It’s not every day that you may see a local group of people sword fighting in a local park. Just every Saturday. But the swords and historical techniques aren’t all that make this group special.
Amid the current wave of conflicts surrounding transgender athletes, the historic fencing community in Reno is a place that is clearly inclusive.
HEMA is short for “historic European martial arts,” and those who participate in it practice with a wide variety of weaponry and techniques. While HEMA has a history of being dominated by men, in many places that trend is beginning to shift, and the space is becoming more inclusive to women, nonbinary and transgender individuals.
“The majority of tournaments I go to are co-ed,” said Michael French, who has been doing HEMA since 2017. “A lot of tournaments were initially women's tournaments. Later they expanded to URG, which stands for ‘Underrepresented Genders.’ And those are specifically for people who identify as not a man.”
There is a thriving HEMA community in Reno, primarily through an organization called Noble Science, which provides classes and organizes tournaments. For many, participation in classes or just casual get togethers is in part to prepare for these competitions, an area in other sports that have become notorious battlegrounds for transgender rights.
Percy Crano, a trans man who has been fencing for a year, participated as a line judge at a local women’s tournament called FrauFecht last Fall.
“There were trans women competing,” Crano said. “And there were some queer, trans, AFAB (assigned female at birth) trans people, and non-binary people who were competing.”
May Roselove, a transgender woman, said her interactions with the Reno HEMA community have been very positive.
“The community that I work with and fight alongside with has been very welcoming, and I haven't had any quarrels or issues,” Roselove said. “It's been a very welcoming community in terms of acceptance and really not caring whether you're trans or not, because we're all here to have fun and have a good fight.”
Another outlet for the historical fencing community is the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), a community that “[pursues] research and re-creation of pre-seventeenth century skills, arts, combat and culture.”
A focus of the SCA is historical combat, and unlike HEMA, there aren’t even any URG elements in competitive fights; everyone fights everyone else.
The SCA has an official DEI officer, and radical inclusion is a large part of the culture, said Dustin Thelen, who has been a part of the SCA for nearly 10 years.
Thelen is a member of the Order of Defense, which means he has been recognized by the SCA for his “great skill at rapier and/or cut-and-thrust combat, as well as for qualities of courtesy and grace, for willingness to teach others, and for service to the kingdom.”
Thelen has helped organize various SCA rapier events. “As an organization, as a corporation, [the SCA has] in their mission statement and bylaws inclusivity written in. And so the trans person would be not only welcomed [to compete], but encouraged to be themselves.”
Concerns over trans women having an advantage over cisgender women rarely play a role in the historical fencing community.
“I get my ass handed to me all the time,” Eleanor Muir, a trans woman who participates in HEMA, said. “There's a dude I fence with, and he's almost a full foot shorter than me, and he kicks my ass every time.”
“I've seen people from all different backgrounds, all different weight classes, all different sexes and genders, all different levels of flexibility, excel within the hobby,” French said. “And so I personally, for a purely competitive reason, I don't think there's a reason to separate [by gender].”
There are some in the community who would like to see some competitions potentially divided by factors other than gender.
“Even at FrauFecht, there were some people getting hit harder than they wanted to be hit, right? And this was from AFABs,” said Andy Hoeng, who has been doing HEMA competitively for seven years.
“I think it might be interesting to play around with having lower calibration tournaments,” Hoeng added. “We don't have to say they're women's tournaments, but just denote them as like, you can't hit at a certain level, right? And it will help especially smaller women to be able to compete in weapons such as longsword or saber, and not feel like they're in danger or something like that.”
When an accepting community is available, spaces like HEMA and the SCA tend to attract transgender and gender nonconforming people at a greater rate than many other sports.
“Most HEMA people I've met, even if they don't know that much about the queer community or the trans experience, they're willing to listen and learn about those things,” Crano said. “I've never met anybody in HEMA who has ever been just completely turned off by it or completely unwilling to at least give space to it.”
“I feel like maybe niche sports, especially historical fencing, the people that are usually into it are not typical, so to speak,” said Hoeng. “So we have a lot of autistic people, for instance, in fencing, probably a higher proportion than you would see in like football, but just like those kind of people are usually interested in niche things like that.”
“I guess it's just one of those things that we find a niche for, as the queer community,” Muir said.
“Fencing is an awesome sport,” French concluded. “Come play with swords!”
The Noble Science Academy’s website can be found here, and the local SCA group’s here.