View Single Post
Old 12-09-2011, 08:18 PM   #32
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
United_States
Offline
Re: On being Female in an Aikido Dojo

Quote:
Basia Halliop wrote: View Post
I can only speak to my own comment, but I meant the two problems of the effect other people's lack of respect has on you personally, and the actual lack of respect itself.
The context was Szczepan's response to OP, which began as follows:

"The respect must be earned; it is not automatically attached to any particular rank. If you feel that ppl don't respect you, you have to work twice or ten times harder, instead of looking for hypothetical sexism."

OP responded:

"I understand I did not put much detail in my original post, but its rather odd you assume that I'm not working hard rather than the chance there could be sexism."

So, that raises the question: just what are we curing, anyway? And doesn't that hinge on whether the sexism in question is real or, as Szczepan put it, "hypothetical"? In the general sense, I'm sure the problem could be defined as "crappy training experience", but the cure depends on the cause.

I'm of two minds about the advice to ignore other people and go for your own goals. On the one hand, you can't force a bigot to abandon his stupid bigotries. On the other hand, just how much aikido can you do while "ignoring other people"? Partner practice is essential, and if your dojo is full of people who won't be good partners to you, for whatever reason, you can't exactly "go for your own goals" in that situation.

There's also the consideration of whether it makes sense to accept such a situation and stay in it. If you're a woman living in a world where every aikido dojo is sexist, and you want to train, you might as well suck up the bullshit ripoff hypocritical twice-the-work-for-half-the-credit crap at your present dojo as anywhere else. But we don't live in such a world, and there are plenty of dojos that aren't like that. Given that that's the case, is the best advice to knuckle under and accept the situation -- or is it to ease on down the road to somewhere where you can train without that bullshit on your back?
  Reply With Quote