Category Archives: i am woman

The Gender Hate Stuff

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Just by virtue of being a woman, never mind one with many hobbies, skills, interests, etc. that are male dominated, I think about gender issues a lot. There are women out there who don’t work at software companies, who have never tried going to classes a a gym full of men, who haven’t been playing video games since the 80s (or for their whole lives), who never worked in tech support, who weren’t ‘tom boys’ who played with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who aren’t really competitive, who never said ‘I want to be a major league baseball player when I grow up’, who never experienced sexual abuse, who never experienced street harassment, who were never followed or stalked, who have never been called a bitch for asserting themselves, who never worried about being perceived as a bitch for asserting themselves, and maybe those women don’t think about this stuff much.

Though gender issues affect everyone (not just women by any means), maybe people just don’t follow the news much these days. Maybe people don’t see it affecting themselves that badly and have a hard time with empathy and putting themselves in others shoes.

I am one of those people who tells themselves not to read the comments on articles, videos, blog posts, etc., but does it anyways. It doesn’t matter how much hope or despair is in the article, the comments can always pull you a different way. I find it interesting that I read something and think X, Y, Z, and other people think… BANANA! Even though I know some are just trolls being trolls, some will be real people and their real opinions, and I’m too curious not too look. A lone comment isn’t enough anymore to make me think people as a whole think one way or another, but when they pile up, you start to see a picture of what a group of people think. Too often, it’s not a pretty picture.

These pictures make me feel like we have so far to go as people, to be better, more compassionate, human beings.

I’m a person. I also just so happen to be a woman.

While I believe in my own equality, I also believe I shouldn’t have to fight for it. I shouldn’t have to hold myself up under the pressure of perfect example.

I’m a gamer. I don’t want to be the woman gamer that represents all the women. We’re all just as similar to men gamers, and just as different to other women gamers. I am a gamer. I am a woman. I am a person. These are all separate things about myself. I don’t want to be the woman anything. I don’t want to be the end all to define myself, but since I like certain things, it seems like it has to.

I am a person. Please treat me like a person.

When I read about victims who don’t report harassment or violence, I do feel sad that they didn’t push forward to help all women, like me, have a safer world. I also realize that it’s not fair of me, or anyone, to expect or ask that any of these individuals put themselves on the line inviting additional violence, pain, or even death upon themselves. It’s easy for people to blame a victim for not stepping up, because we feel like our voices will eventually make the world safer and make us equals.

It’s easy to blame the victim who steps up for not being the perfect example, for what they were wearing, their sexual history, for not reporting it immediately, for using imperfect language, their tone, or for not having a perfect past. We want a super hero, but instead we just have people. There are some people that just so happen to also be a women. We expect too much of them when they’re down, and we expect not enough of them when they have all the potential.

When the world fails you, we do the best we can, and try not to fail the world or ourselves.

I’m a person. I also just so happen to be a woman.

Don’t Envy The Victim’s Shoes

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I’m a person. I also just so happen to be a woman.

While I believe in my own equality, I also believe I shouldn’t have to fight for it. I shouldn’t have to hold myself up under the pressure of perfect example.

Among other things, I’m a gamer. I don’t want to be the woman gamer that represents the other women gamers. We’re all just as similar to men gamers, and just as different to other women gamers. I am a gamer. I am a woman. I am a person. These are all separate things about myself. I don’t want to be ‘the woman’ anything. I don’t want woman to be the over arching word defines me, but since I am passionate about certain things that women are still a rarity in, it seems like it has to.

I am a person. I want to be treated like a person. I don’t even know what being treated like a woman exactly means to you, but I know I don’t want it, especially if you get to define it.

I don’t want to be an example, but I will be either way, because I just so happen to be a woman. I’m a minority, a rarity, a weird thing. In a world where over half the people are women, it’s so weird to so often be the rarity.

Rarity means special, extra value, worth more in economic terms. It doesn’t translate to people who are different.

But you know that men also can be the minority in communities based around certain activities. In my own experiences I’ve seen it in community theater and my current ceramics studio. Now that they’re the weird thing, wouldn’t you expect harassment or violence inside those groups towards men? Instead, it usually comes from the outside of those groups. It often comes in the form of accusing the men of being feminine, as if this is a bad thing. Beat up the theater fag. Shouldn’t Johnny be playing hockey instead? It’s not about these community groups that share interests, but symptoms a larger social problem. It’s not just about women, it’s about all people.

We need to make it clear that it’s not about blaming gamers or men when we see issues in the gaming community or with what some men do. I am a gamer after all. I also love men.

