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Old 04-05-2013, 09:11 AM   #120
Cady Goldfield
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,035
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Re: how do we define martial?

Quote:
Lorien Lowe wrote: View Post
One is forced to wonder what the poster thinks of female budoka, given this definition. Are we all stupid, or are we just gay?
The poster is a female budoka, and also a naturalist and an observer of evolutionary ecology.
We are animals, and we are wired for certain behaviors just as are all other creatures. Our self-consciousness and intellect allow us to create rationales and layers of nuanced behaviors that, if peeled away, come down to the same basic drives as all of life on Earth.

Females fight for resources and territory, and mates, but with a subtle difference in motives and an overt difference in method and technology. Intelligence has nothing to do with any of these drives or approaches, however, and women certainly have the intellect and capabiligy to strategize large-scale warfare. But hormonally we don't tend to have the levels of testosterone that make us (as a group) aggressors that would be the perpetrators of invasive warfare.

As for being budoka, again the difference is largely in motives. Self-defense, and the defense of children and the helpless, are more normally the extent of the martial aspect for women. In budo, there are abstract aspects that are attractive to women, that are not directly combative. Very few, if any, women train to be mercenaries who are going to go into violent fields of work. Some women like to spar and do MMA, but they are a small minority, and there are a number of factors, both simple and complex, tied into this choice of pursuit.

Last edited by Cady Goldfield : 04-05-2013 at 09:23 AM.
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