http://maryofegypt.tumblr.com/post/18239083511/the-sadsack-or-the-sexappeal
Friday, February 24, 2012
The Sadsack or the Sexappeal
Moving Day (last post)?
Oh beloved blog, with all three of your fruitful posts! I am treating you to this rainy Friday evening, footing the bill and everything, because we need to talk (you know what that means). I've decided this isn't working for me. It's over.
It's really not you. You're great. I just think there might be something better out there and need to take a chance while I'm fresh, you know? Womenz only get so far before we turn into old, cold pie. So I will be moving all Mary of Egypt activity over to the younger, sleeker Tumblr. Please forgive me. You must know you're beautiful.
http://maryofegypt.tumblr.com/
It's really not you. You're great. I just think there might be something better out there and need to take a chance while I'm fresh, you know? Womenz only get so far before we turn into old, cold pie. So I will be moving all Mary of Egypt activity over to the younger, sleeker Tumblr. Please forgive me. You must know you're beautiful.
http://maryofegypt.tumblr.com/
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Kicking and Screaming: Women in the Fighting Arts
We women have all had The Nightmare (or, in a quarter of cases, the experience). "I was at a shady night club when a creep came up from behind and started grabbing on me and trying to force himself on me." But how many of us are able to continue the narrative like Sarah Stobbe, Tae Kwon Do champion: "I did an outside knee clip and took him to the floor, using my elbow to his throat to get him to go down quickly. I was able to get bouncers to walk me and my friends to our cars."
Or how about this thriller: "Another situation occurred when a guy I was dating at the time began speeding through red lights and telling me he was going to kill me. When he finally stopped the car, he reached over my seat and held the door closed and his other hand was around my neck. I was able to deliver a solid hook punch, just enough to shock him with a mouth filling with blood, and I was able to get out of the car." Props to Sarah aside, there aren't many women who could say they've fended off attackers with their bare fists. We read the statistics, we double-lock our doors, and we perhaps (in 25% of cases) experience such traumatic events as these, and yet we are certainly not rushing out in droves to arm ourselves with our own bodies. But I am not writing in order to chastise women for their lack of knowledge (or men for their aggression). In fact, in my own escapades as a beginning martial arts student, I quickly became aware of many reasons, both societal and psychological, for the low percentage of female students in my classes. As I became filled with the thrill of learning new skills, I also became fascinated by the implications of progress.
My teacher was a saint. I wrote him email after frantic email. "Mr, I'm a concert pianist, will my hands be ok after punching?" "Mr, my wrist feels funny practicing piano today, I'm worried! Will my hands be ok?" He'd stay after class to show me how to stretch my wrists out. They were always fine. In fact, after a month or so of training, I felt like a stronger pianist than ever before. And more fluid, more attuned to my body at the instrument. It was fantastic. I was going to be a killer.
But then the panic attacked. In Krav Maga class, during ground defense, you lie on your back, spread your legs, and attempt to remove a 200 lb man from on top of you while he has you in a choke hold. It was a stressful situation for any woman, even if it was safely contained within the walls of my little school. I watched with dismay as one of my fellow students, a 7th grade bubble of a girl who spoke incessantly of The Beatles with a mouth full of candy and Red Bull, pushed and kicked and hit her way to no avail. The other students chant: "One, two, three, four, five!" and then you're out. As in, after five seconds of a real strangulation you're unconscious. "Ok, you're unconscious..." my teacher says, as he gets up from astride her, and she coughs and coughs, tears of pain in her eyes. She's fine, but I'm not. I'm having my first panic attack, hyperventilating, holding back tears, and barely able to stand.
Let me rewind and say that I didn't just come to martial arts as a happy-go-lucky athletic-type, hoping to "empower" myself or "get in shape". I was the victim ::cough, cough:: of attempted assault and stalking. My plight is far better than that of most human women (I escaped intact (unharmed except for forcible insomnia and PTSD); read: I was not raped) and I acknowledge my relative luck, but I was as surprised to find out as you might be that the threat of harm can be as injurious to one's psyche as harm itself. Especially for upper-middle-class sheltered white girls like myself. Anyhow, I digress. I came to martial arts because I wanted to fight back- for my right to live free from threat.
The first panic attack was one of many. That night, after getting home and showering off sweat and horrible residual feelings, I realized that I had panicked in such severe ways because the threat of having to shove a Bro off of me was real, actual, and as tangible as the drill itself. Suddenly the concept of "mental focus" took on a whole new meaning- focusing on the drill at hand would mean putting to rest fears of a very real situation. And so my love affair with martial arts began, in tandem with many sleepless nights.
When I couldn't sleep I would read feminist literature, and often until sunrise would sit in hyper-vigilance with my mace and my hammer and my Greer and my Valenti and my dog. As I summoned up the motivation to occasionally attend Krav class, I started noticing some very interesting correlations between my wee-hours reading list and my class time.
