she-kicks-she-throws:

I was speaking with a fellow high-ranking woman martial artist with significant high-level competition experience over 17 years, and in her experience it was fairly common for women to cry during an intense sparring session.  

In her opinion, this was not a show of weakness, but a common and totally acceptable reaction to intensity and didn’t actually diminish the woman’s effectiveness in the ring.  

This jives with studies about how and why women cry when they are angry. However, in some male-dominated spaces, crying during sparring can be interpreted as weakness or not being ready or confident.  

What are your experiences with crying during martial arts sparring? Have you ever cried when sparing?  How did you feel about it? How did others take it?  

I was stunned and startled when I started crying during the ultimate test of my Hapkido during my black belt testing in October.  Four men came at me with various attacks (pushes, punches, grabs, kicks) and my task was to improvise to use my techniques to neutralize them one by one, over and over and over.  

A few seconds in, my ki-yaps turned to screams and sobs.  My opponents were confused, but complied as I kept waving them to continue through the tears.  In my head, I was mortified.  So embarrassed.  I just couldn’t believe I was crying during my black belt test - the moment where I had to prove myself as a warrior of control and fluidity, an example of calm and practice, a woman confident.

The judges stopped me and asked if I was alright.  I tried to assure them that I absolutely was and that I wanted to continue.  They allowed me to and before I knew it, it was over.

I heard second-hand that the judges had no idea what to do with me - only one person spoke out on my behalf concerning the crying.  He seemed to understand that martial arts was an expressive experience for me.  

Afterwards, to my face, many people who’d observed my testing said things about me being brave, or impressive, and that they were proud. But all I could feel for a long time was that they were being cajoling and pitying, because I was still so embarrassed.

In my head and heart I knew that I did good hapkido, that crying shouldn’t matter, that I didn’t give up, that I absolutely was not afraid, or sad, or hurt.  What I felt was ferociousness.  

Now that I’ve heard that it’s not all that uncommon, that crying isn’t a bizarre reaction to intensity, I feel like that insecurity is finally leaving.

liesthepatriarchytoldme:

The patriarchy told me that sexism was over.

(submitted by anonymous)

(source)

swishyswingskirts:

veronicaofithaca:

Seeing as this is a discourse that we’ll be bringing up in my scene in the coming weeks, I thought I’d pose it to tumblr: how normal is it for female identified persons to lead and male identified persons to follow in your scene?

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I don’t even know you but I LOVE YOU GUYS ALREADY! YOU’RE ALL SUPER CUTE

Also, on a less squee-ful note, here some observations. 

As far as I can see, men and women are encouraged to lead, probably because there simply aren’t enough men interested in dancing to have a 1:1 man/woman ratio. On the other hand, only women are encouraged to follow. 

…I’m half tempted to go into an angry rant here about why two women dancing together isn’t a big deal, but when a man follows, suddenly everybody is forming a jam circle and going “Look how great!” (I’m guilty of that, tbh. Doesn’t mean I don’t view it critically..) because obviously it’s obvious by now that women can do everything that men do [♫everything you can do, I can do better. I can do everything better than you!♫) but men still aren’t comfy doing “women things” because ick, cooties! ..so we have to be extra supportive of them!!1! 

But I’m not gonna rant, noooope, not at all. 

RE: Angry Rant

I NO RITE?  It used to be the all the rage to hold same-sex/gender contests at late nights on big weekends, and I used to always enter.  I had a few women friends who could both lead and follow.  We could actually dance! We could switch clearly between roles and do banging dancing.  But it was always a garbage disaster.

What wins at those things isn’t good dancing, but who can do the most shockingly homoerotic stunts.  I hate the fetishization of homosexuality, that a straight guy gyrating against another straight guy is some kind of bold party trick.  Like it’s sooooo exciting and oh my god they went there and ngh derp.  

Yuck on men showing off by following poorly, vamping as feminine without actually dedicating consideration that following isn’t an inherently feminine act, that following isn’t just a sexy show that it’s an integral part of the dance.  Yuck on following as a stunt!  In those situations, their performance of clunky feminine performance is far more rewarded then actually following.  Which is hard.  Which is beautiful.  Which is really cool.  

*Yes, following can be an expression of feminine sexuality, it can be funny.  That is all valid.  But fetishizing it so often rings problematic for me. 

So I refer everyone to my playlist again.

bristolswing:

Why Men Lead and Women Follow - 10 Wrong Reasons

Before people get riled up by this, lookee also at the bottom of the page of the article the linked page is so angry about:

Addendum: The above is the article as I first wrote it in about 1999. In 2010, it became the ignition for some surprisingly heated debate amongst Lindy hoppers on-line. I should not need to defend this essay, because it really is clear enough what it is saying, but for those interested in controversy, I have written a page dealing with criticisms, and adding clarifications. Find there also a link to a Yehoodi radio talk show I took part in about this page.

And on that page:

I think the reason that some people have trouble with the article, is that they are treating it not as ten factors that go towards explaining why a convention that undoubtedly exists is the way it is (why men tend to lead and women tend to follow instead of the other way around), but instead as “Ten justifications, each of which is strong enough on its own to make plain why it has to be the case and should be the case that men lead in social dance and women follow.” In fact, none of the ten reasons in the list on its own is strong enough to make it the case that the convention has to be the way it is. It was once the case, before the convention was established, that it could have gone either way. In the end, it came down on the side where men generally lead and women generally follow. I list in this essay factors that all nudged in the same direction. I am explaining the convention, not justifying it. Indeed, if you read the work carefully, you will see that I accept that perhaps there is a drawback to the convention’s very existence.

Lloyd’s one of the good guys - he writes like he talks - which is “a lot”!

Eh, he’s so dismissive.  Talking about the invalidly of *offense taken, talking about political correctness, marking those who think he’s off his rails as angry and no fun.  He doesn’t get to use ‘you’ and then decide who he means.  

I don’t think that his meaning got lost.  I just think he’s wrong.

He gives his 10 reasons and frames them as here’s maybe why this stuff exists but he doesn’t acknowledge that repeating these as normal and things that will make someone feel better about understanding the sexist foundations of our dance only perpetuates them.  We don’t need to normalize stereotypes.  That perpetuates the stereotypes.  We should normalize a diversity of experience.  That will allow for more diversity of experience.

His norms erase diverse expressions of gender, trans* experiences and those who aren’t heterosexual.

Instead of advising people uncomfortable with the sexist foundations of our partnering by telling them it’s all just normal, we should advise people on how to appreciate things that are good and problematic at the same time. Lindy hop is good! But there are elements of it that are problematic.  We intersect with some very complicated topics like racism, sexism, and classism and not always gracefully.

If a person, the supposed target of the article, is made uncomfortable by the problematic sexist bs in our scene, then perhaps we can be accepting and encouraging of them to defy the standard and dance how they want to dance.  We can tell them that bs like height and strength actually do not matter.  We can create spaces that don’t shuffle people off into boxes, like classes not using gendered language and nixing competition requirements that say ‘one man, one woman’.

* People so often dismiss the idea of being offended that I don’t use the term anymore.  If you’re offended then the next step is being called over-sensitive or just looking for ideas to be angry.  I hate that bs.  Now I focus on the wrongness and harm things do. The objection to Lloyd’s article isn’t offense and PC, it’s about how it and other thinking like it continue to make Lindy Hop a space that excludes.

(Source: emilymeowler)