Women of Chivalry

Now I admit to being one of those who thought that Chivalry died when we sent old Dobbin to the glue factory, but Grian Ruadh ingen Aed of the SCA has a slightly different view, which I think might be summarized as "suck it up, girls, and get with the program."

Shut The Hell Up.

Yes, I’m talking to YOU.

YOU are the reason that many male fighters (and not a few female fighters) still think that female fighters in general are whiny candyasses not worth training.

...

YOU are the attention-seeker who bellyaches the loudest about being hit too hard whenever someone lays anything more substantial than a tap on you.

YOU are the sinkhole of negativity who has a mile long list of gripes and complaints that you will reel off to anyone who will stand still long enough to listen but doesn’t seem interested in actually finding solutions.

YOU are the flutter of false earnestness constantly asking for advice but rarely taking any that doesn’t involve stroking your fragile little ego or garnering you more attention.

And don’t even start with me about how you’re “struggling with the lizard brain”. That analogy was first presented in The Armored Rose as a means of identifying problems that could then be circumvented and moved past. You and those like you have seized upon the “lizard brain” as some sort of rallying banner that you wave every time things get a little difficult or someone calls you on acting like a moron or you screw up in a big way. It’s your crutch, your favorite excuse for anything under the sun that doesn’t go right with regard to your fighting. Put down the lizard and back away slowly.

I’m not talking about having a problem and not being able to figure out why it’s happening or what’s causing it. That’s why we have a fighting community to help each other troubleshoot when needed. The next step after troubleshooting, however, is implementing the solution or the process that will lead to the solution.

It is most emphatically not bringing up the same set of gripes over and over again and refusing to do any of the things you know will result in those gripes going away.

It is not making “poor me” posts to your favorite email list every time you go home from practice with bruises because you haven’t been doing the skills work needed to not get hit so often or because you’ve been sitting on your ass for so long that all you can do at practice is hold up your shield with a shaking arm and suck wind while someone else uses you for a pell.

You know perfectly well why your defense is full of holes a truck could drive through. You also know what to do about it.

You know perfectly well why you suck wind at practice. You also know what to do about that.

It seems obvious, but you may actually not know, that the only way to become really good at fighting is to practice a lot and to fight a lot. If you don’t put in the work, don’t expect to improve, and don’t come crying to the rest of us over it. If you really want to change, shut your pie hole, get off your ass and take some action.

If you don’t actually mind that you’re not that good at fighting and you have other priorities right now that you are happily pursuing, groovy. At least you know where you are and what you want at the moment.

If your skill level bothers you, and you are actively working on changing it for the better, awesome. You also know where you are and what you want.

If you can’t stand not being lauded as a “good fighter”, but you’re too lazy or too distracted to put in the effort it takes to become one, as I said before, shut your mouth. You are not allowed to complain. Not One Word.

By “effort”, I do not mean going to fighter practice every once in while and then moaning about how it always feels like you’re never getting anywhere. I do not mean talking non-stop about your fighting problems while doing nothing about them. I do not mean acting like other fighters owe it to you to accommodate your whiny, unmotivated ass and give you rah-rah speeches every time you have a pity party over it.

I’ve been right in this spot myself, many moons ago before I figured out that the only “bad practices” are the ones I make bad. If I haven’t learned something even from having my ass handed to me, that’s my failure and no one else’s. If I’m not working to correct what I see as problems in my fighting, I forfeit the right to whinge. If I can’t see the source of a problem, it’s my responsibility to ask for help figuring that out. At no point does any of this become anyone else’s responsibility.

So if you really want to fight, take responsibility for yourself and do something about it. Make some forward progress. Analyze your trouble spots and work on fixing them. Ask intelligent questions. Go to fighter practice often enough that your muscles and brain don’t lose whatever they’ve gained from one to the next. Go to your fighting companions and mentors when you need help and listen up when they offer it. Don’t be a black hole; give something back in time, effort or materials.

Figure out what you want out of fighting before you ask anyone to give you their time and attention. If you can’t articulate a reasonable answer to the question “What are your fighting goals?”, you’re not even ready to start. No one should rightly waste a moment of their precious time on any newbie until they can come up with that answer. People who have no idea why they’re fighting and what they want out of it are almost always the ones who hang around for a little while and then disappear from the game.

So, find your bootstraps and grab on. No one, and I do mean no one, is going to make a fighter out of you except you.

Now, it’s time to put up or shut up.

Of course I think she is talking about sword fighting.