Donald Padgett at The Advocate:

A cisgender woman was disqualified from a recent fencing match because she refused to fight her transgender opponent. The incident was captured on video, which went viral after it was posted to social media. The disqualified fighter described the issue as serious, while the USA Fencing Association defended the disqualification and its policies for transgender and nonbinary competitors. Stephanie Turner, 31, was competing in the regional tournament at the University of Maryland on March 30 when she took a knee at the start of a match rather than fight her transgender opponent. A judge quickly stopped the match, issued a black card, and disqualified Turner from the tournament. The entire incident was captured on video. After the video garnered criticism online, USA Fencing issued a statement saying the judge acted appropriately in disqualifying Turner. “A fencer is not permitted to refuse to fence another properly entered fencer for any reason,” USA Fencing said in a statement provided to the Associated Press. “Under these rules, such a refusal results in disqualification and the corresponding sanctions. This policy exists to maintain fair competition standards and preserve the sport’s integrity.”

Turner disagreed with the ruling and USA Fencing’s policies on trans and nonbinary athletes in the sport.

USA Fencing was right to defend the black card issued to Stephanie Turner for kneeling to trans athlete Redmond Sullivan by refusing to compete against her.

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Like, this is a new thing they’ve done. And they’ve decided to be super fucking weird about it. It defaults to prefer not to answer but if you leave it like that or if you say you’re nonbinary they demand ASAB documentation.

A female athlete was reportedly not told she would be competing against a male during a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament in California last week, prompting a policy revision from the North American Grappling Association (NAGA).

On September 12, Brazilian jiu-jitsu athlete Taelor Moore posted a clip to her Instagram account with the caption, “I weighed in at 135 … and she was over 200!” In the video, a much larger male with braided hair steps up to the mat and engages in combat with her.

See rest of article

ByGenevieve Gluck. September 12, 2023

A number of trans-identified males have been dominating women’s fencing championships despite the fact that many of them floundered in the men’s category. A source has now revealed that many women in the sport fear losing opportunities if they speak out against the inclusion of men in women’s fencing.

In November of 2022, USA Fencing adopted a Transgender and Nonbinary Athlete Policy which stated that division placement would be determined based on self-declared “gender identity” or “gender expression” rather than on biological sex.

You can just switch out a righty pistol grip for a lefty grip right?

You know the holiday season is fast approaching and I know for many of you that means the Season of Giving!

Instead of focusing that energy on a big cause where you see little effect, this year let me offer you another option:

My friend CJ is a prospective Paralympian who is pursuing a chance to compete in Tokyo at the 2020 Paralympic games. International and Olympic level competition is expensive for anyone, but traditionally fencing doesn't receive as much attention or financial help as other "prinetime" Olympic sports. Less so for wheelchair fencing.

CJ isn't just looking for handouts though, through his Patreon he's looking to make you a part of his journey. You can sponsor CJ for as little as $1 a month and up to $20 a month. Personally I'm going to be signing up for the $15 tier so I can receive postcards and little souvenirs from CJ's travels!

You probably spend $10 a month on frivolous things like a sticker subscription or your Hulu account you literally never use--- instead put that toward CJ! He's a dedicated, talented, international quality athlete who will put that $10 to good use.

He's an excellent fencer and would represent Team USA wonderfully!

S. Baum at Erin In The Morning:

The circus came to Washington last week. Or as New Mexico’s Democratic Representative Melanie Stansbury called it, “the USA Fencing Subcommittee” of the DOGE Subcommittee of the Oversight Committee of Congress. The three-and-a-half-hour-long show was led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who perhaps fashioned herself the ringleader or the lion tamer. In actuality, as per usual, she was the clown. The DOGE Committee was supposedly chartered to fight fiscal “waste” at the federal level. It has investigated topics like defunding PBS and government-owned properties, but its foray into a privately-run fencing organization—which receives no federal dollars—foreshadows a much darker future. Under the DOGE Committee, anything and everything could be related to “government efficiency,” thrusting any perceived enemy of the far-right state into the spotlight for harassment and ridicule. When pressed by Democratic colleagues about how and why USA Fencing even fell under DOGE’s jurisdiction, MTG’s answer was more or less “because I said so.” The DOGE Committee is well on its way to becoming our generation’s HUAC—the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was a Red Scare-era Congressional formation dedicated to rooting out the “communists,” as well as the gays, the gender deviants, the satanists, the Soviets, or anybody else they decided they didn’t like. At its core, last week’s DOGE hearing was not about women’s sports. It was a manufactured spectacle; a content farm; an all-American propaganda factory. The hearing centered around Stephanie Turner, a 31-year-old who was awarded $5,000 by an anti-trans extremist group after staging a premeditated protest against a trans fencer, who is twelve years her junior. Watching it left viewers with more questions than answers—literally. The GOP did not allow key witnesses like USA Fencing's board chairman Damien Lehfeldt nor the National Women's Law Center President Fatima Graves to answer almost any question they were asked. Instead, they were immediately interrupted by Republicans spewing disinformation and hate speech about the “groomers”—a slur levied by extremists to suggest all trans people are pedophiles.

If one could speculate what goes on in the head of such a strange and terrifying creature as MTG, it could be argued that Lehfeldt was targeted (as opposed to the USA Fencing CEO, who would be more capable of answering questions, Lehfeldt said) because he presented an easy target for Fox News-ready soundbites. He has been a vocal proponent of trans rights. The congressional subpoena issued to him, forcing him to testify, states that he allegedly self-identified as the owner of a Reddit account that posted, “Spread love. I know it sounds cheesy to say that, but our LGBTQIA+ family is in a lot of pain right now. Remind them they’re seen and remind them they matter. And if you’re in DC, come to the hearing.” The two “expert” witnesses for the GOP were gender radicals like Turner and Payton McNabb, a former collegiate athlete who sustained a TBI during a volleyball match, propelling her into a lucrative career of anti-trans activism.

Turner, meanwhile, has said she spent years investigating every opponent ahead of her matches to try to clock if they were trans women, because she avoided tournaments with so-called “male” fencers. The heinous bigotry and unscientific implications of that comment aside, it’s not even true. Just seven days before the now-infamous competition that launched her own career in anti-trans activism, she willingly entered a mixed-gender event, earning eighth place out of 32 fencers, beating many presumably-cis men. So she does fence males. The only person she refused to fence was a trans woman.