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Old 03-07-2013, 05:05 PM   #12
OwlMatt
 
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Dojo: Milwaukee Aikikai
Location: Wisconsin
Join Date: Dec 2009
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Re: The Great Non-Issue

Quote:
Jon Reading wrote: View Post
1. People who are uncomfortable with homosexual behavior are people, too. I have never once convinced a friend to be more open-minded about sexuality by calling them childish. Nor by diminishing or dismissing their concerns. Change is difficult and scary and I try to be empathetic to that experience. Then I throw them into a dark elevator filled with a bunch of gay people, suspended over a pit of snakes.
I think dismissing their concerns is exactly what is called for. We don't have to insult them or be rude, but we don't have to offer them validation, either. If someone says he's not comfortable training with a homosexual, the only proper answer is that homosexuals have the same right to train that he has, and that his discomfort doesn't change that.
Quote:
2. Sexual abuse in martial arts is a serious problem. It is not OK for anyone to endure unwanted sexual advances. I don't care who is advancing and who is receiving, and I don't care what the score ever was; sexual harassment is wrong.
I'm not talking about sexual harassment. I train with a married couple who met doing aikido; clearly, their relationship could not have come about without one training partner making romantic advances toward another. What I am suggesting is that there is nothing wrong with homosexuals doing the same thing, and men (it's always men) who are afraid of being at the other end of the advances might just have to deal with it, the way that women do all the time.

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