I hope you wanted a long post about gender and fencing!!!!
Okay, this is the post about fencing and gender that I've been thinking about for a while. Because I think about fencing literally every day, haha.
Today in particular I was talking to another coach at a competition. We were from the only two schools that had brought sabre that day, and we were bemoaning that. A couple other schools had promised to bring sabre, but had dropped out at the last second because they didn't have enough people. Sabre is generally the smallest event at any fencing event, but it can be especially rough at the high school level. Well, sure, I said. After all, it's only in the last generation (my generation) that you have women who grew up fencing sabre and can pass it on/coach/act as role models for the next generation of fencers. There wasn't an American national championship for women's sabre until 1988, and that only came after huge efforts by the amazing Ruby Watson. We didn't get a world championship until 1999, or an Olympic event until 2004. Two thousand and fucking four.
"What," said the other coach. "Are you blaming this on the fencing patriarchy?"
I know it sounds like he was making fun of me, but we were completely on the same page. I am absolutely blaming this on the fencing patriarchy. We talked about the Olympics problems (fencing STILL doesn't have the full complement of medals it should have), and problems with getting women's sabre, and women's epee (which was also a late starter), and this whole mess that I wade into every day.
It's not that I haven't had female fencing role models - I've actually been super lucky in that. My coach for my last two years at college was a pioneer in women's sabre, and she had a female assistant coach who had fenced sabre at my university about a decade before. Here in grad school land I've gotten to hang out with a woman who was one of the first to fence sabre internationally, and work with a ton of older women who took up sabre (or epee) after it was opened to them. I've met older guys who remember very clearly how annoyed their female friends were when they were stuck in foil and wanted to try something new, and how excited they were when they broke out of that.
But the expansion of women's fencing is a process and we are firmly in the middle of the process. And that's why I tend to look askance at calls for more mixed-gender fencing, which I see a lot. Not so much from the establishment (which hates change and also the prospect of making big events even larger). The calls come from young fencers and especially young fencers who value social justice or hate the gender binary or want to know why you use arbitrary lines to divide a sport that seems like it should have space for people of all genders to compete. I was at a GSA meeting last semester, talking to some high school students about being queer and at college, and I mentioned that one of my challenges is figuring out how to express my gender identity while also being involved in the traditionally-gendered world of fencing.
One of the students made this appalled face and just said "Gender segregation."
I laughed nervously and gave her a condensed version of this. I understand where the horror is coming from. I feel kind of gross when I say "No, I don't want more mixed fencing." At this point I'm out as non-binary to about half of my friends, I'm out professionally (through the blurb on my department website), I'm out on facebook if anyone looked. I don't insist on my pronouns because I'm lazy, but I don't identify as female. I understand the urge to break down the barriers and say "THIS IS ALL JUST SPORT."
And there already is a lot of mixed fencing. I've never been at any club (except for the odd school like mine that has varsity women and club men) that doesn't have primarily mixed practices. Local tournaments are generally mixed to boost numbers - I got my rating at a mixed event by beating a male friend. It's at school events and upper-level national and international events where the boundary lines start getting drawn. So why do we need them at all?
The reason that I still want those boundary lines is because I honestly think that a lot of women's fencing would go away if we didn't have them. Not the stuff at the top - stellar athletes like Mariel Zagunis would rise anyway, probably (I'll get to that in a second). But at the high school level, at the beginners' classes, at the small-time university clubs. There are a lot of guys out there who fence, and not a lot of girls, and I want to give each of those girls as many opportunities as I can. And once you go to mixed fencing, those opportunities get cut in half.
At my high school, I have eight sabre fencers, five guys and three girls. Because I have men's and women's teams, each of those girls gets to start and compete against other girls and get pushed to be better better better better. They get told that they're needed and valuable and please please show up for this competition, we want you. If I had one team, still with three starters? One of those girls would be on it, and she'd be clawing for that spot. Not because of natural male athletic talent or WHATEVER. It's just that I have more guys and the odds of a couple of them being good is better. Fencing doesn't have a gender parity yet. It's not even close.
