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Old 06-12-2015, 03:54 AM   #1
Sojourner
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Trans Inclusive Aikido

I noticed the other day that an Aikido site listed a Women's introductory class and beneath the advertisement pointed out that this class is trans-inclusive - Brittania Ki-Aikido - http://www.canadiankifederation.com/clubs.html

Perhaps I am naive, but I figured that any Aikido for women classes would be open to trans people if they wished to attend? My hope would be that an Aikido dojo would be the last place that anyone would find discrimination based on race or gender, especially if we take the founders philosophy on Aikido being the art of peace for all people?

Good on them for advertising that they are inclusive of all people though, I hope people do not feel that they have to hold back from attending training at an Aikido dojo because of a race or gender issue. If that is the case them perhaps more dojos should take their lead and seek to address it?
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Old 06-12-2015, 07:03 AM   #2
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Ben White wrote: View Post
Good on them for advertising that they are inclusive of all people though, I hope people do not feel that they have to hold back from attending training at an Aikido dojo because of a race or gender issue.
It's great that you think that way, but that's not reality. I've got some close friends who are trans, a coworker who is in transition, and in my experience it's definitely not the case that the average person thinks of "women" as inclusive of MTF trans women. Mind you, they may not have a hard-set attitude against such inclusion, but their mental picture of "women", and their assumptions of what a "woman" is, do not include trans people.
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Old 06-12-2015, 09:59 AM   #3
kewms
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

The Girl Scouts of America made news and attracted conservative ire when they announced that any young person who identifies as a girl and is recognized as a girl by her family is welcome in the organization. It is by no means safe to assume that any organization is trans-inclusive.

Aikido is a Japanese art, and Japan is one of the most culturally homogenous nations on earth. Moreover, aikido dojos are made up of people, with all the same biases of people anywhere. It would be nice to believe that an aikido dojo is the "last place one would find discrimination," but I very much doubt that it's true.

Katherine
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Old 06-12-2015, 12:29 PM   #4
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Mary Malmros wrote: View Post
... their mental picture of "women", and their assumptions of what a "woman" is, do not include trans people.
With all all charity toward those suffering from such a disconnection between subjective conception and objective physical reality, a woman is not a "mental picture" but an objectively real condition and kind of human being. A man is likewise. They differ -- not merely in apparent, secondary or perceptual differences -- but in their real irreducible and essential sexual differences. The exceeding rarity of true developmental intersex conditions -- which in nature typically lack the reproductive functions of either sex -- only belies the problem with this modern mushing-up of truly essential differences. And this has impact in what Aikido teaches.

In Eastern wisdom, "It is first necessary to call things by their right names."
Quote:
Analects XIII wrote:
君子於其所不知,蓋闕如也。名不正,則言不順;言不順,則事不成...
""If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success." (Legge, tr.)
Or, as Francis Bacon said, in the Western mode: "Nature, to be commanded, must first be obeyed."

This essential polarity defines and -- literally-- produces human existence. Such an understanding of essential sexual difference (Izanagi/Izanami) and its inherently creative productivity (takemusu aiki, ubuya) deeply informs the conceptual world of Aikido and its role in resolving real human conflict.

The practical art is defined precisely by its manipulation of dually-opposed, inextricably linked and yet irreconcilably different poles of action: In and Yo. The essential polarity of the dually-opposed in-yo components of aiki, require clear understanding of their essential difference, and their proper and intimately connected association and inter-operation. This cannot be accomplished by a mind that begins with a sense that the one and the other are simply interchangeable and indistinct labels of nothing more than a cultural or personal choice. The immediate topic is simply one example of a far broader and deeper problem affecting many areas of our culture -- but is most starkly seen in this example.

One problem in teaching someone operating from this perspective, is that they plainly are not disposed to receive the essential teaching about the inalterable polarity of in-yo ho. To put it bluntly, if the nature of unblended polarity is not deeply understood and maintained, aiki cannot function. Harmony of opposites -- aiki -- is only necessary, and only operable as a principle, when there are in fact two such categorical differences that cannot truly be mixed into any third synthetic thing. Inflections and intersections of the two are ubquitous in the world, but in and yo cannot arbitrarily be assigned or altered at will without doing injury to the reality of their action in martial encounter. To do so destroys the effectiveness, in the case of Aikido, of the art that is to be learned.

