For more than a week, conservative news outlets and right-wing corners of social media have championed Stephanie Turner, 31, a fencer who took a knee and removed her mask to forfeit a tournament duel against Red Sullivan, 19, a transgender woman. But most discourse around the incident — in which Turner was disqualified by a USA Fencing referee with a “black card” for refusing to compete against an eligible opponent — has obscured important context. Sullivan was reluctant to speak to journalists amid the concocted uproar, she tells Rolling Stone, as she was disheartened by inaccurate, unscientific, and hostile press. “My entire life is political,” she says, mentioning just how many articles Fox News has written about her and Turner — at least a dozen to date — and that she is currently reading Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, which famously argues that American mass media serves to disseminate propaganda. “There are a million things more important than to talk about a silly little fencing tournament in Maryland,” she says, let alone a specific bout between “two people, neither of whom were going to win the event.” Days after Turner’s performative exit on March 30 from the annual Cherry Blossom Open tournament at the University of Maryland, footage of the display went viral on social media. In the clip, Sullivan approaches Turner, thinking that she might be hurt, before her opponent says that she won’t fence. In an interview with Fox News, Turner explained her actions while misgendering Sullivan, saying, “I looked at the ref and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I cannot do this. I am a woman, and this is a man, and this is a women’s tournament. And I will not fence this individual.'” By that point, video of her protest had been shared by groups such as the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, which advocates against trans women in sports, and author J.K. Rowling, who is known for her staunchly transphobic views. “What a heroine looks like,” Rowling wrote of Turner. Turner said on Fox that she had for a while known that she would forfeit a duel if up against a transgender woman, and made a habit of avoiding tournaments where a trans athlete might be registered, claiming that Sullivan had signed up for the Cherry Blossom after her. Turner further predicted that backing out of the duel with Sullivan “will probably, at least for the moment, destroy my life.” It did not. In addition to her accolades from the many journalists, celebrities, and influencers behind today’s moral panic over trans inclusion in sports, Turner received a $5,000 prize and was named a “Courage Wins Champion” by XX-XY Athletics, a sportswear brand that also opposes transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. The company said it was inducting her into a leadership program as well. However, unlike many sports, it’s not uncommon for fencers to train or compete in co-ed settings. In fact, just a week prior to the Maryland tournament, Turner had entered a “mixed” event at the Swarthmore College Phoenix Cup — and defeated four different cisgender male opponents, ultimately placing 8th out of 32 fencers. As for the Cherry Blossom, Sullivan remained in the contest and won two out of six bouts, placing 24th out of 39 fencers. A sophomore at Wagner College in New York, Sullivan tells Rolling Stone that “fencing is an esoteric sport” that is difficult to understand from outside the community. In fencing clubs, she says, it’s understood that “you can get something from practicing with anyone and everyone,” mostly regardless of gender or age, and that “the goal is to fence most people there.” She adds: “12-year-olds come up and ask to fence me regularly, and I will regularly lose to certain 12-year-olds” who are especially well-trained or talented. “Fencing is not a measure of pure strength,” she notes, nor is body size an obvious advantage: U.S. Olympic champion fencer Lee Kiefer, she says, is only five-foot-four-inches tall, but routinely defeats significantly taller rivals due to her timing and accuracy. Sullivan, who has been fencing for six years and calls herself a “mid” competitor, entered men’s and mixed events from 2021 through mid-2023. She first became medically eligible for women’s tournaments in the fall of 2024. Since President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning trans women in women’s sports, with the NCAA accordingly changing their rules to permit only those assigned female at birth in women’s college athletics, she has not fenced for her former women’s college team, which she joined and was active in last semester. “I was bewildered — flabbergasted, even,” Sullivan says of the moment when Turner refused to duel her, in what she describes as a staged and unnecessary stunt recorded by at least two people present. She recalls saying, “Bro, what,” when she heard Turner’s remarks. “Nothing close to this has ever happened. No one has ever had a problem with me fencing in a women’s event,” Sullivan says. “She could have withdrawn herself from the tournament, or talked to the organizers and said, ‘Hey, I do not want to fence this person,’ and seen if they could