This scales up with bigger clubs, scales up even more with countries. There are a limited number of starting spots, a limited number of Olympic berths. I got started in fencing because I really wanted to do it and was pretty athletic in a very specific way AND because my school needed a third women's sabre and I was just devoted enough to latch onto it and keep hold by my fingernails for four years. If I had been told I couldn't compete and wouldn't be able to for years and wasn't really needed? I probably would have kept doing martial arts and dropped fencing. At my university now we grab women's fencers with both hands and tell them we love them while trying to be as non-creepy as possible. We actively recruit women and talk about how to recruit women and how to make the club a better space for them. Because we need them to fill out teams. We NEED them. If we were mixed gender it would be so much easier to let women slip through the cracks. If we had a mixed gender sabre team, I think I would be on it. If we had a mixed gender foil or epee team, it would be men only. Because we have more men, and out of a bunch of men some of them have fenced before and out of a few women there are only two that had any prior experience. And without separate teams, there would be no reason to try so hard to train women to fill them.
Mariel Zagunis, who I mentioned above, won the first Olympic Gold in women's sabre. She only got to go because Jacqueline Esimaje, the qualifying fencer from Nigeria, lost her spot due to inexplicable bullshit from her government. Zagunis was at the last possible spot on the women's rankings. If the Olympics had decided to open the sabre event to men and women instead of creating a new women's event, there's no way Zagunis would have been able to go. A generation of US women's sabre fencers wouldn't have been inspired.
Even when there aren't explicit boundary lines, gender still sneaks in. At local mixed events, the top 8 in sabre is usually 6-7 guys, plus me and/or this super good teenager. That's not on purpose, there's no one there trying to keep women out of the finals. It's straight competition. But out of a few female(-presenting) people, I'm the oldest competitive sabre fencer by a pretty wide margin. The teenager is the highest rated by a pretty wide margin. Out of tons of men, you have a much fuller spread of ages and experience and ratings. So the gender ratio just shakes out that way. And that sounds innocent, but the consequences aren't - women at the bottom of the rankings get discouraged, women at the top look around themselves and feel alienated.
At this competition today, I was one of four female coaches, out of at least 12 coach-type people. This is actually pretty good - at the biggest competition we go to, one that attracts high school teams from several states, I've been one of only two female coaches out of maybe 3 dozen coaches two years running. The other coach is from my school. We get some obvious sexism from a couple people, and that's aggravating. But the more insidious thing is just having that ratio. Just looking at who is leading and teaching young fencers and showing them the future of the sport and then thinking 'wow, that's a lot of dudes.' Sympathetic coach, the guy I started the entry with, didn't talk about how his high school has an all-male coaching staff. But that's part of the problem, and I think that's the kind of problem that mixed fencing would exacerbate. A lack of examples of female fencing. A few great female fencers and not much else.
Like I said, this is a gross argument. I'm saying "Look, you idealistic young people who want to do away with the strictures of gender and their strangle-hold on how we interact with sport, you don't know what you're talking about. I have PRACTICAL experience, and separation is clearly the best policy." But gender still matters in fencing right now, and if you ignore it the sexism will just sneak in under the radar. I am on the side of fencing. I want more fencing. I want more women's fencing. And if I have to deal with the gender binary to get it, I guess that's what it takes.
I tacked on a (-presenting) qualifier to female up there, but fencing is the only place where I even vaguely identify with my assigned gender. I mean that in a purely classification sense - it still gives me crawls when one of my students calls me 'Miss' or when I'm directing and someone says 'Ma'am.' I don't object because I want to be supportive to the young girls I work with, I want to be an example. I don't know how to reconcile non-binary identity with gendered fencing. I'm working on it. I'm trying to give every support to my trans friends who are figuring out how to transition from fencing as their assigned gender to their actual gender, or whether they want to, and what it means for them. But I'm not going to tear down women's fencing, because that's what going to complete mixed fencing would do.
So take that, teenager at a GSA meeting.
Okay, I could talk about this for literally hours, and I left a lot of stuff out. But fencing + gender bullshit is basically the background radiation of my life so HERE YOU GO
(Further thoughts appreciated from anyone, the more I type about this the more annoyed and less rational I get.)
