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Old 08-11-2002, 04:40 PM   #13
guest1234
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 915
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I agree, in that I personally wouldn't use a women-only class, but then, by the time I ran into bozos, I knew enough Aikido to know that they were bozos (I have been extremely fortunate in my 'formative' months).

Beginners have great, sponge-like minds, eager and willing to soak up everything Aikido, and I have seen beginners of both genders get discouraged when just-barely-senior students 'teach' them things that are wrong, from rolls to technique, that they know they saw differently. Especially scary when someone who has terrible ukemi skills themselves decides to 'fix' a beginner's problem. Unfortuanately, those who seem to be the usual 'givers' of advice are male, and the receivers most often female...and when the female beginner gets fed up or discouraged by this garbage, she doesn't realize it is garbage, being too new to know a bozo when she sees one, so she leaves, and then the guys look around and say "hey, why don't we have more women in the dojo?"
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