WesterlyMagazine

‘Fencing Lessons with Hermaphroditic Flatworms’ by Prema Arasu

For Dmitry

This work of creative nonfiction by Prema Arasu was published in Westerly Online Special Issue (OSI16): Oceans. This Special Issue of Westerly is an exciting collaboration with The UWA Oceans Institute, guest-edited by Prema Arasu. Contributors include scientists from the OI alongside literary luminaries and emerging WA writers.

OSI16 is available to download in its entirety for free here.

Prema Arasu is a postdoctoral research fellow in creative writing at the Minderoo–UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre. Prema’s book of poetry, Vampire Squid, is forthcoming with Fremantle Press (2026).

Fencing Lessons with Hermaphroditic Flatworms

I. En garde
Non-parasitic marine flatworms (Class: Turbellaria, Phylum: Platyhelminthes) are some of the most structurally simplistic creatures of the sea. They have no circulatory or respiratory organs, simple ocelli and a one-way gut. They lack the molluscan complexity of nudibranchs but imitate their flamboyant forms in two-dimensional facsimile; they are fabulously patterned and hued in aposematic neon to ward off predators. This begets common names like the candy-striped flatworm. The Persian carpet flatworm. The brilliant flatworm. The racing stripe flatworm. The gold-speckled flatworm.

Most marine flatworms are hermaphroditic, possessing both ovaries and testes. Hermaphroditic flatworms mate by duelling. Their sexual encounters consist of a battle with their two-headed stylets, each attempting to pierce the other in a process known as traumatic insemination, or penis fencing. The first flatworm to be stabbed becomes female. She carries the mated pair’s eggs.

II.  Prêts
In 17th and 18th century Europe, fencing was a form of training for duelling. A duel was a respectable way for a gentleman to resolve a dispute. Duels were fought to first blood—or death, with the rules of engagement written in a code duello.

The modern sport of fencing bears little resemblance to its deadly predecessor. There are three types of modern fencing: foil, épée and sabre. Originating as a training weapon, the foil is the lightest weapon. The sabre is a slashing weapon with a crescent-shaped hand guard. Women’s sabre was officially recognised by the global fencing peak body, Fédération Internationale d’Escrime, in 1998, and first appeared in the Olympics in 2008. The épée is a heavier thrusting weapon. I fence épée.

In épée, the whole body is the target—touches to the head, foot, hand all count. Épée fencing has a reputation as a dull spectator sport, as opponents bounce back and forth, size each other up, and wait for a misstep. When the action happens, blades and bodies collide in a fraction of a second, and only the wires attached to the electronics can reliably tell who got the point.

III. Allez
My coach Dmitry is named after Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest. Demeter is often depicted carrying a cornucopia or a sheave of wheat. Dmitry uses a French grip on his épée. For our one-on-one coaching sessions, he wears a heavily padded black gambeson to absorb the practice hits. Black, I’m told, is reserved for coaches.

Training begins with stretching. Then, when my quads are warmed up after a day of sitting in an office chair, Dmitry teaches me how to lunge, parry, riposte, counter-attack, toe touch, flick. After our lesson, I fence. I fence whoever will fence me, regardless of the skill gap. There is always something to be learned. I try to fence the women, but there are three or four boys for every girl at my club.

IV. Advance
According to Ovid, Hermaphroditus was the extraordinarily handsome son of Aphrodite and Hermes. In Ovid’s version of the story, a nymph called Salmacis glanced upon the young Hermaphroditus bathing in a pool. Overcome with desire, she threw herself upon him, ignoring his protests. Refusing to let go, Salmacis begged the gods to be with Hermaphroditus, and the gods granted her wish. Then their bodies became one, with both male and female parts, and, unhappy with his fate, Hermaphroditus cursed the pool so that it turned anyone who swam in it into a person with male and female genitals.

V. Engagement
Fencing equipment is regulated for safety. A full kit consists of a sword, glove, mask, breastplate, plastron, jacket and breeches. A wire runs from the bell guard of the sword, up the sleeve and through the body of the jacket to plug into the machinery behind. To this setup, each fencer will add their own knee-high socks and choice of sneakers.