Take, for a first crude example, the notion of gender roles. It amazed me to read, in actual published books (!), women speaking of their ingrained social learnings: women are taught to be sweet, subservient, and to not make a ruckus. I'd go to class and be instructed to shout out "NO" or "HELP" or "STOP" and find myself completely mute. It felt rude, improper, obscene, unfeminine, for God's sake! There I was, a woman who goes about her life without a shred of make-up on her face and hairy legs to boot, a self-proclaimed feminist, and I couldn't even bring myself to shout in situations where I was directed to do so. During other drills, I was supposed to hit my teacher in the face (he wore a sort of astronaut-like helmet) and after halfhearted attempts would immediately say "I'm sorry". The (mostly male) class laughed at my politeness and I cringed.
Even hardened feminist writer and activist Germaine Greer writes of her inability to injure her own assailant: "The only time I was ever assaulted, I urged myself to counterattack quite uselessly. 'The carotid artery…' I thought desperately, as my head rang from the blows, 'the testicles…pressure points…' but I also thought 'but you might kill him.' I should have been thinking, 'He might kill me…' But there you are." Indeed, be it our genteel supposedly innate feminine ways or our submissive upbringing, our own self-censorship prohibits us from truly defending ourselves.
The physical experience of immediate self-censorship brought home the truth about what I had been reading at all hours:
"One of the reported effects of training is the awakening of extremely strong emotions that are essential in the confrontation of the self. These emotions become very important because they are difficult to ignore, especially as they are expressed in a physical manner. When individuals are forced to confront these feelings, they become stronger - more confident, more disciplined and more expressive (Women and the Martial Arts, Karate.com)."
How about the men in my class? They were doing just fine with the shouting and the ruckuses. They seemed to want to help in any way that they could. "It's ok to actually hit me, I can take it". Or, "Make sure you make eye contact and give a good offense". Or (my personal favorite), "Come on, harder, harder, faster, faster". They would talk about defending their girlfriends from slanderous remarks with their fighting abilities. I felt sorry for them sometimes, that they'd never really have a need for their skills except in the defense of their womenz. Sorry, and extremely enraged/jealous, and confused about their need to be involved in such a violent hobby. I had subconsciously donned the role of Helpless Woman and they had subconsciously tried to be My Protector, but they'd probably never realize it. They would, however, (said my perhaps paranoid mind) jostle for the spot next to me during what I dubbed "straddling drills"; where we would sit atop a body-sized pad and practice pummeling and slamming it into the ground from a very suggestive position. I was told I was a Wolf, and nicknamed thusly, while protecting the cub of my own integrity by learning to pound a punching bag until I was sore, muscles burning, still the non-athlete band-camp nerd. Apparently female fighters are "hot", who knew?
If I wasn't being given directions, I was being coddled. During many drills men would barely touch me at all, or hit very weakly/slowly and not give me the opportunity to react with speed and precision. Or else they'd go all out. My wonderful, patient teacher stopped giving my Krav class about six months into my training and was replaced. I gave the new guy a chance, until during a drill for a move I wasn't completely capable of executing (one which involved closing the eyes and being attacked from a random angle, mind you!) he flung his linebacker physique at me full-force, tackling me to the ground with his hands tightly around my neck in some sort of nightmarish, un-demonstrative way. "The bully is the aggressive male or female who does not feel that women belong in the martial arts or feels they have something to prove, respectively (karate.com)." As a veteran music instructor, I knew from my own vocation that giving students more than they can handle or intimidating them is a big demotivator, and vowed to find a different teacher.
I have since joined a Jeet Kun Do class at a very reputable school, and am happy to find myself appropriately paced and challenged. I meanwhile grapple with my ingrained female training as I learn to grapple with my forearms a la Bruce Lee, and am surrounded by men the majority of the time. I cannot say that I am happy with the ratio of men to women in my classes, especially since I am aware of the dire and immediate need of women to attend to such training, but I am trying to stay optimistic about the things I am learning regarding gender roles and fighting back. Fighting is not about having something to prove, it is about confronting one's own nightmares. In class they tell you that the enemy is in your mind, and it's true. However, if it weren't for my negative experiences, I would not be in these classes and learning so much about the self and the ancient fighting arts. I would not be even remotely aware that I need to challenge the role I was brought up by society to embody, or that I have such deeply ingrained self-censorship and behavioral patterns as a contemporary woman. Most importantly, I wouldn't be developing such a mean uppercut or groin-strike. I wouldn't know, without a doubt, that I would rather die fighting for my dignity than panic and freeze like a (playboy) bunny.
