Parsing Fightcamp

My girlfriend is disabled,  She has also been sexually assaulted ("touched up") by my esteemed and honourable embezzler of funds when he was a teacher. If he wasn't a massive cunt, she would have a skill and experience at least equal to mine.

She was SG-3, she chose Middleton to be her Moriarty- she's one of us with new eyes and old memories.

She had her first open competiion at Fightcamp this year. Dropped out after her first bout- which she was happy to lose, and will be happier when she sees the video- her first bout was at the hands of a very good fencer and the eventual winner of the pool. The shit between it:

She needed a moment because she was expecting 5 exchanges, and someone said 6th. There were tears a breather and a lot of frustration with herself... and patronising bullshit from the sidelines and the "judges".

The judges made many shit calls- I was cornering for a newbie and there were no rules that allowed me to intervene or tear them a new one, I saw flat blows. Abuse of the afterblow rule (foot didn't move- it was still in time). Halt called and ignored enough times that if I had the power, I would have ended the pool and disqualified everyone who didn't.

I am angry that I told someone who left HEMA 10 years ago and only just has a tenuous grasp on a wonderful hobby, that she was right to pull out of the feder competition. 

The cost of one member

We had a bit of a crisis of conscious recently. The club has worked hard to distance itself from old associations. We didn't tell  about the new group who we saw as papercut toxic. The kinds who use gay or girl as insults. The people that define microagressions.

We're now big enough to need formal rules and procedures.  It's not enough to rely on the goodwill of members and gentlemanly behaviour. And yes, I don't like virtue signaling. You come into my space- you treat everyone in the room as if they could, regretfully, kill you.

Not going to lie. I balked at a formal code of conduct, I have to be actively promoting it. I looked at the code with apprehension, assuming that nobody would willingly break it. Worrying about if I did.

I didn't think that people would object to the rules. Let alone people we trusted. We're a club of 60+ active members, we can take walk ins, we can be idiots sometimes, but we have a principle of diversity.

So we have someone who refused to obey a code that expected people to recognise pronouns- 3 years of goodwill, equipment loans and valuable contribution lost because he couldn't learn a name or respect personhood.

I am angry it came to this. But proud that this was the decision.

4 down, 56 to go.

It's the Fightcamp planning spree and inbetween comittee and club stuff, constantly more complicated life stuff and so on...  It has always been hard keeping the blog- But nkw harder than ever because things I want to rant about is too sensitive, so it passes without comment until it is no. longer topical. A lot of the stuff I do now has to respect the trust and some weird authority other people have given me.. Been a very long time since I was just a well intentioned idiot with a sword and a copy of Guy Windsor.

I am taking a little time to reflect about the stuff I love-

This year, 2 more of my guys have been invited to teach. We have a lass who will be ready to teach sword and buckler next year.  Another of the ladies is capable of teaching a class worthy of Fightcamp - and  would have run it at Renaissance Rumble.

On the newer end, we have competitors who are eager to throw themselves in at the deep end. My girlfriend is ready to fulfil a promise she made to herself last year and has been (almost) equally scared and joyful when she realises that it's real and a possibility. We have competitors and those who are going for the sheer joy of learning stuff they never get a chance to try.

It is hard to say how proud I am and how far we (I) have come from the uber shinai at the gunpowder mills.