An evening at QFN
Hosted every first Saturday of the month at Seven Star Women's Kung Fu, QFN begins at 6 p.m. with a round of introductions from the Coordinator, volunteers, and the night's guest instructor.

The theme for August 20 was "Become Unpinnable," with participants learning the common ways an aggressor can hold them down and the most effective ones to escape.

The instructor demonstrated first with a volunteer, then participants joined in, practicing the new techniques with a partner and working on moves such as "the shrimp," to mount defenses intended to escape an aggressor up to several times larger.

Marco, a beginner to martial arts, arrived at QFN having never stepped foot in a studio before. "I am very easy to pin down, especially [by] people who know what they're doing," he said. "But with the 'Become Unpinnable' training,' I kind of felt like I kind of had a chance with the predefined motions."

At 7 p.m., the Coordinator and the guest instructor laid down safety guidelines and opened up the mats to spars.

A mix of low- and high-intensity games followed. Some of the more experienced participants jumped in quickly, while beginners were slower to find a partner. The partners "negotiate beforehand, so that they're not doing anything that they aren't ready for," said the Coordinator. But in this way, "they can still see themselves in participating in a more advanced martial arts environment."

Shade and a group of fellow Balintawak martial artists arrived shortly before 7 p.m. after training together in Olympia. For Shade, QFN presents an opportunity to spar with people familiar with different combat styles, like kickboxing and jiu-jitsu, which they said is "not an experience I have very often."

The Coordinator described the importance of testing one's skills against various fighting styles. "For example, if you do jiu-jitsu, that is non-striking. And so you can come to the spar... and play different fighting games that might involve striking, and see how you feel about it in a safe environment, and see where your training needs to be bolstered."

Finding safety in community
For Marco, a big part of creating a safe environment is creating a space built on trust and acceptance — and Queer Fight Night does just that.

For him, being able to learn from and practice with fellow Queer people means "being able to be more vulnerable... That's very important, because you are getting very physical, there's a lot of contact, so you need to be able to be comfortable with the people you are sparring with, or you won't want to do it."

Seeing Queer representation in the martial arts is important, said Shade. "I just like talking to the people here. It's a great feeling to be able to train with other Queer people... to be interested in learning together and teaching."

The Coordinator added that QFN carves out a space dedicated to Queer people to grow their confidence in martial arts and enter others they might have otherwise shied away from. "You are able to go to places where you might not have felt comfortable or safe, and you're able to push yourself in new ways."

And with this confidence, they said, QFN creates "people who can go out [to] spaces where there [hasn't traditionally been] room for Queer people."

Queering martial arts
Beyond creating solidarity, another goal of QFN is to tailor martial arts to the specific challenges that Queer people face and to look beyond traditional gendered styles of combat.

"Queering martial arts spaces, to me, means applying it in news ways and finding different avenues of interruption of violence... to address the violence of our lives," the Coordinator explained. "As Queer people, we are subject to a very special kind of violence, and multiple kinds... — like trans-misogyny, homophobia, transphobia in general."

True inclusivity, they said, "means having things that actually are applicable and worthwhile for us to learn. The only people who can do that are Queer martial artists, the only people who know our struggles and know our dangers, who know the constant environments [that face] a Queer person — only we can come up with solutions that will work for ourselves."

For the Coordinator, Queer Fight Night provides a unique opportunity, one in which allows Queer people to come together as a community, "exploring together... and coming up with new solutions to these problems we've been facing, but that we've never been given tools to actually fix. It's really, really magical."