So I encourage all women (those who have suffered traumatic experience and those who are lucky enough to have escaped, or also those who been free from harm or threat of harm) to learn to fight back. Screaming and yelling is the first step, often the hardest, but the most cathartic. I believe that in the midst of such challenges every woman will reap benefits towards her daily life, in whatever field she may be involved, her professional life, or motherhood. Focus, strength and discipline are human traits, not masculine traits, and ones that members of "the weaker sex" are in dire need of embracing as inherently their own. It is only when we women stop seeing ourselves as physically weak that male sadists will stop seeing us as prey. How far my polite gen-X sisters have yet to go.
References:
http://www.martialartsfemale.com/sarahstobbe/page_interview.html
http://www.rainn.org/statistics
http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html
http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/
http://www.karateforums.com/women-and-the-martial-arts-vt33669.html
Greer, Germaine. The Madwoman's Underclothes. London: First Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986. Print.
Or how about this thriller: "Another situation occurred when a guy I was dating at the time began speeding through red lights and telling me he was going to kill me. When he finally stopped the car, he reached over my seat and held the door closed and his other hand was around my neck. I was able to deliver a solid hook punch, just enough to shock him with a mouth filling with blood, and I was able to get out of the car." Props to Sarah aside, there aren't many women who could say they've fended off attackers with their bare fists. We read the statistics, we double-lock our doors, and we perhaps (in 25% of cases) experience such traumatic events as these, and yet we are certainly not rushing out in droves to arm ourselves with our own bodies. But I am not writing in order to chastise women for their lack of knowledge (or men for their aggression). In fact, in my own escapades as a beginning martial arts student, I quickly became aware of many reasons, both societal and psychological, for the low percentage of female students in my classes. As I became filled with the thrill of learning new skills, I also became fascinated by the implications of progress.
My teacher was a saint. I wrote him email after frantic email. "Mr, I'm a concert pianist, will my hands be ok after punching?" "Mr, my wrist feels funny practicing piano today, I'm worried! Will my hands be ok?" He'd stay after class to show me how to stretch my wrists out. They were always fine. In fact, after a month or so of training, I felt like a stronger pianist than ever before. And more fluid, more attuned to my body at the instrument. It was fantastic. I was going to be a killer.
But then the panic attacked. In Krav Maga class, during ground defense, you lie on your back, spread your legs, and attempt to remove a 200 lb man from on top of you while he has you in a choke hold. It was a stressful situation for any woman, even if it was safely contained within the walls of my little school. I watched with dismay as one of my fellow students, a 7th grade bubble of a girl who spoke incessantly of The Beatles with a mouth full of candy and Red Bull, pushed and kicked and hit her way to no avail. The other students chant: "One, two, three, four, five!" and then you're out. As in, after five seconds of a real strangulation you're unconscious. "Ok, you're unconscious..." my teacher says, as he gets up from astride her, and she coughs and coughs, tears of pain in her eyes. She's fine, but I'm not. I'm having my first panic attack, hyperventilating, holding back tears, and barely able to stand.
Let me rewind and say that I didn't just come to martial arts as a happy-go-lucky athletic-type, hoping to "empower" myself or "get in shape". I was the victim ::cough, cough:: of attempted assault and stalking. My plight is far better than that of most human women (I escaped intact (unharmed except for forcible insomnia and PTSD); read: I was not raped) and I acknowledge my relative luck, but I was as surprised to find out as you might be that the threat of harm can be as injurious to one's psyche as harm itself. Especially for upper-middle-class sheltered white girls like myself. Anyhow, I digress. I came to martial arts because I wanted to fight back- for my right to live free from threat.
The first panic attack was one of many. That night, after getting home and showering off sweat and horrible residual feelings, I realized that I had panicked in such severe ways because the threat of having to shove a Bro off of me was real, actual, and as tangible as the drill itself. Suddenly the concept of "mental focus" took on a whole new meaning- focusing on the drill at hand would mean putting to rest fears of a very real situation. And so my love affair with martial arts began, in tandem with many sleepless nights.
When I couldn't sleep I would read feminist literature, and often until sunrise would sit in hyper-vigilance with my mace and my hammer and my Greer and my Valenti and my dog. As I summoned up the motivation to occasionally attend Krav class, I started noticing some very interesting correlations between my wee-hours reading list and my class time.
Take, for a first crude example, the notion of gender roles. It amazed me to read, in actual published books (!), women speaking of their ingrained social learnings: women are taught to be sweet, subservient, and to not make a ruckus. I'd go to class and be instructed to shout out "NO" or "HELP" or "STOP" and find myself completely mute. It felt rude, improper, obscene, unfeminine, for God's sake! There I was, a woman who goes about her life without a shred of make-up on her face and hairy legs to boot, a self-proclaimed feminist, and I couldn't even bring myself to shout in situations where I was directed to do so. During other drills, I was supposed to hit my teacher in the face (he wore a sort of astronaut-like helmet) and after halfhearted attempts would immediately say "I'm sorry". The (mostly male) class laughed at my politeness and I cringed.
