Obama affirms teh gay.

[wufwugy]

The obvious extension to that is to say that if women want to sign to fight men, they should be allowed to. It won't happen anytime soon because it's a PR nightmare for any fighting league.

The ideology against dog fighting has gotten in the way of the dog-fighting market, and I for one am perfectly fine with it. I realize that is a flawed analogy because willing participants and such, but if MMA wants to further legitimize itself, it can't just hold the position "whatever people sign up for and draws an audience is fine".

Women should be able to sign to fight men. Allowing that doesn't mean it's ever going to happen or be accepted in the rare case that it does. Nobody wants to watch that shit and no respectable company will ever promote it. That's the market at work. The "willing participants" aspect is essential for it to work, and why rules about something like dog fighting should be different.

I'm not sure it's possible to find an example where consenting adults should not be allowed to do what they've consented to unless there is a demonstrable problematic externality (like a father should not be allowed to gamble his house even if he and the casino consent. This is because of an externality like his social contract with his family). Gaming and sport is one of the areas in which the free market works incredibly well and regulations tend to just cause problem

[d0zer]

Women should be able to sign to fight men. Allowing that doesn't mean it's ever going to happen or be accepted in the rare case that it does. Nobody wants to watch that shit and no respectable company will ever promote it.

I think you could definitely get a non-trivial subset of the MMA fanbase to watch M v F fights.

When I say "shouldn't be allowed", I don't mean that there should be government regulation preventing it, I mean it in the same way that featherweights aren't allowed to fight heavyweights in the (current) UFC. As entertaining as the early UFCs were at times, weight classes and gender segregation is good for the legitimizing the sport.

The transgender situation is more of a gray area than male vs female, but I think the same arguments against male vs female apply.