The transgender fencer who competed in the women’s USA Fencing tournament has stepped down from the Wagner College women’s fencing team following controversy over their participation.
As Breitbart News reported last week, women’s fencer Stephanie Turner refused a match against a transgender opponent at the Cherry Blossom Open in Maryland this past weekend, opting to take a knee instead. When Turner learned that she would be facing off against transgender fencer Redmond Sullivan, she wanted her protest to be caught on video and decided to take a knee just before the match began. She had already participated in warmups and competed in four bouts that day. Take a look:
Woman immediately disqualified and expelled from a @USAFencing event after refusing to face a male opponent.
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) April 2, 2025
This type of protest needs to be mirrored by female athletes at scale. By agreeing to compete, you tacitly accept the absurd premise.pic.twitter.com/uAoM3UlzWm
According to Fox News, Wagner College confirmed that Redmond Sullivan exited the team more than a week following the viral controversy at the Cherry Blossom Open.
“Sullivan is shown to have competed for the Wagner women’s team in the foil competition in several meets during the first half of the 2024-25 season. Sullivan participated on the men’s team during the 2023-24 season, scoresheets from meets during the season showed,” Fox News reported.
Sullivan’s exit might be in accordance with the NCAA changing its transgender-inclusion policy to match President Donald Trump’s signing of the “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order. Not only did USA Fencing defend its inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports, but Damien Lehfelt, the chair of USA Fencing, was seen publicly championing men who disadvantage women after being called out.
The Independent Council of Women’s Sports shared several screenshots from Lehfelt’s Instagram Stories in which he outright said that “cisgendered” women should be disadvantaged while arrogantly thumbing his nose in the face of a woman who complained about his stance.
🤺Damien Lehfeldt, Chair of USA Fencing, has used his own social media to humiliate women who dare advocate for a sex-based category in women's fencing.
— ICONS (@icons_women) April 3, 2025
This private email exchange is one he shared to his IG when a woman wrote him in defense of female fencers after this article… https://t.co/QszxomnqZX pic.twitter.com/lUQVPQyYQa
According to Reduxx, Lehfelt previously said “transgender women are women” when he posted an article to his blog, The Fencing Coach, and even told women to believe that giving male “athletes a sense of belonging and a will to live is more powerful than medals and competitive glory.”
In response, some social media users sent him anonymous messages asking him to clarify his position, seemingly bewildered that a USA Fencing official would so brazenly oppose fair opportunities for female athletes.
“Are you okay with cis females being at a disadvantage?” one person asked Lehfeldt in a question he posted to his Instagram story, to which he simply responded: “Yeah.”
One anonymous source told Reduxx that women in the fencing community have become fearful of voicing their misgivings about allowing men in women’s sports.
“It is reflective of fencing being linked to entry into college, specifically, and highly competitive universities. Most schools that have a fencing team are in the Ivy League, and one of the best ways to get into the Ivy League is through fencing,” said one source. “The problem with this issue is that it’s so inflammatory that it’s hard to say anything without someone calling you a bigot, a Nazi, or a ‘violent threat to other people’ for not believing that men can become women or believing that men should be competing in the women’s division.”
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