From a hashtag to a movement: How boxing helped Tegan Higginbotham see that #MeToo has a fighting chance

IT took boxing to show Tegan Higginbotham that women need to join together for a fighting chance.

ABOUT six years ago, I joined a gym that hosted pro-rules boxing competitions and signed myself up for a fight.
I trained hard, pushed myself emotionally and physically into uncharted territory, and when the day came, I lost.

I exited the bout with slight discolouration around my left eye, a ruinously sore body, and, thanks to what I assume was concussion, two days where I couldn’t think straight.

Honestly, I couldn’t follow conversations; I forgot how to drive my car. It was only when I found myself signing up to the Young Liberals that I went, ‘Hang on…?”

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Tegan Higginbotham in the boxing gym.

Yet despite my apparent lack of skill, the next year I went back and did it again. I trained hard, I pushed myself emotionally and physically, and this time I bloody well won. That’s right, you’re reading the words of a bona fide champion.

But at the end of the match, I knew I’d truly reached my limit. I’d tasted victory, learnt what I’d needed to and — most importantly — I liked the shape of my nose as it was.

My short-lived professional fighting career was over.

Now forgive me for rushing through the details, but you see this is a tale I’ve dined out on for quite some time. Six months after my fight, I launched a show for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival called Million Dollar Tegan and haven’t stopped telling jokes about it since.

And aside from killer material, the story was inevitably interesting. This all happened just before the new-wave women’s sporting revolution hit. The idea of a woman being aggressive and physical in a sporting context is something we’re quite familiar with now, thanks to AFLW. But as recently as four years ago, it was still novelty, and therefore so was I.

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Tegan Higginbotham.

But during those years where I waxed lyrical about how much I hate burpees or how boxing gloves smell like actual a--- despite the fact that my hands never smell that way …
at least, not very often … I failed to explore the two greatest lessons I took from my experience.

Perhaps they weren’t funny enough. Or perhaps my reluctance to appear too sincere got the better of me. But given recent events, they’re lessons I’ve found myself reflecting upon more.

The first of these two points is the one that frustrates me most.
Over the course of my two training periods, I worked my body into the strongest and fittest shape it had ever been in.

Aerobically I was pretty good. But I specifically remember standing on the tram one day with my arm gripping on to the ceiling rail, catching a glance of my bulging bicep and exclaiming out loud, “Oh God, yes.”

I was, indisputably, strong. I was very strong. And when I hit that boxing bag, my God, the sound it made. The girls who I trained with would punch me square in the head, and although I never liked it, and although at times it made me cry and feel angry, and challenged me on levels I hadn’t expected, I came back and did it again.

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Actress Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in the movie Alien Resurrection.

I was Ripley, I was Sarah Connor, I was the opposite of Sarah Huckabee Sanders: I was strong. Then I went home and had a play fight with the man I was seeing. I loved this man very much, he was great and nothing untoward happened.

Except that with what appeared to be hardly any effort, he completely overpowered me. Again. Like always.

Even at my fittest, I couldn’t overpower a man who was, without being too critical, not at his physical peak.

Of course, this wasn’t a real fight. Had I been in danger, there were a few things I could have done to increase my chances. Although I’ve never gotten to the bottom of why my mother pressed this information on us so often; I’ve always been quick to recall her instructions to
“Go for the eyes”.

But I would have lost. Barring a few exceptions, men are stronger. They are physically stronger. And it pisses me off, just as it would piss me off when my trainer would say, “Just hit me. Hit me as hard as you can.”

Because he knew that even if I swung and punched him right in his guts, I couldn’t do any real damage. I have zero doubt his intentions were to help. But this particular teaching method only served to further highlight how significantly smaller my muscles were in comparison to his.

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"Me too" on the hand of a protester during a gathering against gender-based and sexual violence. Picture: AFP Photo/Bertrand Guay

This is the crux of all the problems, isn’t it? At the end of the day, men are physically stronger. And regardless of whether you’re in a boxing ring or on a casting couch, they can overpower us.

Oddly enough, this hadn’t scared me as much until these past few months. The “Me Too” campaign has been heartbreaking.

It’s been complicated. Textured. It’s given women a stark opportunity to reflect upon the events in our own lives with honesty.

It’s one thing to realise you’d been bulls----ing society, it’s another thing altogether to realise you’ve been bulls----ing yourself. This movement has ripped a hole in my industry and suddenly I feel exposed.

I’m hoping this has all been for something. I won’t deny I’ve had my concerns that “Times Up” and “Me Too” could soon find themselves relegated to the same corners of the internet where we’re still trying to Stop Kony or discussing how “on fleek” our eyebrows are.

These are the risks when you exist among an opinion-driven media cycle. Instead of focusing on the bigger picture, we dissect the minutia of every argument.

The show I wrote about boxing, all those years ago, started with the line, “They say you don’t know who you are until you’ve taken a hit.”

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One-third of the women in Tegan Higginbotham’s audience had likely already been hit at one point or another, probably by an intimate partner. Picture: File image

Back then, it never crossed my mind that, statistically, one-third of the women in my audience had already been hit at one point or another, probably by an intimate partner. This s--- is too big for us to mess up.

But this leads me to the other great lesson I took from my boxing experiences. It’s that when you chuck a bunch of women together and set them the challenge of becoming the strongest versions of themselves, it’s pretty f---ing great.

We would push each other, sweat all over each other, test each other’s boundaries, establish roles and it was awesome. I saw first-hand that women, by our very nature, in our bones, in our blood and clutched in the middle of our balled up fists … care for each other. We care deeply for each other.

So much so that even when placed in a boxing ring and asked to punch the other person in the face, we still care.

I’m not saying everyone should take up boxing. But from time to time we need to get offline, step away from the hype, and be in each other’s presence. We need to talk with each other, check in on each other, and help each other. Only then will the hashtag become a movement, and the movement change lives.

— Higginbotham is an actor, sports presenter and writer. She recently read a version of this piece at The Stella Prize longlist announcement in Melbourne. The Stella celebrates and recognises Australian women’s writing with a $50,000 annual prize. The 2018 shortlist will be announced to coincide with International Women’s Day on Thursday.