have reshuffled the pools. She actively chose to have this interaction and film it and then send it to people to post it.” The original viral posts about the clip on social platform X, she observes, included Sullivan’s full name, but avoided naming Turner, whose identity was not public until she began talking to Fox News. As such, Sullivan was far more exposed to the public. “On any day of the week, no one would care about the outcome of a fencing tournament,” Sullivan says. “The only reason people care about this is because the adjective ‘trans’ has been attached.” She laughs off a Fox anchor’s incorrect suggestion that the tournament was an Olympic qualifying event. “It was nowhere near that,” she says. “It’s a regional event, which basically matters for only regional points, and for most people, they’re for funsies.” She also contests Turner’s claim that she had seen their pool matchup scheduled the night before the tournament. “The pools weren’t posted until 10 minutes before we started fencing on the day of the event,” she says. Attempts to reach Turner’s rep for comment were unsuccessful. Charles X. Wang, an attorney and board member of the nonprofit Fair Fencing Organization (FFO) who wrote on Facebook that he was “proud to represent Turner” in the matter of her disqualification, did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment. FFO in February announced a crowdfunding campaign to mount a class-action lawsuit against USA Fencing over a litany of complaints, including “wrongful application of DEI policies.” USA Fencing has so far stood by the decision to eject Turner from the Cherry Blossom, which will not affect her eligibility for future events. The expulsion, they said in a statement, “was not related to any personal statement but was merely the direct result of her decision to decline to fence an eligible opponent, which the [International Fencing Federation] rules clearly prohibit. USA Fencing is obligated to follow the letter of those rules and ensure that participants respect the standards set at the international level.” The Cherry Blossom Open is a non-collegiate tournament, and Sullivan had met USA Fencing’s hormone requirements for trans athletes to compete in a women’s event. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said he will investigate the organization, as did Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Sen. Ted Cruz also wrote a letter attacking USA Fencing’s inclusion policies. Republicans and far-right agitators have spared no effort in demonizing the vanishingly tiny fraction of trans athletes among sporting associations around the world, even in games like disc golf and darts. Sullivan finds it absurd. “Darts, what trans advantage is there?” she asks. “You’re throwing a tiny little thing at a board.” She says she’s “been aware” that she could be targeted the same way, and that after the aborted face-off with Turner, “I knew I was cooked.” Sullivan had already attracted the attention of anti-trans groups in December, when the faux-feminist transphobia site Reduxx published a post about her winning a women’s Junior Olympics qualifier. “While it sounds super prestigious, it’s not,” Sullivan says. “It’s just a national tournament with kind of different branding.” She was friends with almost everyone in the tournament, she says, including the woman to whom she nearly lost in the finals. On Fox News, Turner cited the Reduxx hit piece as the reason she’d known that Sullivan is trans. In the past week, Sullivan has been frustrated by coverage that not only features older pictures of her and her birth name, but trades on the “patently false” idea that “sex is binary and immutable” and constantly describes her as a “biological male.” And she finds anti-trans sentiment about protecting women’s spaces and sports, when couched in the language of feminism by figures like Rowling, former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines, and former tennis pro Martina Navratilova, who faced potential repercussions for coming out as gay in the 1980s, particularly disingenuous. (Navratilova wrote on X that USA Fencing had thrown women “under the gender bullshit bus” when she shared the tournament video.) “Feminism should include all women, including trans women, and, I mean, coming from a trans person, that’s less likely to be well received,” Sullivan says. “But they aren’t even fucking feminists.” She calls Navratilova, “morally bankrupt” for recycling the toxic rhetoric she and other queer athletes endured in the past to go after trans athletes. “In a world of Navratilovas, be a Billie Jean,” she adds, referencing another gay tennis superstar of the 1980s who supports trans people’s participation in sports. Thankfully, Sullivan has found that the actual fencing community has rallied to her side, and is reading “incredibly” supportive comments across platforms, including Reddit and Facebook. She reiterates that fencing is hardly a matter of broad public interest compared to stories like Trump’s tariffs or Israel’s war on Gaza. “Even when it’s an Olympic cycle,” she says, “if you were to say, ‘Name a gold medal Olympian [fencer],’ people would be like, ‘What’s fencing?'”