thegirlsclub

[Jesmond]

Lately, I'm getting irritated by a female fighters who act like they want to fight, but will not do one goddamn reasonable thing to advance their goals.

I feel like I spend a bunch of time trying to match women who claim they want to fight up with resources and trainers. But be damned if they are willing to make any effort at all besides whining on the internet. It makes me want to punch them in the face.

Example, recently a female fighter is whining about her crappy practice. I ask around. I find out it the best practice in the whole kingdom. There are 30-45 people coming to that practice with about a dozen knights. And they are not hateful cavemen either. I know they are willing to help. I even arrange for introductions and private instruction. And a bunch of nothing happens.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of female fighters that refuse to make or acquire armour. I'm tired of female fighters that refuse to go to an actual practice. I'm tired of female fighters that don't actually want to fight. I'm tired of female fighters with some sort of psychological damage / mental illness / special snowflake status.

Mostly, I'm tired of all the damn excuses.
_________________
First authorized: 1996 - 2000
Re-authorized: 2006 - now
Last event: Coronation
Next event: Border Raids
The Misery Tour: You'll wish you had less fun.

[Cunian]

Ye-ah. There are times it really does not seem like putting much effort into any sort of novices is a useful thing. Around here, most are pretty happy to spend money on armour and often they will come to practice quite regularly for drills, slow work, etc. Frequently enough they will persist through authorization. Then the pain/gain curve hits them and they fizzle out. I think there are just a lot of people wanting a weekend hobby where they can feel like a fantasy hero and mistake us for a likely choice. On the other hand, where's the difference? I mean, I won't deny I want to feel like a fantasy hero. Maybe I just have a better, (more delusional), imagination.

I think women "get away" with being the special snowflake fighter more than men. Men pretty much get beat up and either find a reason to persist or go away. Women can get extra sympathy for their issues from both male and female fighters for various reasons, in the occasional case valid enough. But it's really hard to tell over the internet how valid the issues may be.

[kfinna]

There's people like that everywhere. They don't necessarily want to advance / fix the issue / et cetera, they want to show up and collect sympathy and attention. And of course it's never *their* fault they make no progress...

See it in the hockey rink, on the lacrosse field, in relationships... *pfeh*

On a more constructive note. Do they want to fight, or do they want to become high-caliber well-known fighters? 'Fighting' may, to them, mean showing up to the occasional event and keeping their authorizations current. (If they want to become Really Awesome, then...yeah. I dunno. You can lead a horse to water, yada yada.)

[Slaine]

I guess this describes me for many years. Fighting was my hobby's hobby and I did just enough at times not to lose my authorizations. I didn't whine about it though because I knew it was totally my deal and not the fault of anyone else. I asked little of others.

I do wonder at times if it is a matter of different learning styles. That fighting class I took in November had 20 people at the beginning both men and women and the 4th and final class was 3 women. Regular practices around here tend to be mostly a bear pit with occasional one on one teaching. I don't learn so good that way. The class was really good because it was valuable to see other versions of almost there in the other students. I learned from the critique of others (just like art class hmmmm) because it wasn't about me and I wasn't tempted to take it personally.

Are the male newbs who flake like this just doing less whining?

[Natasha Maria]

I know a male fighter who does this too... well, he keeps fighting and all, but his armour always breaks and he refuses to fix it properly and on and on. It's all a "poor me" story, and for every suggestion, he has a reason it won't work.

I'm just going to start distributing a line of T-Shirts that say "Give up and Whine a Lot"

I think it just annoys me more when women do it. I suspect that there are lots of women who consider themselves fighters simply because more of them actually stick around the SCA after realizing at some level that fighting isn't really for them. Yet they aren't ready to give up on the image of themselves as fighters, hence the litany of excuses.