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/86496.html. Comment wherever you want.
Today in particular I was talking to another coach at a competition. We were from the only two schools that had brought sabre that day, and we were bemoaning that. A couple other schools had promised to bring sabre, but had dropped out at the last second because they didn't have enough people. Sabre is generally the smallest event at any fencing event, but it can be especially rough at the high school level. Well, sure, I said. After all, it's only in the last generation (my generation) that you have women who grew up fencing sabre and can pass it on/coach/act as role models for the next generation of fencers. There wasn't an American national championship for women's sabre until 1988, and that only came after huge efforts by the amazing Ruby Watson. We didn't get a world championship until 1999, or an Olympic event until 2004. Two thousand and fucking four.
"What," said the other coach. "Are you blaming this on the fencing patriarchy?"
I know it sounds like he was making fun of me, but we were completely on the same page. I am absolutely blaming this on the fencing patriarchy. We talked about the Olympics problems (fencing STILL doesn't have the full complement of medals it should have), and problems with getting women's sabre, and women's epee (which was also a late starter), and this whole mess that I wade into every day.
It's not that I haven't had female fencing role models - I've actually been super lucky in that. My coach for my last two years at college was a pioneer in women's sabre, and she had a female assistant coach who had fenced sabre at my university about a decade before. Here in grad school land I've gotten to hang out with a woman who was one of the first to fence sabre internationally, and work with a ton of older women who took up sabre (or epee) after it was opened to them. I've met older guys who remember very clearly how annoyed their female friends were when they were stuck in foil and wanted to try something new, and how excited they were when they broke out of that.
But the expansion of women's fencing is a process and we are firmly in the middle of the process. And that's why I tend to look askance at calls for more mixed-gender fencing, which I see a lot. Not so much from the establishment (which hates change and also the prospect of making big events even larger). The calls come from young fencers and especially young fencers who value social justice or hate the gender binary or want to know why you use arbitrary lines to divide a sport that seems like it should have space for people of all genders to compete. I was at a GSA meeting last semester, talking to some high school students about being queer and at college, and I mentioned that one of my challenges is figuring out how to express my gender identity while also being involved in the traditionally-gendered world of fencing.
One of the students made this appalled face and just said "Gender segregation."
I laughed nervously and gave her a condensed version of this. I understand where the horror is coming from. I feel kind of gross when I say "No, I don't want more mixed fencing." At this point I'm out as non-binary to about half of my friends, I'm out professionally (through the blurb on my department website), I'm out on facebook if anyone looked. I don't insist on my pronouns because I'm lazy, but I don't identify as female. I understand the urge to break down the barriers and say "THIS IS ALL JUST SPORT."
And there already is a lot of mixed fencing. I've never been at any club (except for the odd school like mine that has varsity women and club men) that doesn't have primarily mixed practices. Local tournaments are generally mixed to boost numbers - I got my rating at a mixed event by beating a male friend. It's at school events and upper-level national and international events where the boundary lines start getting drawn. So why do we need them at all?
The reason that I still want those boundary lines is because I honestly think that a lot of women's fencing would go away if we didn't have them. Not the stuff at the top - stellar athletes like Mariel Zagunis would rise anyway, probably (I'll get to that in a second). But at the high school level, at the beginners' classes, at the small-time university clubs. There are a lot of guys out there who fence, and not a lot of girls, and I want to give each of those girls as many opportunities as I can. And once you go to mixed fencing, those opportunities get cut in half.
At my high school, I have eight sabre fencers, five guys and three girls. Because I have men's and women's teams, each of those girls gets to start and compete against other girls and get pushed to be better better better better. They get told that they're needed and valuable and please please show up for this competition, we want you. If I had one team, still with three starters? One of those girls would be on it, and she'd be clawing for that spot. Not because of natural male athletic talent or WHATEVER. It's just that I have more guys and the odds of a couple of them being good is better. Fencing doesn't have a gender parity yet. It's not even close.
