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Saturday, Oct 17, 2015 9:00 PM UTC
Since when is Ronda Rousey a role model?
The UFC champ is everyone's favorite new badass, now that her history of transphobia and violence are being ignored
Topics: Ronda Rousey, mma, UFC, Feminism, Transphobia, aol_on, Entertainment News
“Rowdy” Ronda Rousey is an incredible fighter, an Olympian, a movie star, maybe even a burgeoning fashonista and — if you go by countless Internet headlines about the UFC women’s bantamweight champion — an icon and a role model.
Rousey started fighting in 2011 and quickly captured the attention of MMA fans. She joined the UFC in 2013, but didn’t ascend to international superstardom until recently, in part thanks to roles in “The Expendables 3,” “Entourage” and “Furious 7.” When she finally did become a crossover hit, it was massive. Not many MMA fighters receive coverage in The New Yorker and The New York Times, nor do they get shoutouts from celebrities like Beyoncé, Chris Pratt, Shaq and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. And the people of Brazil don’t start crying upon the sight of other celebrities and sports stars like they did with Rousey.
While Rousey is all people say she is (and more) athletically, outside of martial feats, her role model status is questionable. First, Rousey has a history of highly transphobic remarks and flat-out ignorance when it comes to trans athletes. In 2013, when UFC fighter Matt Mitrione made offensive comments about transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox, calling her a “lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak,” the New York Post asked Rousey for her thoughts on Mitrione’s words. Rousey said he expressed himself “extremely poorly” and that she could “understand the UFC doesn’t want to be associated with views like that.” But in that same interview, Rousey didn’t exactly demonstrate a predilection for sensitivity. “She can try hormones, chop her pecker off, but it’s still the same bone structure a man has,” Rousey said about Fox. “What if she became UFC champion and we had a transgender women’s champion? It’s a very socially difficult situation.”
It’s only a “socially difficult” situation thanks to people like Rousey. Earlier this year, Rousey tried softening her words — though not changing her opinion — in an interview with the Huffington Post. “From what I’ve read, it seems if like you’ve already gone through puberty as a man, even if you really want to rid yourself of those physical advantages, I just don’t think science is there yet.”
Rousey studied the wrong “science,” because claims of supposed transgender superiority in athletics are categorically false and have zero scientific backing.
But her insensitive musings go beyond transmisogyny and transphobia. This summer, Rousey decried what she called a “do-nothing bitch”:
“I have this one term for the kind of woman that my mother raised me to not be and I call it a ‘do-nothing bitch.’ The kind of chick that just, like, tries to be pretty and be taken care of by somebody else. That’s why I think it’s hilarious, like, that people like say that my body looks masculine or something like that. I’m just like, listen, just because my body was developed for a purpose other than fucking millionaires doesn’t mean it’s masculine. I think it’s femininely badass as fuck. Because there’s not a single muscle on my body that isn’t for a purpose. Because I’m not a do-nothing bitch.”
Being proud of your body is great. Burying other women because they have a different body than yours is not. As Alanna Vagianos noted in the Huffington Post, Rousey’s DNB speech is “certainly not empowering, and it certainly does nothing to combat the large issues that create a society where athletic bodies like Rousey’s are judged as less than.”
Despite tone deaf and responsive commentary, Rousey became the darling of the Internet media after the ESPYs. She won the “Best Fighter of the Year” award and called out Floyd Mayweather for his history of domestic violence.
“I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once,” she said. Rousey didn’t quit her verbal blitz, claiming she made more money per second than Mayweather. The feud spawned billions of “who wins in a fight between Ronda Rousey and Floyd Mayweather???” clickbait takes. Domestic violence is abhorrent. Yet Rousey is currently dating UFC fighter Travis Browne — a man accused of domestic abuse in his previous relationship. In August, his wife Jenna Renee Webb said she’d be pressing charges against Browne. Though a third-party investigation done at the behest of the UFC found “inconclusive evidence” of these claims.
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