Someone was giving advice to a newcomer at practice one night, and I liked it. He told the newcomer to expect an amount of attention directly in relation to the amount of effort he/she showed. Show up with a stick, someone will teach you something. Ask good questions based on what they are telling you. Try to bring one new thing, be it armour or question to the next practice. I thought this was good information to share with the newcomers, since it gave them specifics to help them get our attention and deserve it too.

Otherwise... after a while they might just get the T-Shirt instead of the attention - Ok, not really

Maria

[helene]

In response though, I'd ask for tolerance for those of us who are "hobby" fighters. I really like fighting but there's not room in my life right now for it to be an all-consuming passion. I get out when I can (and really enjoy it). I try to keep upgrading my kit, little by little. I try to maintain my equipment, but not everything gets fixed immediately. I am trying to learn as I go, but I recognize that my pace (at once or twice a month) is painfully, terribly slow for people who are doing this every week and most weekends. The flip side of that is that I try not to complain about my slow progression, even when it is frustrating. My plan is to just keep on plugging away, focusing on having fun and making forward progress.

Fighting isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. For some people, it will be a hobby, but it doesn't mean they don't enjoy it. It doesn't mean that they don't care, but it may not be the #1 priority in their life.

So... stop, take a breath, and think about the context of the conversation Is it a hobbiest contemplating upgrading (kit, skills, etc) or is it a whiny bitch. The phrase "Ugh, my legs still don't fit right" could be either person, it just depends on the the context. Feel free to disdain the whiny bitch, but please grant a little patience to the hobbiest
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"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a Russian" - Battle of the Nations peanut gallery

http://helenestuff.blogspot.com/

[Arngrim]

I'd like to make a suggestion to the hobbyfighter (male or female):
Fix the armour.
Really.

If you dedicte some time and money and plan a bit, you should be able to get all your gear in working(if not spiffy) order, fitting right, with all the little modifications and repairwork needed done in a week.

After you have a working set of armour, fight as much, or as little as you wish, but that will be one detail shows that you are trying to do it right, even if you don't do it often.

You will also enjoy it more and move better. It will make you a better fighter too. And you won't be mistaken for someone who blames their equipment.
_________________
Male. Fighter since 1995.
Location: Sweden/Nordmark, Drachenwald

[Corby de la Flamme]

It isn't just women.

I've become very aware after years of teaching that anyone running a practice has to come to grips with the reality that half or more of the time, you're pouring your time down a hole and it will ultimately be of no benefit to the trainee nor the Society.

A huge number of people try it for a while, borrow armor, come to practice, never authorize, never give anything back. (I am NOT speaking of hobby fighters who do what they can.)

The struggle is to discern the really interested from the people who are going to just disappear after getting 10 hours of my time. And this is why I think it is important to not make getting to practice too easy. Getting something out of practice should be just hard enough to discourage the easily discouraged, but not so difficult that "keepers" can't make it.

I've talked and written about this before: Everyone needs discouragement.

[Corby de la Flamme]

(I use the generic "you" below. Decidedly not referring to the OP, whom I do not know.)

The flip side of fighters who refuse to be helped bothers me even more: "fighters" who refuse to shut up.

Some people don't know how to fight and/or don't know how to teach. (These are separate things. Though if you can't fight, your teaching is going to be basic. Plenty of extraordinary fighters can't teach.)

If you've never had any sort of real tournament/war success and there are people around you at practice who are better than you and willing, let them do the teaching. I've seen good people driven from practices by "trainers" who didn't know what they were talking about and wouldn't shut up.

This is particularly insidious when some low-skill fighter spreads their whiney excuse-laden thoughts about fighting to new people. "Listen to me, I know how to fight, I can beat those guys in the shiny helms but they don't take my blows, I should be a knight but it's an old boy's club blah blah." That crap needs to be shut down.

[freiman the minstrel]

[Slaine]

I'm trying to be more than a hobby fighter. I've been authorized for 15 years and my longest break was the year off for pregnancy and recovery. Even when I had foot surgery I was back at it within 6 months. So maybe I've not listened in the past but I've been trying to of late.