I also recognize that men face harassment as well as part of sexism. Patriarchy hurts everyone. This isn’t simply about men vs women. Women spout bigotry that holds themselves and men back. Men get beat to a bloody pulp for not being ‘man enough’. People are hurtful and being hurt, and gender itself or those that belong to a particular gender are not to blame.

When I read about victims who don’t report inequality, especially harassment or violence, I do feel sad that they didn’t push forward to help all of us have a safer world. I also realize that it’s not fair of me, or anyone, to expect or ask that any of these individuals put themselves on the line inviting additional violence, pain, or even death upon themselves. It’s easy for people to blame a victim for not stepping up, because we feel like our voices are needed to eventually make the world safer and make us equals.

It’s also easy to blame the victim who steps up for not being the perfect example, for what they were wearing, their sexual history, for not reporting it immediately, for using imperfect language, their tone, or for not having a perfect past. We want super heroes, but instead we just have people.

There are some people that just so happen to also be women. We expect too much of them when they’re down, and we expect not enough of them when they have all the potential to be more.

When the world fails us, we do the best we can, and try not to fail the world or ourselves.

I am a person. I want to be treated like a person. I don’t want to be a victim, but I also don’t want to stand in those shoes, be the example, and fight for what should already be.

A Dark Blue One

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“I only own one gi, and it’s getting pretty old, dirty, starting to fall apart. I want to get one of the dark blue ones, but I don’t see many. Do you think you have any in my size?”

“Why blue?”

“White looks dirty very easily. My pants are pretty much permanently gray. I have a black cat to boot.”

“I like them. Forces people to wash them.”

“They look dirty even when do wash them, though.”

“Ever seen the pink gis?”

“YES! Yuck. I don’t think I’ve never seen anyone in one though except for the internet. Do women actually wear those?”

“Yeah, when I was in California there was a all women’s class of like 30, all happily rolling in their pink gis.”

“Well, no pink and co-ed classes here, and I prefer it that way.”

“We can order you a gi and you won’t have to pay shipping. Just look on the Gracie website. Did you want to get that in a women’s size?”

“Women’s size? Do they have a different sizing system? I think this one is like an A2 or A3. I’m having a hard time finding a tag where it isn’t completely worn off.”

“Yes, they do have women’s sizes and the gis fit different.”

“Cool. What colors do they have? Do they have the dark blue.”

“No. They only have them in pink.”

“…so that class of women? How do you know they were happy to wear pink if they only had the option was pink or a gi that doesn’t fit right? Maybe they’re actually all angry and feel ridiculous in their pink gis?”

“So… you don’t want a pink gi?”

“…nah, I want a dark blue one. A pink one probably still won’t fit right anyways. It’s not like most womens’ pants do.”

Women in Grappling

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I came across an article with a woman’s opinion how to attract women grapplers to your martial arts school.

http://www.grapplearts.com/how-to-get-women-into-grappling.html

Some things in there don’t matter to me. Women instructors and all women classes. Yeah. Whatever. I like a co-ed environment. I don’t even mind if the place I’m training seems like a matted cave or dungeon.

One thing stuck out for me:

“However, don’t assume that two women are a good match just because they’re women. At 110-odd pounds, I’ve been partnered with a 200-lb woman, just because we were the only chicks in the class. Probably it’d have been better to put me with the 140-lb guy and her with the 180-lb guy.”

I just wanted to run up to the author, shake her, and say, “So I’m not the only one who’s been in this position!?”

There was a period where this was frequently happening to me. I’m more like 150 than 110, but I think the woman I kept being paired up with was considerably more than 200. I felt bad, not being able to put her in my guard because of her girth versus my leg length, but I kept wondering if she felt even worse about the whole thing.

Maybe people of higher belt rank can deal with something like extreme weight differences in training partners, but this was happening when I was a brand-new no-stripes white belt and I think she had three stripes at the time.

There was no tactful way to bring it up to the instructor and no inoffensive way I could think to talk about it with my training partner. Looking back, it’s not something I should have ever been put into the position to need to address.

Keep in mind that had there just been not many people in class and literally the only person there was for me to pair up with was a mismatch, that’s a very different story and it happens. Where I currently train there is a mix of belt levels and sizes. I often train with guys bigger than me. It’s not a big deal.

The big deal is making the mismatched ‘chicks’ train together just because they’re ‘chicks’. There was more than one guy there around my weight I could have trained with and bigger guys she could have trained with. We were ONLY matched because we were both female, and put together in spite of us not being matched in size or even skill level (she was high white, me low white).

When you put together two people to roll who aren’t matched physically AND they’re both beginners, I think that can be pretty dangerous. Beginners don’t know subtleties of shifting weight slightly, training hard by using good technique and not muscle, when to tap, how to just make the person tap and not cry out in pain, or what slight differences in a move can make it likely to break someone’s wrist. Even drilling can be dangerous in this situation.

