Being a boxer

(These were a few thoughts I scribbled down in October of 2005, when contemplating what it meant to be the first woman to compete as a boxer at Oxford University.)

‘Why would you, as a girl, want to box?’

‘Aren’t you afraid of getting hurt?’

‘You wouldn’t want to lose that pretty face, now would you?’

These are all comments I’ve received repeatedly since I’ve started boxing. Some aren’t quite as oblique. One College Fellow looked at me, shook his head, and said: ‘Lady boxer … You ought to be ashamed.’

I simply do not believe that ‘because I’m a woman’ the sport’s physical demands are any different than they would be for a man. There are power differentials, which I readily admit; pound for pound, it is most likely that male and female boxers of equal boxing ability will hit at different speeds and with different strength. But the stresses these boxers are placing on their bodies, in relative terms, is equal. And when a nose bleeds or an eye blackens, it does so equally for both!!

The reality is that boxing can be brutal. It is demanding on the body, the head, the psyche. Boxing is hard. Full stop. And coping with that requires a strength of will that surpasses bodily endurance. But I’ve also fallen in love with the sport. Boxing has such a vicious grace. When a good boxer moves across the ring, it is elegant danger.

Yet women boxers still face different challenges and reactions than men. At every bout I’ve had thus far (and I’ve had 5), the announcers have made some reference afterward to the fact that ‘Oh, their boyfriends or husbands better be careful! Wow! Men, watch out – these women hit hard.’ Can you imagine this same announcer telling the women to watch out for hard-hitting men, lest they get beat up?? I can’t either. Maybe it’s because we still live in a society where statistics on violence against women are all too real, and all too high, and it still surprises people when women pick up a pair of gloves and decide to fight back.

But I’m not trying to speak for all women. I’m not trying to explain the phenomenon that is the slow and steady rise of women in boxing. I can only speak for myself. I can only point to the ways being a boxer has allowed me to lay claim to my strength, to come into my power, to find pride in overcoming my own fears and hurts.

Because ultimately, it is not whether you are a man or a women that pushes you forward to face your opponent in the ring. When every inch of your body aches for rest, screams to stop – when you remember the boxing great who once said, ‘Pain makes cowards of us all’ – finding the courage to continue must come from your heart. It must come from your will.