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Old 05-17-2005, 07:49 AM   #2
rob_liberti
Dojo: Shobu Aikido of Connecticut
Location: East Haven, CT
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 1,402
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Re: Can women defend themselves?

Quote:
Mary Eastland wrote:
In "the women and baby thread" I thought I noticed an attitude that Aikido training is nice for women but they can't really ever learn to defend themselves. So what do you as an instructor or student think about this?
Umm... Well...I don't mean to pick on you here, but to answer the question, as an instructor, I think that you "noticed" things that were not there. (Not on the first 14 posts on that thread, anyway.)

It's hard enough to protect yourself with both hands free. If you think you can protect a baby in a sling while being attacker, you must move REALLY well, male or female.

Quote:
Mary Eastland wrote:
And if you are an instructor and you don't believe that women can ever learn to defend themselves, how can you help to instill the feeling that they could?
Given the suposition, I would say that you shouldn't do that. I actually think Women can defend themselves, so it's not too dificult to defend my point of view. I recently did that on aikiweb about a month or two ago.

Quote:
Mary Eastland wrote:
I think a lot of men think that they could overtake a woman just because she is a women. I don't mean this to become a men vs women thread, I am just interested if people have really ever thought about this and why they believe it.
I am a little brother. I have YEARS of experience with being the smaller, weaker, and _most unfortunately_ the "dumber" role of the two combatants. If your martial skill set relative to the other person isn't sufficient to overcome the inequalities, you are in trouble. Men are generally bigger and stronger than women, and are have a major socialization factor in their favor. Can it be overcome? Absolutely.

Rob
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