I remember a class full of particularly bad knee-on-belly instances. The reaction I got when trying to talk to my training partner about the fact I was being hurt were comments along the lines of ‘It’s not my fault’, ‘I’m not doing this on purpose’, and ‘Suck it up’.

My current coach is very careful about keeping an eye on safety. He lets us pair up, but if he doesn’t like the matches for whatever reason (safety or not), he’ll change them. If people are mismatched, he’ll make sure it’s still safe by telling the more experienced person to work on something specific or not to do certain things. If he sees someone not being safe, he’ll do whatever he thinks needs to be done to stop it. You might get told to do push ups if you know better. You’ll get a demonstration and explanation if you just didn’t realize you were practicing a technique incorrectly. He reminds those of us who are smaller and less experienced to only pair up with people we feel comfortable with, so I’ve never feel pressured to go with someone I didn’t.

I’m a proud person and it can be hard hearing him tell someone to ‘go easy’ with me sometimes. The smart part of me realizes that it has nothing to do with how tough or how much heart I have, he just wants to make sure we all can continue to train and will want to continue to train. If you get hurt or feel unsafe or frustrated, that’s not going to happen.

Let’s use an example. A guy in class has nasty headlock submissions that he can put on and crank at the blink of an eye. Pair that guy up with someone other than a guy who has amazing headlock escapes. You might have someone who’s neck is stiff for the next week (or worse) and feels very frustrated. You also have someone who isn’t learning anything, just doing the same moves that work for them at full force over and over. Fixing this isn’t just safe training, it’s smart training. The guy cranking on headlocks over and over needs to learn control. You can put a headlock on and then finish it with the minimal amount of pressure to make the person tap. He probably also should work on some other techniques so it’s not the only move he can use when it comes to competition or real life.

Jiu-jitsu is the gentle art. A perfectly executed move is done with minimal effort and exertion by the person doing it. Their technique is so dead on that they do not need to over-exert themselves. If they need to crank, pull, and muscle their way through a move, then their technique is less than perfect and they’re making up for it with size and strength. Sometimes I’m thankful that I’m not super athletic and strong. Since I can’t muscle and force my way through a move, I’m forced to learn the technique correctly or not get results.

The purpose of classes is not to win, it’s to learn. The only person you can lose is against yourself, and that happens if you’re not learning and improving.

If you’re in an environment where people are being matched with training partners that aren’t good for them, it can be very hard to learn and improve. Even of you think gender makes a difference when rolling, you have to concede that there are certainly factors that matter much more when being paired up. If it’s your only consideration when pairing up, then you might consider not taking classes (or teaching if you’re a coach) in a coed environment.

Be People

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I work in IT. I train jiu-jitsu. I don’t like the color pink. I grew up playing catch with my dad. I still have my ninja turtles. I am not gay (or closeted).

I don’t think that being a woman or a man or being attracted to one sex or another is relevant to what I should do or like.

I don’t care for you or anyone else to tell me (or any man or woman) what it is to be a man or a woman or gay or strait (or anything else).

Let us just be people and have/make our own identities.

I shouldn’t feel like I have to shout things like this to the sky (or blog), but every now and then I have a conversation with someone I respect that really makes me feel like I need to chisel words into a mountain so it’s as visible from a million miles away.

Each generation we may be getting closer to that world where people are allowed to just be people, but moments like this I feel like it’s more of an impossible dream. If we can’t even do this with gender, the most basic of two human categories we’re stuffed in, how are we going to get past issues of race or religion?

I can always think back to where we were as society even a few generations back. We have come so far. I’m trying to be patient, but this kind of patience can be very trying.

Beautiful Bruises

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WARNING: This post contains a woman’s yearly checkup, mentions of birth control, and shaving. While no graphic details are provided, those who use the letters “TMI” frequently might want to browse away. Oh, and I farted while writing this! :D


It’s getting to be close to that time where I have to make a doctors appointment to have my yearly checkup. If I don’t go, they’ll stop giving me my birth control prescription which will make me sick, sick, sick on a monthly basis. I’m a pretty healthy young woman who works out, doesn’t eat too much crap, doesn’t smoke, etc., so this should be a walk in the park, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not how my appointment last year went. I ended up not having an appointment with my regular doctor since I didn’t want to take a whole day off of work (everything in the morning was booked).

A little more than a month before my appointment is when I started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Big surprise, I had more than a few bruises. This happened when I used to play paintball too. I didn’t think much of it before the appointment.

What I’m used to when I go to the doctor is they ask all about how you’re doing with big smiles and what’s going on in your life. They weigh you and listen to your heart. The uncomfortable parts are the down-there-doctoring they have to do, not the social part.