Even hardened feminist writer and activist Germaine Greer writes of her inability to injure her own assailant: "The only time I was ever assaulted, I urged myself to counterattack quite uselessly. 'The carotid artery…' I thought desperately, as my head rang from the blows, 'the testicles…pressure points…' but I also thought 'but you might kill him.' I should have been thinking, 'He might kill me…' But there you are." Indeed, be it our genteel supposedly innate feminine ways or our submissive upbringing, our own self-censorship prohibits us from truly defending ourselves.
The physical experience of immediate self-censorship brought home the truth about what I had been reading at all hours:
"One of the reported effects of training is the awakening of extremely strong emotions that are essential in the confrontation of the self. These emotions become very important because they are difficult to ignore, especially as they are expressed in a physical manner. When individuals are forced to confront these feelings, they become stronger - more confident, more disciplined and more expressive (Women and the Martial Arts, Karate.com)."
How about the men in my class? They were doing just fine with the shouting and the ruckuses. They seemed to want to help in any way that they could. "It's ok to actually hit me, I can take it". Or, "Make sure you make eye contact and give a good offense". Or (my personal favorite), "Come on, harder, harder, faster, faster". They would talk about defending their girlfriends from slanderous remarks with their fighting abilities. I felt sorry for them sometimes, that they'd never really have a need for their skills except in the defense of their womenz. Sorry, and extremely enraged/jealous, and confused about their need to be involved in such a violent hobby. I had subconsciously donned the role of Helpless Woman and they had subconsciously tried to be My Protector, but they'd probably never realize it. They would, however, (said my perhaps paranoid mind) jostle for the spot next to me during what I dubbed "straddling drills"; where we would sit atop a body-sized pad and practice pummeling and slamming it into the ground from a very suggestive position. I was told I was a Wolf, and nicknamed thusly, while protecting the cub of my own integrity by learning to pound a punching bag until I was sore, muscles burning, still the non-athlete band-camp nerd. Apparently female fighters are "hot", who knew?
If I wasn't being given directions, I was being coddled. During many drills men would barely touch me at all, or hit very weakly/slowly and not give me the opportunity to react with speed and precision. Or else they'd go all out. My wonderful, patient teacher stopped giving my Krav class about six months into my training and was replaced. I gave the new guy a chance, until during a drill for a move I wasn't completely capable of executing (one which involved closing the eyes and being attacked from a random angle, mind you!) he flung his linebacker physique at me full-force, tackling me to the ground with his hands tightly around my neck in some sort of nightmarish, un-demonstrative way. "The bully is the aggressive male or female who does not feel that women belong in the martial arts or feels they have something to prove, respectively (karate.com)." As a veteran music instructor, I knew from my own vocation that giving students more than they can handle or intimidating them is a big demotivator, and vowed to find a different teacher.
I have since joined a Jeet Kun Do class at a very reputable school, and am happy to find myself appropriately paced and challenged. I meanwhile grapple with my ingrained female training as I learn to grapple with my forearms a la Bruce Lee, and am surrounded by men the majority of the time. I cannot say that I am happy with the ratio of men to women in my classes, especially since I am aware of the dire and immediate need of women to attend to such training, but I am trying to stay optimistic about the things I am learning regarding gender roles and fighting back. Fighting is not about having something to prove, it is about confronting one's own nightmares. In class they tell you that the enemy is in your mind, and it's true. However, if it weren't for my negative experiences, I would not be in these classes and learning so much about the self and the ancient fighting arts. I would not be even remotely aware that I need to challenge the role I was brought up by society to embody, or that I have such deeply ingrained self-censorship and behavioral patterns as a contemporary woman. Most importantly, I wouldn't be developing such a mean uppercut or groin-strike. I wouldn't know, without a doubt, that I would rather die fighting for my dignity than panic and freeze like a (playboy) bunny.
So I encourage all women (those who have suffered traumatic experience and those who are lucky enough to have escaped, or also those who been free from harm or threat of harm) to learn to fight back. Screaming and yelling is the first step, often the hardest, but the most cathartic. I believe that in the midst of such challenges every woman will reap benefits towards her daily life, in whatever field she may be involved, her professional life, or motherhood. Focus, strength and discipline are human traits, not masculine traits, and ones that members of "the weaker sex" are in dire need of embracing as inherently their own. It is only when we women stop seeing ourselves as physically weak that male sadists will stop seeing us as prey. How far my polite gen-X sisters have yet to go.
References:
http://www.martialartsfemale.com/sarahstobbe/page_interview.html
http://www.rainn.org/statistics
http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html
http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/
http://www.karateforums.com/women-and-the-martial-arts-vt33669.html
Greer, Germaine. The Madwoman's Underclothes. London: First Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986. Print.
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