This last practice I didn't dress out. It was DH's turn. I did bring my new gauntlet and new mace and swung at the pell a few times. I wasn't particularly thinking about my body mechanics because it was all about the hand holding the mace. I was double checking the strapping every couple shots (I'd tried something new.) Anyway, someone shouted from behind me about my hips. I ignored them. They shouted some more and started talking to someone nearby about me. I ignored them some more. A friend (a knight I had asked to help me with fighting) came over to talk to me.

I realize this isn't quite what the OP was about but objectively I was a female fighter ignoring advice. I'm not entirely sure what to do to change my rep. I'm still going to ignore stupid advice.

[Natasha Maria]

I think there is a big difference between someone who will not take advice at all and someone who already has a set of goals and a plan to meet them... then sometimes the problem is the giver of advice who isn't listening to the "why" behind the ignoring of their advice.

I like to set specific, attainable goals, so I've dealt with this in a few different ways. Sometimes I start the sparring by sharing my goals with my partner, which helps direct their advice in the area I'm working on. Other times, I will wait until they start offering critique and then let them know what I'm up to. Usually that works pretty well since they still get to feel useful, but their comments are more relevant to my goals.

When it's the really incompetent people offering advice, usually with the goal of making themselves feel superior (and I don't mean people who are not spectacular fighters but who can see a lot in the fight - those people I like to listen to), I have a different strategy. If they are polite and obviously mean well, I try to have a notebook handy to write down what they say. I usually say thanks for the advice, but I am really concentrating on ____ right now. I'll write it down so I can remember it for when I'm ready for it. This actually works well with good advice too Alternatively, and particularly if they are way off base, I have an agreement with my knight that I can send those folks to him as a filter. That's usually quite funny, at least for my knight and I.

I think there is a big difference between the "hobby fighter" who enjoys learning to fight but maybe has real life things making it hard to really commit to training hard, and the "Special Snowflake" folks who don't seem to have any real desire to fight, but instead are more interested in being seen as a part of the fighting community and thinking about themselves as fighters, preferably while donning armour as little as possible.

Just my 2 cents... apparently I'm feeling verbose... Sorry!

Maria

[Cunian]

I think almost all female fighters have to ignore advice on occasion. Frankly, we get inundated with advice of fairly random qualities. All well meant, undoubtedly, but often enough either lousy or so very basic as to be REALLY irritating and rather insulting. (Especially when one is on the comeback.) I think Jess was irritated at people who complain they get no help and then won't follow up on really top-notch help that's been specifically rounded up for them at no small effort.

[Jesmond]

[Jesmond]

But this other stuff is fun to talk about too.

About a month or two ago, I was fighting in a pool tourney at an event I hadn't been to in about 15 years. The local marshal in my pool was either inexperienced or just not a fighter. I'm not sure which it was. (There are reasons for this statement I don't want to elaborate on.) Anyway, I had been having all kinds of power issues due to recovering from my thumb injury on top of all my normal power issues. So I hit a lot of people multiple times, but I didn't hit them with good blows. They were not shrugging. I just wasn't throwing good stuff right handed at that point but my pride wouldn't let me fight left handed anymore.

After that pool was complete, this super adorable marshal came up to me. He was so excited for me being a girl and a fighter and that I actually hit people. But he explained that girls have hips. And he launched into a speech about hip rotation and how he had heard that can help and how I might want to discuss with my trainer about employing my hips to power my blows. He was so damn nice. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Somehow I think I managed to keep a straight face as I acted like this was an entirely novel concept that I had never ever heard of before and was certain to employ at the first opportunity to solve all my problems.

Sometimes it is either laugh or cry.
_________________
First authorized: 1996 - 2000
Re-authorized: 2006 - now
Last event: Coronation
Next event: Border Raids
The Misery Tour: You'll wish you had less fun.