When I speak to women about self defense and their ability to fight back, I sometimes get told \u201cIt\u2019s different for you because you\u2019re big.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that I am larger than the average woman. I am, in fact, about the size of the average U.S. man \u2013 or was, at least, until I began some of the inevitable shrinking that comes from age. I also have a pretty classic mesomorph body \u2013 sturdy, broad-shouldered, and so forth.<\/p>\n
I am, in fact, larger than Mitsugi Saotome Shihan, under whom I studied Aikido for years, and was, in fact, also somewhat larger than my karate teacher back in the 1980s, who I think was around 5\u20197\u201d and weighed about 140. It should go without saying that both of them could kick my ass, and still can, even though they\u2019re in their late 80s now.<\/p>\n
Which is to say that one thing spending half my life in martial arts has taught me is that size doesn\u2019t matter. In fact, part of the lore of martial arts is that training makes it possible for small people to fight effectively.<\/p>\n
Size can be intimidating \u2013 I\u2019ve had large male friends explain to me that they never got into fights because no one wanted to start trouble with them. Though come to think of it, that was guys who were basically good natured. Guys with a chip on their shoulder tended to get into trouble no matter what size they were.<\/p>\n
I might be big enough to telegraph \u201cnot worth the trouble\u201d but I\u2019m certainly not big enough to be intimidating to troublesome guys. But I do also have an attitude.<\/p>\n
You can be small and still have attitude. I still remember back in my early days of Aikido coming into the women\u2019s dressing room and hearing one of my fellow students \u2013 who was maybe 5 feet tall \u2013 say, \u201cI was training with this guy who didn\u2019t think women could do this, so I threw him over there and then I threw him the other way.\u201d She was demonstrating hand movements as she spoke and I recall thinking that I was going to be very careful when I trained with her.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another thing: no one ever takes me for a man. I mean, I\u2019m large for a woman and my voice is relatively deep \u2013 I used to be an alto, but my singing range is more tenor these days, maybe almost baritone. Not to mention that I\u2019m loud and I\u2019m hard to shut up.<\/p>\n
It might be the hair \u2013 I have lots of it. Or my hips. Anyway, something about me tells people I\u2019m a woman, and no one ever assumes I might be trans. <\/p>\n
I have been able to use this effectively. I was once in a restroom with a trans woman friend and someone else said something about there being a man in the bathroom. And I said, \u201cNo, I just have a deep voice,\u201d which left her very confused because she wasn\u2019t talking about me, but couldn\u2019t exactly say that.<\/p>\n
That experience did make it clear to me that some women \u2013 both trans and cis \u2013 run into that kind of bathroom policing on a regular basis. It\u2019s appalling and infuriating, but we live in a society that is determined to make it hard for people to take care of their basic needs.<\/p>\n
I do rebel against gender rules, even if that\u2019s not obvious from my appearance. My current opinion on gender can be summed up as the following: I am a woman and nobody gets to tell me I\u2019m doing it wrong.<\/p>\n
Though of course, they do. \u201cToo big, too loud, too interested in the wrong things.\u201d I don\u2019t get misgendered, but I do run into men who are outraged by the fact that I refuse to shut up and do things their way.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ve started to wonder, ever since the woman who won the gold in boxing at the Olympics was attacked as \u201creally a man,\u201d if part of the reason people assume I\u2019m female is simply because I\u2019m not a world class athlete.<\/p>\n
I mean, I\u2019m a jock, or at least, I spent a lifetime in martial arts. But while I know a lot, I\u2019m in no way world class, or outstanding in the world of martial arts. I\u2019m just someone who stuck with it and learned a lot over the years.<\/p>\n
But what if I had combined perseverance with talent and taken up, say, judo, which is an Olympic sport?<\/p>\n
I am, as I said, large. I\u2019d be in the heavyweight division, no question. There\u2019s no way I\u2019d ever be small enough for smaller weight classes no matter how good a shape I was in.<\/p>\n
Would people have labeled me a man if I\u2019d been a judo champion, just because I was big and successful? Maybe.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t sound anymore ridiculous than the absurd allegations against the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.<\/p>\n
When people claim a talented woman athlete or other strong woman must be male, it\u2019s because they can\u2019t conceive of a woman being strong. That\u2019s not girly. That\u2019s not feminine. There must be something wrong with her.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all rooted in a lack of respect for what women can do. And it\u2019s rooted in the belief that men are always better at whatever the sport (or profession) is than women.<\/p>\n
So a strong woman boxer must really be a man. And to prevent that, we must have invasive exams and toss out any competitor who doesn\u2019t meet certain arbitrary criteria that the group doing the sport has decided means woman.<\/p>\n
Trans women are excluded on the assumption that of course they\u2019ll beat cis women because they\u2019re \u201creally\u201d men. I would note that they don\u2019t, as a rule, and the whole emphasis on this is just a right-wing ploy to rile people up.<\/p>\n
The point is that the whole obsession with who is a woman for purpose of competitive sport is rooted in the idea that women are so inferior to men that any old guy can pretend to be a woman and win the gold.<\/p>\n
Kind of like all those men who barely know how to hold a tennis racket but are convinced they could score a point off Serena Williams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I speak to women about self defense and their ability to fight back, I sometimes get told \u201cIt\u2019s different for you because you\u2019re big.\u201d It\u2019s true that I am larger than the average woman. I am, in fact, about the size of the average U.S. man \u2013 or was, at least, until I began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,17],"tags":[188,1032],"class_list":["post-3924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-rants","tag-martial-arts","tag-strong-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3925,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924\/revisions\/3925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}