That appointment was awkward all around. I was asked a little about how things were going and I mentioned my new martial arts training which I was very excited about. I was already used to the, “What’s that? Like karate?” reaction, but I didn’t expect the disgust when I explained what it was. This woman might as well have told me to get in the kitchen and find a husband already with the looks she gave me and how little she wanted to hear about it. I don’t know if it was because it sounded scary, manly, or I told her that yes, I train with both men and women, etc. I also didn’t care. This was my doctors appointment. I didn’t expect to be judged on my choice of preferred sports.

Once the actual exam began, so did the questions about my bruises. I’ve already explained that I participate in a full contact grappling martial art, but apparently she was still surprised and confused as to why I had bruises. I reiterated what Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was and even tried explaining what we’d been working on. I had a good idea of what moves some of the bruises were from. She went from disgust to not believing me. Apparently, if a woman has bruises, she’s being abused by someone and lying about it.

I mentioned that I could prove that I did the martial art if she cared. My membership card is on my key chain. She didn’t care. She didn’t even want to discuss it. She just went on to examine every single bruise and scribble on her notepad. I asked what she was doing, I was told she was ‘documenting’.

She was especially interested in a bruise I had on my chest. That was the obvious clincher someone was abusing me apparently. As I originally typed this, I had a bruise on my chest. No, I don’t know exactly how I got it. It could have been from someone putting on a tight near side armbar on me, with their legs tightly pressed down. It could have been from a too high knee on belly. It could have been from me trying to break someone posture when they were in my guard and them falling and pushing off of me with a hand, elbow, head, whatever. There are a lot of scenarios I can think of. I don’t know how it got there. It’s a bruise the size of a coin. Who cares?

I can’t imagine what women who are being abused go through when they go to the doctor. This woman was not being friendly, warm, or comforting. She came off as accusatory. I am aware that people who are abused in any way, shape, or form usually already think it’s somehow their own fault. With the amount of disgust she was giving off from the beginning, no woman would have felt comfortable admitting anything to her anyways.

I was disgusted and offended on all of those levels. I felt for every woman athlete and every abused woman. I came into the doctors expecting to have the first appointment without the vague questions about, “Well, are you happy with your weight?” since I was working out harder than I ever had in my entire life.

After we moved beyond the bruises, I was asked about my sex life. I am prescribed birth control, so okay, makes sense. I mentioned I was starting to see someone at that point which may or may not turn into something. Once again, no happy comments for me for something I thought was a good thing. I expected a ‘congrats’ or ‘good for you’. What I got was a lecture about condom usage and STDs. I’m sure my little file there said that I’d been on birth control since I was seventeen, not to mention my current age. If you don’t believe I use condoms, I can show you the ones I carry in my purse just in case… but then would she take that to mean I was promiscuous? I was done trying to win with this lady.

The ridiculousness reached a peak when I got a lecture about the razor burns on my bikini line. I have sensitive skin and have tried a lot of things not to get razor burn there and under my arms when shaving. The only thing I’ve found that works 100% is: not shaving. In this case, I’d shaved fairly recently which I’d think any doctor might be thankful for, but no… I was quizzed about why I was shaving so much down there. I just looked at her. Then was told to “be careful” and that I could give myself an infection, etc. I didn’t even get any good tips on how to prevent razor burn. So, thanks for nothing. I’ll just continue to use the shaving gel that claims it’s “Bumps Free!!” and Neosporin afterwards when I do shave…

So, this was a few months shy of a year ago. Since then I’ve been proud of every single bruise I’ve had. To me, it means I’m tough stuff. It’s a symbol that I’m working hard, that I’m not afraid, and that I am training with tough people who aren’t afraid to work hard with me. I’ve never had any injury from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that has been doctor-worthy. I don’t usually notice any new bruises until I take a shower later or someone points them out. I actually bruise less and less as time goes on. I think my body is just becoming tougher stuff, because I’ve done the opposite of slowing down.

If this is the reaction I get to some tiny bruises on my body, I can’t wait for a black eye. Bring it on. It’s sad that it doesn’t occur to me to be worried about injuries except with knowing the sexism I’ll have to deal with.

I’ll deal with pride and humor. Maybe I’ll make some Fight Club reference. I’m sure I’ll wear my smile and Gracie Barra t-shirt as accessories. I’m a real kind of woman, the kind that identifies as person first, then a woman. That makes some people uncomfortable. I don’t mind, but I still don’t want to have to deal with their discomfort. Stand aside. I have goals to achieve and fun to have. Guess what? I’ve run all out of bubble gum, and you know what that means…

I like playing Katamari Damacy, but I prefer to roll around in real life. From the mats, with love, me.