Having said that -- I would not for a minute exclude anyone. I contend that this art can even correct and inform this deep truth: There are real differences that are innately creative and productive BECAUSE OF the inescapable reality of their difference. Our culture, now clearly committed to be undiscriminating to the point of irrationality, has fundamentally failed to teach this. It may yet be learned through the art and the stubbornly real and concrete instrument of the human body acting in and through overt conflict.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-12-2015, 01:50 PM   #5
Cliff Judge
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Okay, we're doing this on General. Seems like a better fit for Open Discussions.

Erick, I appreciate that your thinking is highly nuanced but I want to address the base level of what you are saying. Feel free to correct me if I don't seem to be hearing you correctly.

Sex is anything but deterministic. Whatever the level of rarity of intersex conditions, the fact that they happen at all is proof that sex is not binary in nature. The "reality" of an individual's physical sex is essentially the entire story of how their body developed from the time they were a zygote up through puberty, and beyond. And its none of your business.

And sex has nothing to do with gender. Gender is entirely a social construct, the same as race. if you think you know a person's gender better than they do, that's an act of aggression against their right to live their lives.

Transgender people don't deserve your "charity" they deserve your respect and admiration for being brave enough to be themselves amid casual and generally accepted transphobia.

These points are all essentially moot. Someone may be able to ban transgendered people from practice at their dojo, or force them to use the wrong bathrooms or changing rooms in certain localities today, but that's changing. Eventually we'll get to the point where they have the same rights as cisgendered people and you will be facing lawsuits if you discriminate.

P.S. the idea that a transgendered person cannot be taught Aikido because they cannot understand the proper relationship between In and Yo is not just transphobic, it is sexist. Just so you know!

Last edited by Cliff Judge : 06-12-2015 at 02:02 PM.
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Old 06-12-2015, 04:30 PM   #6
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Cliff Judge wrote: View Post
Okay, we're doing this on General. Seems like a better fit for Open Discussions.

Erick, I appreciate that your thinking is highly nuanced but I want to address the base level of what you are saying. Feel free to correct me if I don't seem to be hearing you correctly.

Sex is anything but deterministic. Whatever the level of rarity of intersex conditions, the fact that they happen at all is proof that sex is not binary in nature. The "reality" of an individual's physical sex is essentially the entire story of how their body developed from the time they were a zygote up through puberty, and beyond. And its none of your business.

And sex has nothing to do with gender. Gender is entirely a social construct, the same as race. if you think you know a person's gender better than they do, that's an act of aggression against their right to live their lives.

Transgender people don't deserve your "charity" they deserve your respect and admiration for being brave enough to be themselves amid casual and generally accepted transphobia.

These points are all essentially moot. Someone may be able to ban transgendered people from practice at their dojo, or force them to use the wrong bathrooms or changing rooms in certain localities today, but that's changing. Eventually we'll get to the point where they have the same rights as cisgendered people and you will be facing lawsuits if you discriminate.

P.S. the idea that a transgendered person cannot be taught Aikido because they cannot understand the proper relationship between In and Yo is not just transphobic, it is sexist. Just so you know!
Pretty much says everything I thought while reading Eric's post. So thank you.

Janet Rosen
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Old 06-12-2015, 04:50 PM   #7
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Cliff Judge wrote: View Post
P.S. the idea that a transgendered person cannot be taught Aikido because they cannot understand the proper relationship between In and Yo is not just transphobic, it is sexist.
Jargon aside, since I specifically said that such a person may well be taught -- and that I would teach them, I fail to understand your point. That he or she will have likely difficulty because of their habit of thought about such things, I think I made my point already.

