Two organizations, Degenderettes and Red Panda Muay Thai, are fighting against transmisogyny promoted within the worlds of mainstream martial arts and self-defense. Both organizations center transgender women and are challenging an entrenched cisgender-masculine monopoly on who gets to learn how to fight.

Trans women who learn how to fight have been a lightning rod on the battlefields of the right-wing culture wars for over a decade. Detractors of their participation in combat sports accuse them of everything from cheating to being a physical threat or hazard to cis women, often denying their own womanhood in the process. These same people have little to say about lauded cis male champions in combat sports who are known perpetrators of domestic abuse and violence against women. Scout Tran, the executive director of Degenderettes and a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, called attention to this scapegoating in an interview with Prism.

“Targeting trans women in sports is just playing to people’s unexamined transphobia,” Tran said. “The macro effect is that people feel justified thinking about trans people in transphobic ways outside of sports. In martial arts specifically, this makes it more difficult for trans people to access self-defense, which makes [them] so much easier to bully physically.” 

Tran, who is based in Portland, Oregon, said this isn’t new: “Queer people have been vigorously hazed out of martial arts since forever.”

Tran’s organization makes martial arts accessible to trans people using a pedagogy that centers victims of interpersonal violence and gender injustice. Degenderettes, which has chapters across the country, teaches both martial arts and a team- and relationship-based alternative to more individualized forms of self-defense. These practices grew over the past decade out of relationships formed between trans elders who survived the anti-LGBTQIA+ politics that arose in the 1980s and the AIDS pandemic and trans sex workers who were categorically unable to rely on law enforcement for support when faced with violence. Crucially, many of these individuals also could not easily enter or train in most martial arts gyms due to entrenched transphobia.

Hostility toward trans people in martial arts schools and gyms, whether explicit or implicit, hinders any sense of camaraderie trans students could otherwise feel with their peers. Progressing within a discipline is a struggle without this rapport and in an atmosphere of social duress. 

Abigail Austin, who runs Seattle’s Red Panda Muay Thai, said she was treated as a “human punching bag” at the beginning of her martial arts journey. This was before she knew she was trans, though she was aware of her queerness and did not hide it.

“I learned really early that going to some place where people didn’t hate you on sight was going to be beneficial,” said Abigail, who has trained at more than 50 martial arts schools.

Tran said a lot of the anti-trans bullying at gyms comes in the form of microaggressions that fly under the radar of coaches.

“The gym … is [watching for] any aggression over a certain threshold, and the bullies will intentionally be underneath that threshold so that they can harass the trans person without catching the repercussions,” Tran said.

Essentially, Tran said, the exclusion of transgender people from training will not be rectified by “nice” cisgender coaches and allies. The root of this problem is, in fact, systemic.

Culture wars and stigmatization

Transphobia, and transmisogyny in particular, has proven to be particularly entrenched in combat sports as a form of entertainment and martial arts more broadly.

In the U.S., the outcry against Fallon Fox’s career in 2013 served as a watershed moment in the campaign against trans women as fighters and athletes. Despite having medically transitioned and meeting all legal requirements to compete, Fox drew outrage when she decided to come out. The Daily Beast reported in 2020 that Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) commentator Joe Rogan smeared Fox, making her life a “living hell.” Disinformation about alleged critical injuries Fox dealt to cisgender opponents remained in circulation nine years after Fox had left the sport.

Alana McLaughlin was the next American fighter to face backlash for being a trans woman in 2021. After her victory over French cisgender kickboxer Celine Provost, McLaughlin drew the ire of UFC fighters Sean Strickland and Jake Shields, as well as conservative pundit Piers Morgan. Despite her success, McLaughlin could not get another fight for four years.

Part of the issue is that mixed martial arts’ popularity and infrastructure were nurtured in a right-wing ecosystem. Donald Trump, for instance, provided backing for the nascent UFC in 2001. Other early entrants were the Gracie family, who added their grappling techniques to the sport as well as their affinity for fascist politics. Despite reports that women in the family are discouraged from training, the various patriarchs of today’s clan have taken it upon themselves to defend female fighters from trans “imposters.” In October 2024, Royce Gracie, the winner of the first UFC, joined the likes of anti-trans activists Riley Gaines and Tulsi Gabbard to campaign against trans women in sports.

The problem with inclusion

The policies governing combat sports are stacked against trans women competing. In 2023, the North American Grappling Association excluded trans women from its women’s division. The following year, the Global Association of Mixed Martial Arts issued a similar restriction but included a caveat recognizing that “transgender athletes may wish to compete in MMA in accordance with their gender identity.”

Some venues, such as the Melrose Ballroom in New York City, have responded by creating divisions specifically for trans and nonbinary contenders to fight in.

Tran, however, questions whether being included in institutions that reject trans athletes is a useful goal. The terms of being included are fundamentally arbitrary,Tran said, taking issue with an implicit focus on whether or not fighters “pass” as their self-identified gender in the eyes of cis audiences, promoters, and even opponents. An Eisner Award-nominated artist, Tran is also exploring eir own experience with this very subject in comic book form. 

“We’ve been set up to require throwing some of us under the bus in order for others of us to get in,” Tran said. “The people who are actually competing in sports are fully under the radar. They’re fully stealth and they’re fully passing. No one knows they’re there. The other trans people in the athletics world don’t know they are there.”

Abigail is even more blunt.

“I don’t care about inclusion,” she said. “I want the world to be an actual better place, which is why when I have conversations with people who are like, ‘We need to put pressure on [the World Boxing Council], we need to put pressure on these organizations,’ I say, ‘Fuck that energy output.’”

She is more focused on “seizing the means of production.” Practically speaking, this means starting a fight promotion by and for transgender people. Abigail’s vision for the Alternative Fighters Association is of an organization that is run cooperatively. All fighters, whether competing for a title or not, would be paid out equally. Cisgender fighters interested in participating must be willing to face off with either a transgender fighter of the same gender or a nonbinary fighter. Most importantly, the Alternative Fighters Association aims to establish, from the grassroots up, a path for all fighters who want to leave the abusive and extractive norms of mainstream promotions, including those who are not trans.

A league of our own

In March, Red Panda Muay Thai hosted a tournament for trans kickboxers and muay Thai fighters from across the country.

There were 25 bouts, meaning a total of 50 contestants. McLaughlin, the famed MMA fighter, was one of them.

Abigail said this turned out to be highly gratifying. She remembers the “tears of joy that folks were visibly showing and just the happiness that they were sharing with me and each other. … Every single one of the participants either thought that they’d never get to fight or that their career was basically over once they started transitioning.”

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor