How to Encourage Women Fighters

[Dana Sheets]

I found the article below to be a nice inspiring piece. It's full of good ideas of how women martial artists and encourage and mentor others. It is reprinted with permission. If folks have some additional suggestions not mentioned in the article it would be good to hear those as well. In general, I find that SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) type information makes many good parallels for women practitioners of eastern martial artists.

Dana

source: http://nondescript.net/lionesse/lhowto.html

How to Encourage Women Fighters
Written by
Laura Kathleen Brashear aka Moogie

Be an example! 
If you are a woman fighter, fight. Visible women on the field are the most important factor in encouraging new fighters. 

Offer to help. 
Offer to show her some moves, to share equipment and garb. Let her borrow your shield or madu, and show her how to use it. 

Create a Community. 
This can be anything: a formal household, a group of House Lionesse members in your area, a loose group of people who support female fighters. (And anything in between!) Anything that fosters acceptance and allows women fighters to get together to share experience and information. 

Ideas for Events for Women Fighters: 

Warm-up sessions: When you arrive at the park, get together to stretch and do warm-up fighting exercises before joining the trenches or battlegames. 

Team up: Every now and then, pair up to support each other in a battle game or trench. Team fighting is fun and good practice. This is also a good way to make beginners feel more at ease. It's important not to do this too much, as you can become dependent on having a partner. 

Fighter Practice or Drill Practice: Hold a women's fighter practice for practice, teaching or drills. Find an experienced fighter that everyone feels comfortable with to give instruction. 

Meetings: Get together as a group to talk, fight, and share resources or solve problems. 

Tourneys:

Form a cheering section and all enter a tourney together and support each other (maybe do training sessions a few weeks before a tournament to get ready).

A newbie tourney can help new girls (and guys!) get a feel for tournaments with less pressure. (If your group is small this may not be necessary), and you can help get women involved with running the lists, reeving, etc.

This site is owned and maintained by Moogie of House Lionesse and House Morrigan. All works copyrighted Laura Brashear 2000

[KZMiller]

Thank you for the article post! It's so true that forming supportive relationships with other women in class can make a tremendous difference in quality of learning.

If you can get your hands on a copy of The Armored Rose by Tobi Beck, that's another SCA source that's great for women fighters and their instructors be they male or female. It translates easily to MA in general. It's my understanding that the physiology aspect of this book has been called into question by experts, but the psychology is right on. You'll probably have to borrow it from someone who already has it; it's rare and, now that it's out of print, probably too expensive to justify purchase.

Essentially she covers the hurdles women address that usually don't affect men due to cultural and emotional differences.

Hurdle One: I can fight. This section addresses the fact that men and women don't compete against each other in sports, from basketball to Olympic events and this teaches women that they *can't* compete against men. (Is archery different? I haven't been following that event.) Perhaps this is changing, but it's at glacial speeds. The majority of women believe they're weaker, they're doomed to lose, and therefore they shouldn't. If they succeed, it's only because the men were playing nice, or didn't want to 'hurt the little lady'. Only a woman with something to prove (and who is therefore overly ambitious and arrogant or crazy, fill in your own limiting statements here) would even try. A woman will probably need encouragement to train and continue to attend class where a man is there to have fun and train his body and encourages himself to return to class.

Hurdle Two: I can hit. This section addresses the difficulty many women have with deliberate or even accidental combat contact with their partners. One of my friends made more contact than she intended with her partner and was so overwhelmed by guilt she didn't want to return to class to face that person again. A quick 'good hit' and a grin from her training partner could keep her from walking away forever.

Hurdle Three: I can be hit. Many women have never had the rough and tumble conditioning in sports that allows men to weather hard contact without emotional backlash. When she enters training for the first time, it's likely that the last time a woman has been hit was a spanking by a parent. Those first hard contacts will invoke a cascade of emotional response that she may not have expected, much less have a capacity to deal with. She won't have to be hurt to cry. Uncontrollable giggling has also been reported, either of which will be hard for a trainer to deal with. Walking away to let her 'cool off' might convince her that everyone has lost respect for her. She'll be telling herself this anyway and will look for the slightest sign of confirmation from her peers and trainer. Tobi recommends after all parties have reassured each other and she's calmed, they should continue practice to reinforce practice rather than cave to the emotional response.

Tobi lists more hurdles that deal with advancing beyond the first tentative steps of training. Tobi also had some great insights as far as men's emotional responses to training women, everything from reluctance to 'hit a girl' to 'teaching her a lesson so she knows I'm just playing and could take her down any time.' As with any generalized statements there's a danger of overstating, but overall I agree with her observations. I recognized those hurdles in my own training.

The social aspect of training is so important to me. When I was the only woman in class in two of the dojos I practiced at, I bonded with the instructor and that was my replacement for having a group of women to find support with. I don't mean social as in friendship, although friendships form. Those hurdles Tobi lists are ten times higher if you're the only gal in town and you look into your partner's eyes and see that 'I shouldn't have to spar you, my honor is besmirched by facing you' look for the first time. It's amazing that this kind of man is more tolerant of training with a junior than a woman his own age and size. I've found that instructors can't or won't help with this. Most of the time they don't see it, or don't understand. Having another woman in class going through the same things can make all the difference. I'll still have to deal with the jerk on my own, but I know if it gets to be too much, I'll have someone to talk to about it and blow off steam who'll understand and not think I'm just whining about nothing.

-- Kami

[Jackie Olsen]

How true ... being the lone woman can be tough in a class.

Having another woman in class going through the same things can make all the difference. I'll still have to deal with the jerk on my own, but I know if it gets to be too much, I'll have someone to talk to about it and blow off steam who'll understand and not think I'm just whining about nothing.

[Dana Sheets]

Happily - the book is not out of print. I refer this book to every woman in the dojo. You can buy directly form the author.

http://www.peak.org/~grainne/Ironrose/armoredrose.html

Dana

PS
Kami - I sent you a PM.

[KZMiller]

Oh good! On Amazon the Armored Rose is listed as out of print and goes for almost $200!

At my favorite dojo we used to have a Black Belt club. Anyone was welcome to participate but it turned out only the women in our class joined and committed to it, for whatever social reasons. It wasn't a group of black belts, but people who aspired to earn a black belt and wanted to encourage other people toward that goal on a daily basis. I sure miss that club! The dojo too. The dojo closed. I think the most important aspect of the club happened after class. If someone was struggling with a form or a drill, we'd get together and help. Sometimes we'd stage mock tests with a mock instructor keeping score and the rest of us observing to prepare someone for the physical and emotional rigors of an exam.

-- Kami

[Gerte]

One of my friends made more contact than she intended with her partner and was so overwhelmed by guilt she didn't want to return to class to face that person again.

This could have been me.

Stupid, because if I am on the receiving end of the hit I will dust myself off, ask them to pull back a little, and keep going. As long as I know it was an accident, I don't hold any kind of grudge or think any less of the person - it just happens sometimes. If someone tells me I am hitting too hard I agonize over it for days.

[/quote]

[Dana Sheets]

Good observation Gerte - it is strange how we're wired. It took me a good three years to stop saying "sorry' every time I cracked someone. I may have stopped saying it out loud after 6 months - but I was still saying it in my head.

Dana