His staunch position
A director on the USA Fencing board once published an opus in support of trans athletes — less than two years before the athletic organization disqualified a female fencer from a tournament because she refused to compete against a trans opponent.
Damien Lehfeldt, the board’s elected at-large director, outlined his staunch position in a long-winded Aug. 30, 2023, blog post, in which he defended the right of trans fencers to compete against women, despite conceding they may have “a physical advantage.”
Can confirm. I started reading it but had to stop – it’s too enraging. I might go back to it later to gather some excerpts. It is indeed long-winded, and of course self-admiring, and smug as the smuggest thing that ever smugged. There are few things more annoying than reading a smug self-admiring long-winded asshole explain why it’s fine for men to ruin women’s sports.
“There is a possibility that transgender women have a physical advantage over their cisgender opponents after transitioning,” the board member wrote. “There is also a possibility they do not. In Fencing, there is no data to support either viewpoint. Giving athletes a sense of belonging and a will to live is more powerful than medals and competitive glory,” [he] continued.
Oh shut up. Of course there is not a possibility that men don’t have a physical advantage over women. And fuck off with your breezy giving away of women’s medals and competitive glory for the sake of men in skirts. Men like this guy just can’t believe their luck in finding a way to mess up women’s lives while pretending to be the good guys and getting away with it.
Lehfeldt was part of the board that expelled Stephanie Turner from the Cherry Blossom Open in Maryland over the weekend because the 31-year-old opted to take a knee rather than compete against trans fencer Redmond Sullivan — a move that critics have ripped as unjust.
It’s unjust all right.
On this issue I was commended for standing up for women’s rights, quite patronizingly, but that I was misguided because there are so few trans women taking women’s places that it’s just not relevant.
Guess the sex of the person who patted me on the head.
First, one is too many. Men do not belong in women’s sport.
Second, the number is growing rapidly. As more mediocre men see other mediocre men suddenly taking gold, they will discover their inner woman.
Third, the number of men who take women’s places is not equal to the number of women affected. That improper assumption is implicit in the argument. It lets the arguer look at the slot in isolation, and that’s exactly how they look at the question: as swapping one cog for another.
Mike: I wouldn’t try to guess. Both sexes have given me the same condescending response.
Reduxx: EXCLUSIVE: Wagner College Allows Male To Transfer To Female Fencing Team, Win Gold At Women’s Junior Olympic Qualifier
The guy had been competing in girls’ sports (athletics) and boys’ sports (fencing) at the same time in high school. He was allowed to transfer from the men’s fencing team to the women’s team in college.
I used to fence. I am familiar with a number of the tournaments mentioned, and attended some of them years ago, but I was never good enough to represent the team at that level. Height is a significant advantage. There are very few short epeeists, where reach is especially important, in the top echelons of the sport. (Epee was opened to women in the 1980s and 90s, and reached the Olympics in 1996; women’s sabre first hit the Olympics in 2004. The fencers in the bout in question were fencing foil, which at the Olympic level has been open to women for a century.)
But, as has been noted many times, this is not a question about whether a particular individual is tall; nobody is suggesting that there be a “tall fencers division”. A major reason there are separate divisions is because men in general have certain physical advantages over women in general, but that isn’t the sole reason. Unless the officials are prepared to jettison the entire concept of sex-based divisions, there is no reason to have a division open both to women and to men who claim to be women. There is no salient difference between Redmond Sullivan and any other male fencer on his team, except that Sullivan claims to be a woman.