“Male fencers are like male figure skaters. Lots of fags.”
BS, dude, BS.
There’s a lot of rigorous training and a lot of pain to get past before you step up on the podium.
In the upper ranks of US fencing at present there is only one faggot. In my day there were none.
We don’t usually think of it as such in America, because nobody carries swords any more, but it is a martial art. The strength, speed, timing, and control of distance I learned in fencing kept me from getting mugged or beat up on more than one continent.
My late husband, who was about as straight as it is possible for a man to be (and Army ROTC, active and then Reserves, rifle team, combat pistol, competitive skeet shooter, and dart team captain extraordinaire) was a fencer with the Atlanta Fencers' Club (Gene Gettler, Maitre d'armes). The whole lot of them were just ordinary American males.
Don't go slinging names just because a couple of idiot kids at Columbia decide to act in an immature and discourteous way. Their professors encourage it.
“””Male fencers are like male figure skaters. Lots of fags. “”
My son was the captain of the fencing team in high school.
He is ok but now that I think about it a few of his teammates could have been fags.
“Male fencers are like male figure skaters. Lots of fags.”
I have no interest in sport/Olympic fencing (which this is), but I am a historical fencer in HEMA. Studying treatises written 600 years ago for German longsword is extremely nerdy, but fighting with a steel federschwert is a tough workout and good full-contact training. You have to wear more protection than typical fencing, but it’s relatively safe.
8. Wrong. I was on a varsity fencing team that won many MAC championships, tied for fourth in the 1966 NCAA championships, produced three All-Americans (including 2 repeaters), and had at least two of us in Vietnam/Cambodia - Lt.Geoff Hamm, our first All American fender in decades KIA from wounds, June 1966, and myself as a pro-American journalist, Fall 1970, and probably others I don’t know about. We practiced hard, fenced hard, won by our skills, and I know that Geoff fought darned hard in leading his men against the communists. We were real men on that team. You hard to be to win!!! In Nam, you had to be a real man regardless of sexual orientation. DON’T insult people you don’t know.