposes, but there's nothing worse than the sight of a woman fighting and gaining credit for it, the sight of a woman being in charge of her own life, undominated and negotiating from an equal position of power to dampen one's erection. So as one of history's greatest turn-offs, women's boxing can continue to expect a torrent of notional red herrings thrown at them by the brotherhood of the insecure. However, while the fight continues the victory it seems is won and while comments such as 'boxing is not lady like' and 'woman are only made for loving' continue to resonate round the media circus when their volume inevitably subsides it will surely be to the back

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