The martial arts are often said to be empowering for women. However, in some instances this “empowerment” can appear inauthentic. This paper coins the phrase “fake female empowerment” to denote a form of martial arts training experience that can look and feel like empowerment for women and girls, while in reality doing nothing to increase their actual power, or even decreasing it . . .
Martial arts practitioner Kay complains that her dojo brothers don’t seem to take her seriously. Here are eleven tactics that might be useful to Kay or others in a similar situation . . .
How can you spot the difference between whether you’re offering, or being offered, fake empowerment or the real thing in your dojo . . . ?
Budō Inochi reader Sara writes: “I dream of being both fierce and compassionate – a real-life warrior goddess. But I don’t have any high-ranking women in my dojo to look up to as role models at this moment in time, unfortunately. Could you suggest a few characters from films, books etc who capture this essence?”. This article is an answer to Sara’s question . . .
“This look is elegant and dangerous, which is pretty much the ultimate display of girl power”, writes Delaney Strunk.
I think:
– Elegant – for sure.
– Ultimate display of girl power – what?!
– Dangerous? Maybe – but to me it looks more dangerous for the women themselves, than for any potential villain . . .
But is this fair . . . ?
There’s one interesting issue that I keep on hearing about from female readers of this blog. And it’s one that many of them feel embarrassed about.
It’s the feeling of resenting another female student, who seems to be more interested in getting male attention than in actually learning anything . . .
It’s not always easy being a woman in a heavily male-dominated dojo.
But today’s article is not a critique of the disadvantages women can face in martial arts training (although I’ve written about this elsewhere).
It’s more of an exploration of how being female – or socialised as feminine – might actually give us some secret advantages over our dojo brothers . . .
“Just take my advice: if you are a respectable girl, as you say you are, don’t walk in Regent Street at night.”
Find out what happened when genteel Victorian / Edwardian ladies started to take an interest in the martial arts . . .
People often say that women are under intolerable pressure to worry about their appearance. Well guess what – this is yet another reason to love martial arts training . . .
“I always say pain is the best teacher”, he grinned, as he twisted and compressed my wrist a little more. I laughed too. Although it hurt, he was kind and fully in control; and not inflicting anything dangerous or intolerable.
But after class, my female friend said: “This is such great training. Nothing ever hurts here! This is how martial arts should be.”
What was going on . . . ?