Quote:
Cliff Judge wrote: View Post
The "reality" of an individual's physical sex is essentially the entire story of how their body developed from the time they were a zygote up through puberty, and beyond. And its none of your business.
I may be mistaken but I thought it was just raised in a forum that I participate in, about an art I teach, as an issue we should address. What part of that is thus suddenly "not my business"... since I certainly did not introduce it ? And if isn't "our" business, why are YOU talking about it, too ?

How we think about the world matters to what we do in the world. Aikido is framed in terms of the male-female -- Izanagi/Izanami -- life-death, fire-water, in-yo dynamic -- I did not frame it that way, but I get it, and I agree with it -- but more critically in terms of Aikido, I must continue to frame it that way so as long as I intend to to remain true to the source of the art.

We stand equally concerned about the welfare of such people -- you and I just have very different ideas about what constitutes their true challenges and essential needs to which our concern and sense of charity is directed.

Quote:
Cliff Judge wrote: View Post
Sex is anything but deterministic.
Everything material is deterministic. Even true intersex conditions are grimly deterministic in their occurrence. It is spiritual things that are not deterministic... and humans are widely understood to be a bit of both -- East or West, take your pick.

We can, by virtue of our spiritual being -- make a new material order out of the existing material order -- our ideas can shape things that have never existed before -- the Eiffel Tower, fireworks, an iPhone, but also the Berlin Wall, Dachau, televised beachside beheadings -- and many other things high and low, kind and wicked, beautiful or grotesque. The human spirit can choose to magnify its material being -- or to destroy it. The latter is generally regarded as a grave misfortune -- East and West.

Aikido's sensibility as a art is at least as strongly aesthetic as it is practical. It is the same spirit as mathematics -- elegance is a sign of the operation of a sound principle. In terms of aesthetics alone, it is an awful thing to reduce a wild maple to a pile of woodchips to carve the mere dead image of a tulip -- which can never be the true beauty of the real tulip nor true beauty of the real tree.

I grant that we humans are capable of and regularly (and rightly or wrongly) shape our material being as much as our spiritual being. But even carefully manicured bonsai achieve superlative beauty by their careful attention to the true nature and habit of the tree in a trained form, which blind nature achieves by mere happenstance. Something like that should be readily in mind on this topic as well, in my view.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-12-2015, 05:49 PM   #8
kewms
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Let's skip the philosophizing and cut to the chase, shall we?

As a teacher, do you believe that you have the right to know what set of genitalia is attached to any of your students? (Assuming that they do not create an issue with their own behavior.)

Do you believe that people "choose" to be transgender? And, conversely, that they can choose not to be?

To what extent (if any) do these characteristics affect the person's ability to learn aikido and your ability to teach them? That is, does the particular set of genitalia *by itself* have any relevance? Or are you simply associating "male" characteristics like aggression with male genitalia, and assuming (for example) that owners of male genitalia will be more aggressive than owners of female genitalia and will need to be taught accordingly?

Katherine
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Old 06-12-2015, 07:45 PM   #9
Hilary
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

We should have a quick show of hands (maybe somewhere else), what percentage of dojos are unisex? I don’t know of any, but that and $5 will buy you a half a Venti Coffee somewhere. I expect most classes are open to all, so that part is not an issue in most cases. The only real question is the dressing room question. I can’t speak for any women, but I do think they have a right not to confront a penis, be it trans, straight or gay in their dressing room. Not a hard problem to solve, but the only real issue that is anyone’s business. All else, for better or worse, is politics.
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Old 06-12-2015, 08:15 PM   #10
Riai Maori
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

And Bruce Jenner can get changed in the hallway. Sorry I mean Kaitlyn.

Motto tsuyoku
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Old 06-13-2015, 12:43 AM   #11
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
Let's skip the philosophizing and cut to the chase, shall we?

As a teacher, do you believe that you have the right to know what set of genitalia is attached to any of your students? (Assuming that they do not create an issue with their own behavior.)

Do you believe that people "choose" to be transgender? And, conversely, that they can choose not to be?

