Should we have women's tourneys?
This is an excerpt from the June 2018 House Lionesse panel on women's fighting. The panelists discuss their opinions on what women's tourneys can do for the game.
There's a necessity for it when you do have female fighters that are maybe discouraged on the field, or maybe they get sluffed a lot because they're female, or they get harassed. A women's tournament is a great space to step some of those fighters into the tournament headspace and to make them feel like now they know what a tournament is, like they can have the confidence with it. It just allows that headspace to be started with if they're not really somebody who feels comfortable and regular tournaments. It was also very helpful when we had that women's tournament at Keep that we didn't just have the participants and their friends and family. We also had--I saw Raven and Tato and a bunch of warlords and sword Knights watching very seriously. There was no cat calling, it was taken as seriously as the HOG Cup was, with people being respectful about it which helped. It was really important for some of those female fighters that didn't feel like they could participate in other things, or they didn't want to worry about being sluffed by somebody for being a woman and the reeve not taking that because they're a woman. So I think they're important. But I don't think we should have the men's tournament and the women's tournament. Having a women's tournament helps; having the regular tournament should stay the way it is. Maybe this is controversial, but I don't think the women's tournament should count towards becoming a sword knight or a warlord. Maybe for lower level warriors, sure, but I I'm in the mindset that it's necessary insomuch as it's a cultural thing. It's not something that should be high level fighting awards.
It's weird from my background in fencing where they are not together. The Olympics are the same way, right, you have women events and you have men events--but I think the difference is the amount of people you have. In sports of that nature there is an equal amount of women and there is an equal amount of men, and we don't have that in this game. We just don't, and to have something that leads to warlord and knighthood from there--if you only have a couple of girls fighting in a tournament it's uncomfortable. I think culturally--yes, absolutely. We should have them in that sense for sure, because there there are a lot of situations where there are a lot of women and they even want to fight and they don't feel comfortable. They just don't. Sometimes it's an intimidation thing and sometimes it's a harassment thing--honestly, it's very uncomfortable to go into a tournament be the only woman there and have several of them try to hit on, you try to ask you out. You're there to fight, you're there to be equal and it can be very uncomfortable. So I think that kind of comfortable space to just compete is nice, and I encourage it.
One hundred percent believe that our women's tournaments do have a space in our game. I think it's a really good segue for getting those women interested or at least in a comfortable competitive environment. Every women's tournament that I've been a part of over the past year and a half has been a very friendly supportive environment.. Even if two people jump in and one person leaves it's always “I really like that blocking, that was awesome!” It doesn't matter what that outcome was, there’s still a very friendly rapport and that's amazing. The problem I'm seeing right now after we've been doing this for about a year and a half is, those women that are competing in those women’s tournaments--we're not seeing those numbers translated into the open tournaments. That's where I'm struggling right now. I don't want there to be two different areas of competition. I don't want there to be a men's and women's. I want there to be an open, but there's definitely a problem with our female fighters not competing in those open tournaments. In the wetlands it's me and maybe, maybe!, two other women and that's it. That seems pretty consistent across the kingdoms that I travel. There's a problem here, I don't know what the solution is so I’ll ask you guys what do you think of that disconnect? Why are they competing in the women’s tournament but they're still not showing up to the men's tournament?
In a very positive polite way, because I have the problem that I'm going to talk about sometimes--I think it comes down to the ego about the numbers that you get in the women's tournament. We have one female sword knight. So we don't have a lot of women who are up in in that upper tier and past whatever number of warriors to be considered a really good fighter like a lot of the men are. On the whole, women in amtgard don't have a lot of skill so it's going to be a disconnect to be able to get a lot of kills or a fair amount of kills or a good percentage of kills versus when you go into the regular tournament and there's a lot more of the really good fighters. Even if you're on par with them you might be 50/50 which means you're probably gonna lose a little bit more. So it it might be a little bit of a blow to the ego to not do as well and you feel worse about your fighting. Some of it is not being overly competitive, you just like the space maybe? We don't have any women's tournament’s here for me to really have that association with, besides what I saw at Keep, but I think it comes down to the ego about not getting as many kills. Our new players have some of that too, men and women alike. A lot of the guys don't want to compete in the kingdom level tournaments but they'll compete in the park level tournaments because, well, they can kill more at the park! But when you go to Kingdom there's a lot more of your good fighters from all around and you're probably gonna die more you're probably gonna lose a lot more and that ego really sucks. It's the esteem of being a good fighter, it's like okay yeah how much am I willing to get out of my comfort level or headspace, to be able to want to fight.
I've not done any women's tournaments but I did women's fighter cards at Feast of the Dead last year and those were great in getting me excited about actually fighting in Amtgard again. Why? Because there was communication--friendly communication back and forth-- just in a little bit of ditching that was done one-on-one. That's the thing that makes me more interested in wanting to fight. It's removing any posturing, at least in the learning level. Removing any need for competition, to just be like okay, this exists, here we'll talk about it in a little bit. Not like, oh god I'm gonna go and get in my own head because I'm standing in line to potentially do--and then never hear my name called because there's no way that's gonna happen.
