Andrew Fischl
speaker
72 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Andrew Fischl’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
And at that point, I think it's fair to say that it's just not that important.
In order to qualify for tournaments that you need to go to to even qualify for the Olympics, so like qualifiers for the qualifiers, you need to have at minimum a C rating. And she does not have that, so it... I don't know her. I've never spoken to her. I've tried to reach out to her, but it seems from the outside, like this is just a casual fencer doing these tournaments for fun.
No, definitely not. And anyone who says that doesn't know anything about athletics.
spoke volumes to me. It may well have been important to her. That's completely fair. But this is not something that anyone would be reasonable in saying they prepared for their entire life.
They both seem very silly to me. As a high-level fencing coach, I can safely say that I have never, ever told one of my female fencers not to fence a male fencer because it was dangerous. We encourage little kids to fence with... high-level fencers all the time. And I would think that… Wait, like literal children? Yes.
I would think that like a small child fencing against an adult would be more quote-unquote dangerous than that. But fencing is one of the safest sports that there is. And everyone has something to gain in practice regardless of who the opponent is.
The week before this competition, she knowingly participated in a mixed competition, which means that men and women are both allowed to sign up. That tournament was extremely casual. There were no points on the line, not a qualifier for anything, just a fun tournament. But she fenced several men in that competition, and she actually did beat some of them.
So as far as the skill level goes, men may have physical advantages over women. How that translates into the sport is up for debate. I think at the top level, there is a significant difference. But at that level, I don't know how much there is. And so much of fencing is about distance, tactics, timing, precision, that just pure strength is not such a gigantic advantage in the sport.
It's not meaningless, but it's not a gigantic advantage. And she did beat several male opponents the week before.
Fenced literal men, yeah. Without an issue for safety and beating some of them. So obviously the skill factor wasn't an issue either.
So the punishment was a black card, which is disqualification and a short probationary period afterwards for refusing to fence an eligible opponent. In fencing, we do not get to pick our opponents. And if we did, it would obviously be ridiculous.
If I refuse to fence you at a competition, then I would be black carded for the same, like in exactly the same manner. I would receive the same probationary period. It's not about trans, black, white, Asian, religious, whatever. It's I am supposed to fence an opponent who's eligible. And by refusing to do that, I am going to be disqualified.
So I think that's pretty silly as well. There have been, to my knowledge, no examples of people in fencing who were bad and then transitioned and suddenly became good. And this is a process that, as I understand, takes a long time to complete. You need to have an appointment with a doctor to diagnose you with gender dysphoria syndrome and then
You need to be on hormones for at least a year, demonstrating consistent tests below a certain testosterone level. And it's not like if I declared myself a woman, I could just compete in a competition, a women's competition tomorrow.
It took a while. She told me that in high school, she was having thoughts of transitioning for a while. And when she finally took it seriously enough to go see a doctor, it took, I think, a year to get that appointment.
She was put on hormones for over a year before she was allowed to compete in the women's category.
I also have a few other stories about this. A friend of mine coaches high school in New Jersey, and she has coached trans athletes before. And there was a trans athlete on her team who was doing okay on the men's foil team, wanted to transition, was told, like, we don't have a spot for you on the women's team right now, so you would just be basically a benchwarmer.
And that person chose to be a female benchwarmer rather than to continue to start as a male because... That's just who this person was. And that was very important to her.
This scheme. Can I read a tweet that I was sent on this topic that's pretty funny?
Okay. Thank God. So I don't remember who said this because I just have a screenshot of the actual text, but...
Showing 21–40 of 72 · page 2 of 4
← Previous
Next →