To what extent (if any) do these characteristics affect the person's ability to learn aikido and your ability to teach them? That is, does the particular set of genitalia *by itself* have any relevance? Or are you simply associating "male" characteristics like aggression with male genitalia, and assuming (for example) that owners of male genitalia will be more aggressive than owners of female genitalia and will need to be taught accordingly?

Katherine
Dear Katherine,My views on your comments is No. I think the question of somebodys sexual orientation or genitalia has no bearing on the question of training or the teaching of Aikido.cheers, Joe

Last edited by akiy : 06-13-2015 at 09:06 AM. Reason: Fixed quote tag
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Old 06-13-2015, 08:34 AM   #12
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
Let's skip the philosophizing and cut to the chase, shall we?
Oh! ... by all means. Let's. And skip the New Inquisition as well, perhaps.

Quote:
As a teacher, do you believe that you have the right to know what set of genitalia is attached to any of your students? (Assuming that they do not create an issue with their own behavior.)
Speaking martially, it may well be important to recognize that one sex has certain overt, anterior vulnerabilities the other one lacks. Beyond that, the point of the question is simple provocation.

Quote:
Do you believe that people "choose" to be transgender? And, conversely, that they can choose not to be?

To what extent (if any) do these characteristics affect the person's ability to learn aikido and your ability to teach them? That is, does the particular set of genitalia *by itself* have any relevance? Or are you simply associating "male" characteristics like aggression with male genitalia, and assuming (for example) that owners of male genitalia will be more aggressive than owners of female genitalia and will need to be taught accordingly?
What "I believe" has zero relevance in martial encounter, except and to the extent there is strategic deception in the engagement. The absolute concrete reality of a sharp thing swinging at my neck is the nature of reality in martial encounter, unmediated by belief, self-identity, or any philosophy for that matter. Life and death requires no belief, it just is.

People who get that reality does not shape itself to our beliefs about it, get beyond their insistence on the categories of belief, and begin to deal in the reality presented in an attack. In this regard, people who insist on this kind of existential campaign against the reality of their own bodies, may have one or two things to overcome or dispense with in reorienting to the reality of a body attacking theirs. Or, as I may hope, the reality thus presented may balance the appreciation of all realities.

The trick of aikido is to put that attacker into the frame of loving protection -- brutal loving protection-- but still, the difference is real and determinative. In the form of a question, how does one learn the spirit of loving protection of the body of another, if one has difficulty with loving protection of one's own body?

Somehow, I suspect you may yet disagree...

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-13-2015, 10:28 AM   #13
sakumeikan
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Oh! ... by all means. Let's. And skip the New Inquisition as well, perhaps.

Speaking martially, it may well be important to recognize that one sex has certain overt, anterior vulnerabilities the other one lacks. Beyond that, the point of the question is simple provocation.

What "I believe" has zero relevance in martial encounter, except and to the extent there is strategic deception in the engagement. The absolute concrete reality of a sharp thing swinging at my neck is the nature of reality in martial encounter, unmediated by belief, self-identity, or any philosophy for that matter. Life and death requires no belief, it just is.

People who get that reality does not shape itself to our beliefs about it, get beyond their insistence on the categories of belief, and begin to deal in the reality presented in an attack. In this regard, people who insist on this kind of existential campaign against the reality of their own bodies, may have one or two things to overcome or dispense with in reorienting to the reality of a body attacking theirs. Or, as I may hope, the reality thus presented may balance the appreciation of all realities.
the phrasee overt
The trick of aikido is to put that attacker into the frame of loving protection -- brutal loving protection-- but still, the difference is real and determinative. In the form of a question, how does one learn the spirit of loving protection of the body of another, if one has difficulty with loving protection of one's own body?

