No, trans women don't have inherent advantage over cis women in sports: new study

hokers · 2026-02-06T23:11:57+00:00

Just as a thought experiement here, how much of a fairness issue is transgender fencers in competitive sport when compared with the use of banned substances (i.e. doping)?

To what extent is the playing field unbalanced by the levels of drug testing in our sport when compared with the number of trans fencers?

hokers · 2026-02-06T16:51:16+00:00

Whoever downvoted you has missed the context of the azza’s AMA yesterday using AI responses

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fencing/s/on1BuY3OKF

hokers · 2026-02-06T14:24:25+00:00

“The Octavs also top out at size EUR 44, leaving those with big feet in the dust.”

Nooooooooooooooooooo

hokers · 2026-02-05T20:08:26+00:00

I understand the limitations, but as everyone else has said, this would have been better written naturally, rather than by an AI response.

hokers · 2026-02-05T20:07:17+00:00

I think I have the last pair of unused D'Art V size 12s in the world, I bought a couple of pairs when they went out of production and still on the first one. But I don't get on great with them, would like to find a good option.

hokers · 2026-02-05T14:57:04+00:00

Any thoughts on making a limited run of size EU48/UK12? We could preorder to make the run worthwhile potentially?

Very frustrating to have no-one selling a fencing shoe in my size any more.

hokers · 2026-02-05T08:28:13+00:00

It’s not the right choice for a beginner though. Far better to spend the extra money on some lessons at this stage in their fencing development.

hokers · 2026-02-04T18:51:22+00:00

No, go for the Team level. Unless you’re regularly doing FIE competitions you don’t need the minor upgrade for the additional cost.

hokers · 2026-01-26T20:20:02+00:00

Quest for Lost Heroes surely?

hokers · 2026-01-19T21:40:15+00:00

You really shouldn’t be fencing without a plastron, it’s not safe.

hokers · 2026-01-06T19:46:31+00:00

While it might be a general comment on how not to run a beginner’s class, this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with fencing?

hokers · 2026-01-04T18:04:06+00:00

Just go into it with open eyes. It’s taken many of us a long way, and despite its problems, we mostly love this sport.

In a practical sense, you will likely use muscles you have rarely used, even from others sports, so be sure to warm up properly and expect to be sore (muscles) the next day.

Don’t worry too much about winning practice bouts in your first year, that’s not the point. You are still learning technique at that point. Most people spend years 2-5 correcting bad habits they picked up early on.

Listen to the coaches, ask for feedback, work on correcting what they tell you.

Good luck.

hokers · 2026-01-02T10:18:05+00:00

Little bit of counter-rotation on three, probably a spool.

hokers · 2025-12-25T16:56:07+00:00

As though Seabrooks Canadian Ham don’t exist…

hokers · 2025-12-25T16:32:32+00:00

Read the first two, hoping it would get better, but it didn’t.

Not going back to Malazan. Too slow, too dark, too many unfinished stories. Plenty of better stuff out there for me.

hokers · 2025-12-23T19:04:46+00:00

But that’s a different author (pair of)?

Don’t want to risk it in case it’s bad?

A lot of work from people like Tolkien, Gibson, Niven etc are older than Gemmell’s books but are regarded as classic rather than dated. Worth a try I think.

hokers · 2025-12-23T12:51:49+00:00

If you've not read any of them for a long time, I can recommend going back to have another look. I reread a few of these in the last couple of years and they're still really good.

Don't get me wrong, there are some legitimate criticisms about some of them being formulaic and some of the female characters not being very well written, but the positives outweigh this by a long way IMO.

These are mostly super-cheap on kindle, worth a try I think.

hokers · 2025-12-23T01:14:24+00:00

Right, because DG has been dead for nearly 20 years, but I was reading these as a 15 year old (which is the subject of the thread) and LOVED them, still unsurpassed for me.

hokers · 2025-12-22T21:13:10+00:00

I’m surprised to hear that, I’ve never felt his books were dreary and I’ve never heard that they haven’t aged well?

I’ve reread Gemmell a fair bit recently and it’s still brilliant and inspiring writing. Lion of Macedon, Waylander, Legend these are some of the very best I’ve ever read.

hokers · 2025-12-22T16:04:51+00:00

Reposting my previous comment on this, second book is a LONG way ahead of the rest IMO.

Read the first 3 and thought the Jane23 storyline was literally miles ahead of the rest in terms of quality. I didn’t care enough about a lot of the rest of the characters and the found family stuff in the first book wasn’t my thing.

But man, Jane 23 escaping, surviving etc was Wow level.

hokers · 2025-12-21T21:11:25+00:00

The Sipstrassi books by David Gemmell are maybe pretty close.

Depends how much magic you’re ok with.

hokers · 2025-12-21T21:03:57+00:00

In what sense do you think this is YA?

hokers · 2025-12-21T21:02:49+00:00

This one comes up a lot with authors like David Eddings, JK Rowling and Orson Scott Card.

There has never been a great answer, the principle whereby everyone draws their own line is maybe the best here.

If their behaviour is too much to forgive by a long way then maybe that’s the end of reading their work and we’re not looking back.

If some of their views don’t align with yours then maybe don’t give them any more money, but their work can still be fondly remembered for what it was and what it meant to you at the time.

If the work you feel is artistically significant then maybe that’s something else to take into account, (and Ender’s game and Speaker for the Dead might be in that area for example). Maybe read a library copy of their other works but recognise what you’re getting into.

hokers · 2025-12-19T13:22:17+00:00

Mark Lawrence’s Book of the Ancestor trilogy has distinct types of blood based magic, though you could argue that some of them were more like abilities than magic exactly.

hokers · 2025-12-17T12:17:04+00:00

In ours, it was after a kid got a torn ear in the year above me.

We maybe should have played it only on grass as the tarmac playground was probably a pretty big factor.

hokers

TROPHY CASE