This scales up with bigger clubs, scales up even more with countries. There are a limited number of starting spots, a limited number of Olympic berths. I got started in fencing because I really wanted to do it and was pretty athletic in a very specific way AND because my school needed a third women's sabre and I was just devoted enough to latch onto it and keep hold by my fingernails for four years. If I had been told I couldn't compete and wouldn't be able to for years and wasn't really needed? I probably would have kept doing martial arts and dropped fencing. At my university now we grab women's fencers with both hands and tell them we love them while trying to be as non-creepy as possible. We actively recruit women and talk about how to recruit women and how to make the club a better space for them. Because we need them to fill out teams. We NEED them. If we were mixed gender it would be so much easier to let women slip through the cracks. If we had a mixed gender sabre team, I think I would be on it. If we had a mixed gender foil or epee team, it would be men only. Because we have more men, and out of a bunch of men some of them have fenced before and out of a few women there are only two that had any prior experience. And without separate teams, there would be no reason to try so hard to train women to fill them.
Mariel Zagunis, who I mentioned above, won the first Olympic Gold in women's sabre. She only got to go because Jacqueline Esimaje, the qualifying fencer from Nigeria, lost her spot due to inexplicable bullshit from her government. Zagunis was at the last possible spot on the women's rankings. If the Olympics had decided to open the sabre event to men and women instead of creating a new women's event, there's no way Zagunis would have been able to go. A generation of US women's sabre fencers wouldn't have been inspired.
Even when there aren't explicit boundary lines, gender still sneaks in. At local mixed events, the top 8 in sabre is usually 6-7 guys, plus me and/or this super good teenager. That's not on purpose, there's no one there trying to keep women out of the finals. It's straight competition. But out of a few female(-presenting) people, I'm the oldest competitive sabre fencer by a pretty wide margin. The teenager is the highest rated by a pretty wide margin. Out of tons of men, you have a much fuller spread of ages and experience and ratings. So the gender ratio just shakes out that way. And that sounds innocent, but the consequences aren't - women at the bottom of the rankings get discouraged, women at the top look around themselves and feel alienated.
At this competition today, I was one of four female coaches, out of at least 12 coach-type people. This is actually pretty good - at the biggest competition we go to, one that attracts high school teams from several states, I've been one of only two female coaches out of maybe 3 dozen coaches two years running. The other coach is from my school. We get some obvious sexism from a couple people, and that's aggravating. But the more insidious thing is just having that ratio. Just looking at who is leading and teaching young fencers and showing them the future of the sport and then thinking 'wow, that's a lot of dudes.' Sympathetic coach, the guy I started the entry with, didn't talk about how his high school has an all-male coaching staff. But that's part of the problem, and I think that's the kind of problem that mixed fencing would exacerbate. A lack of examples of female fencing. A few great female fencers and not much else.
Like I said, this is a gross argument. I'm saying "Look, you idealistic young people who want to do away with the strictures of gender and their strangle-hold on how we interact with sport, you don't know what you're talking about. I have PRACTICAL experience, and separation is clearly the best policy." But gender still matters in fencing right now, and if you ignore it the sexism will just sneak in under the radar. I am on the side of fencing. I want more fencing. I want more women's fencing. And if I have to deal with the gender binary to get it, I guess that's what it takes.
I tacked on a (-presenting) qualifier to female up there, but fencing is the only place where I even vaguely identify with my assigned gender. I mean that in a purely classification sense - it still gives me crawls when one of my students calls me 'Miss' or when I'm directing and someone says 'Ma'am.' I don't object because I want to be supportive to the young girls I work with, I want to be an example. I don't know how to reconcile non-binary identity with gendered fencing. I'm working on it. I'm trying to give every support to my trans friends who are figuring out how to transition from fencing as their assigned gender to their actual gender, or whether they want to, and what it means for them. But I'm not going to tear down women's fencing, because that's what going to complete mixed fencing would do.
So take that, teenager at a GSA meeting.
Okay, I could talk about this for literally hours, and I left a lot of stuff out. But fencing + gender bullshit is basically the background radiation of my life so HERE YOU GO
(Further thoughts appreciated from anyone, the more I type about this the more annoyed and less rational I get.)
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/86496.html. Comment wherever you want.