Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah: The US women boxers


Andrecia Wasson, right, and Raquel Miller at the US women’s boxing Olympic trials. (Photo credit: Jed Conklin/zReportage.com)

As we’ve mentioned before, a good century after the men did it, female boxers will compete in the Olympics for the first time this summer. That means that for the first time in Olympic history both men and women will be competing in every sport.

Mother Jones has an awesome photo essay of the three American boxers who have a shot at London 2012. Marlen Esparza, Queen Underwood and Claressa Shields now head to competed in the 2012 Women’s World Boxing Championships in China for the final hurdle to qualify for the Olympics. Update: Thanks to commenter Sara for pointing out that the World Championship took place earlier this month and Shields and Esparza are headed to the Olympics!

Sadaf Rahimi’s already got my heart, but if these women make it too, I don’t know who I’ll be rooting for.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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