Seconds Out (Women and Fighting)

Kicking ass and taking notes—what it’s like to be a woman in the ring.

Alison Dean teaches English literature. She also kicks people. Hard.

Despite having several amateur fights under her belt, she struggles to be taken as seriously as a male kickboxer would. “You punch hard for a girl” is still an insult—women aren’t supposed to participate in violence.

Her unique perspective as a thirty-something PhD turned fighter allows Dean to expose and explain the inner world of combat sports. She articulates ways fighting changes a person’s—and particularly a woman’s—relationship to their body and to the world around them, and considers how women shift boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, and MMA’s male dominated cultures in turn.

Combining research, anecdotes, and interviews with coaches and fighters, Seconds Out looks at the history of women in the ring, the challenges of training, and the nuances of fighting while female. She shares her own experiences, good and bad, as she takes on her first few amateur fights. With the literary acumen and panache of fighting’s greatest writers, like A. J. Leibling, Joyce Carol Oates, and Katherine Dunn, but from the perspective of someone who has been in the ring, Seconds Out brilliantly explores our culture’s relationship with violence, particularly when it is practiced by women.