Hacker News Reader

Self-hurting is a urban legend afaik and was always (eg putting horse hair in the wound to make it gape wider is such a legend). The number of fencing fraternities is lower today, many stopped it between 1945 and 1970, and also back then many non-frat-guys practiced fencing. Also the number of fights per person was higher back then.

View on HN

I'm not sure if that is also something that has changed over time, but a friend who is in a fencing fraternity (and also recently got a scar) told me that in most duels, certain moves or move combinations with a high risk of injury have been banned. That especially applies to the initiation duels required to enter the fraternity.

For "initiation duels" (Fuchsenpartien), that was commonly the case in the past as well. However, as previously mentioned, since the number of duels ("Partien") per person is usually lower today, the total number of duels where there is a risk for a hit on the cheeks is substantially lower.

It's true that some fraternities (more specifically, groups with common fencing rules called a Waffenring) have also moved to a "Hochcomment", i.e. a set of rules where hitting the cheek is banned entirely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com