At my club there is plenty of variety—some people fence in Converse and pride flag socks, others wear the football socks of their favourite team and some have proper fencing socks with shin padding. There are always diverse opinions on shoes. I have Nike Ballestras. The Adidas d’Artagnans are also favoured. Asics Gel Rockets are popular too.

Soon enough, despite the masks, I can tell who is on each piste by their shoes and socks and height and by the way they move. My socks and shoes are white. Fencing is the only time I ever wear white. The white symbolises an ongoing willingness to learn.

VI. Flèche
The queer poet Mary Jean Chan lyricises the gender-euphoric princeliness of fencing breeches in their first volume of poetry, Flèche: ‘fencing was the closest thing / I knew to desire, all the girls swapping one / uniform for another before practice, their white / dresses replaced by breeches. I thought we were / princes in a fairy tale’ (11). If I ever meet Mary Jean, it will be in princely battle.

Dmitry teaches me how to perform a flèche: a dynamic sprint at an opponent that takes its name from the French word for ‘arrow’. I amass the tension of a bowstring and launch myself forward with my blade-arm outstretched. This is one of Dmitry’s favourite moves. It soon becomes one of mine. I practice on him over and over. After five or six good flèches, and many more bad ones, I am exhausted.

VII. Parry-riposte
Evolutionary success is a numbers game. The goal is to produce the highest number of sexually viable offspring at the lowest possible cost of energy. Charles Darwin, struggling to rationalise the energy cost of the train of a peacock, wrote that the sight of a peacock feather made him sick.

He was able to solve this problem by proposing a theory of sexual selection, in which members of the same sex compete for access to the opposite sex. Sexual selection rationalises the large energy cost of growing sexually appealing features such as a peacock’s train.

The biologist Angus John Bateman suggested that females play a significantly larger role in their offspring’s reproductive success. Females must invest much higher levels of energy to produce and carry a higher number of eggs, while males invest relatively less energy in producing many sperm. Bateman’s paradigm thus views females as the limiting factor of parental investment, over which males will compete in order to ensure the continuation of their genetic material.

VIII. Remise
I have a habit—learned from a life of East Asian martial arts—of chambering my attacking arm, pulling it back like I’m about to throw a punch. In fencing, where strength is nowhere near as important as speed, this odd habit is my tell. Everything should be calculated. Efficient. No unnecessary movements. When I hit, I hit too hard. This is a waste of energy. I still find it difficult to get used to.

Arm up. Arm straight.

I ask Dmitry if he gets tired of telling me the same things every lesson. No, he says. This is part of fencing.

IX. Touché
After every lesson I shed my whites and find pinpoint bruises on the inside of my right arm and the outside of my right leg. Blood seeps out of broken capillaries and spills into the surrounding tissue. These love-bites are red with a purple halo. They blossom blue-green as haemoglobin is broken down into biliverdin, which is then metabolised into sickly yellow bilirubin and, finally, brownish hemosiderin, before fading away.

X. Corps-à-corps
Women weren’t allowed to fence épée until 1996. My fencing club (founded in 1947) is épée only. Foilist Helen Garner writes about the moment she could score a touch without apologising. The women and girls at my club are always apologising for scoring touches. For being aggressive. For winning.

My first tournament was at the beginning of summer. I had recently sprained my ankle. I put on my white epidermis: breeches, socks, ankle strap, chest guard, plastron, body wire, jacket, glove, mask, épée. I sweated seawater under my mask. I collected bruises from all of my partners on my arm, thigh, chest. I fenced everyone present to five points. When it came time to tally the scores we were segregated. There were three of us in the open women’s division. I went home with a bronze medal.

Works Cited

Chan, Mary Jean. Flèche. London: Faber & Faber, 2019.

Darwin, Charles. ‘On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection’. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology 3.9 (1858): 46–50. Sourced at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1858.tb02500.x.

Garner, Helen. The Feel of Steel. Sydney: Picador Australia, 2001.

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