I Was A Fencer For YEARS, And This Is So Beyond Disgusting For SOOOOO Many Reasons FIRSTLY, As Many People

I was a fencer for YEARS, and this is so beyond disgusting for SOOOOO many reasons FIRSTLY, as many people have pointed out, fencing is *typically* a coed sport. The ENTIRE time I was fencing I was almost always fencing against cis guys, who were older and more skilled than me, who were significantly bigger than me, who were generally stronger than me. You know WHY they let the poor little "girl" spar against the big strong boys?... BECAUSE IT DIDN'T MATTER. IN FACT, my coaches typically regarded it as an ADVANTAGE. The factors that go into making a good fencer, if anything (if you were a bioessentialist in the late 2000's, or a reformative feminist of that time) were more likely to be traditionally "female" traits... Being consistently smaller than your opponents is an advantage. There's less space on your torso for them to hit you, and they aren't used to having to aim so low- while you're always used to aiming high. Up until fairly recently, the narrative was that "women" were better at building lower body muscle- which is what almost all of fencing training focuses on (alongside core strength, but not as much). whether or not that's true, it was widely enough believed that pretty much every sport that focused on leg strength as opposed to arm strength was considered female dominated. The same can be said for speed, another important trait for fencing. being light on your feet, being able to jump, lunge, retreat, riposte in quick succession- speed of movement that is fostered by strength of the thigh and calf muscles. These are... once again... traits that are typically considered easier to obtain for "female" athletes. And this isn't even getting into the psychological aspects of martial sports. Do you know how many training matches I've lost to little kids- who I basically let kick my ass with a foil, and suffered my coaches straight up mocking me for it- because I was afraid I was going to hurt them physically or break their confidence in some way? Do you know how many matches you have to win, as a smaller- and weaker- challenger, before you're opponent starts to take you seriously and will actually spar with you? And for many people, who learned the sport through private clubs and classes, who never had the opportunity to lose their personal biases in favor of competitive edge- they will continue to lose because they will always underestimate us, or they will learn better and finally give us a challenge.

The other two traits that are most likely to give you a advantage as a fencer have nothing to do with the athlete's sex at all. For instance, across most martial sports; no one likes sparring with a fucking southpaw! We're difficult, and force our opponents to quite literally invert all of their training and practice in real time during matches. My coaches used to make their competitive teams spar with me to learn how to properly parry someone with an opposing dominant hand- and it didn't matter how much better trained they were, until they learned how to properly handle me I would almost always win. Are you gonna tell me some garbage about handedness being a gendered trait? HAH! and what about reaction time? Does extra testosterone make you block quicker? Disregarding the fact that testosterone levels vary in literally everyone... The idea is just straight up laughable. Imagine living in the world these people live in for a moment- where being born a "man" makes your eyes track movement quicker. It would suck to be these people so bad... This woman has shown a clear misunderstanding of the sport and the training required to excel in it, alongside everyone who has bought into her rhetoric. I don't even care if she's a grifter. I don't care if she has no actual actionable opinions on trans people, and if it was all "about the money". She has left a stain on my sport and the spirit of competition. She is a hypocritical transphobe, co-opting symbols of resistance from another disaffected minority to draw social and psychological targets onto a group of people that has never wanted anything but to be allowed to live our lives- and if she's doing it for money then I respect her even less than if she truly believed in her actions. and I'm frankly disgusted that this sort of bigotry has managed to infect my sport, which I have always considered equalizing and respectful... With all of my heart, I hope that her cruel, nonfactual, cowardly, unsportsmanlike behavior gets her banned from any subsequent competition- and I hope she serves as an example to the rest of the fencing community and its supporters that bigotry should NEVER be accepted in sport... And mostly, I hope her opponent- who I'm certain has had a social spotlight shined on her in a way that no one deserves- can find some peace after this, that hopefully the community at large can come together to reassure that she is welcome in her sport and its communities...

Fencing is typically a co-ed sport. This is transmisogyny in its grossest form.

But this story gets so much worse. The trans woman who she refused to fence only finished in 24th place. Stephanie, the forfeiter, also beat *multiple* cis men in a regional match just one week earlier! And conservatives just paid Stephanie $5k for her kneel. Why is nobody talking about this?