Somehow, I suspect you may yet disagree...
Dear Erick,
What is a New Inquisiton?Is it some kind of Auto Da Fe? Again the phrase overt , anterior vulnerabilities the other lacks.Have you been revising you legal jargon?Could be wrong here but has plain speech been overtaken by statements that does need a Philadelphia lawyer to interpret the words. Erick , please use the phrase KISS.Ie KEEP IT SIMPLE SIMON when you write an article. By doing so brain dead guys like me can follow your line of debate.I guess Perry Mason might have found you a tough cookie. Not like Hamilton Burger his adversary.Poor Hamilton, never won a blinking case against Perry [RaymondBurr]Mason.Cheers, Joe.
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Old 06-13-2015, 10:55 AM   #14
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Joe Curran wrote: View Post
Dear Erick,
What is a New Inquisiton?Is it some kind of Auto Da Fe?
Aiki da fe

Quote:
Again the phrase overt , anterior vulnerabilities the other lacks. KEEP IT SIMPLE SIMON when you write an article.
I coulda said "Chicks ain't got balls to bash." Seems kinda crude put like that. The truth of the matter is actually painfully crude -- and important in a fight.

But I guess I assumed that those that prefer the trans-cis-meta circumlocutions around the cruder truths of the world might prefer more circumspect language -- and we aims ta please.

But your point is well taken. A difficult chasm to bridge, I'll grant you -- hard to find firm foundations on the other side of it. It is hard to keep up when a self-identified "black" woman of apparently pure "white" ancestry cannot be genuinely "black" -- but a world class Olympic male athlete now self-identifying as "female" must be a genuine "woman." I confess the confusion - although I am not certain it is mine to own.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-13-2015, 12:31 PM   #15
Carsten Möllering
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
... that they plainly are not disposed to receive the essential teaching about the inalterable polarity of in-yo ho.
Seems you are not disposed to receive the essential teaching about the ever-changing inter-relation of yin and yang.
Your statement contradicts the most basic conceptions of Daoist philosophy.
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Old 06-13-2015, 03:07 PM   #16
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Carsten Möllering wrote: View Post
Seems you are not disposed to receive the essential teaching about the ever-changing inter-relation of yin and yang.
Your statement contradicts the most basic conceptions of Daoist philosophy.
Your observation is a Western error in understanding Daoist doctrine, based on a fallacy of abstraction. Yin and Yang are not abstract qualities -- but concrete vectors or patterns of development or change that one can immediately identify in nature. Yang develops. Yin develops. They mutually influence the development of the 10,000 things. They are not analytical objects to be substituted for one another.

A Taoist of traditional doctrine would find this modern biological engineering mindset a deep affront to the sublime nature of the Way. One cannot in Taoist teaching simply "excise" the Yang of the male and "drop in" the desired yin of some female qualities and have any actual female. The artificially interposed yin qualities would destroy the developing yang of the male -- but without developing any real yin of the female, which must of its nature grow and flower as a real human being does -- it cannot be transplanted or imposed willy-nilly. It would be seen as a serious wound to the human being at issue because trying to evade the nature of things is to evade the Way, and evading the Way is the road to death, not life.

Chinese Taoist medicine seeks restoration of a disturbed natural order -- not to impose some arbitrary engineered order. Or, back to Bacon -- "Nature, to be commanded-- must first be obeyed."

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-13-2015, 05:03 PM   #17
kewms
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
A Taoist of traditional doctrine would find this modern biological engineering mindset a deep affront to the sublime nature of the Way. One cannot in Taoist teaching simply "excise" the Yang of the male and "drop in" the desired yin of some female qualities and have any actual female. The artificially interposed yin qualities would destroy the developing yang of the male -- but without developing any real yin of the female, which must of its nature grow and flower as a real human being does -- it cannot be transplanted or imposed willy-nilly. It would be seen as a serious wound to the human being at issue because trying to evade the nature of things is to evade the Way, and evading the Way is the road to death, not life.
I suspect that a transgender person would say that they are trying to *follow* their own inherent nature, not evade it. I have no personal experience in the matter, but I certainly don't see why anyone would take such a hellishly difficult path if they felt any other options were available.

Katherine
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Old 06-13-2015, 05:05 PM   #18
kewms
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
What "I believe" has zero relevance in martial encounter, except and to the extent there is strategic deception in the engagement. The absolute concrete reality of a sharp thing swinging at my neck is the nature of reality in martial encounter, unmediated by belief, self-identity, or any philosophy for that matter. Life and death requires no belief, it just is.
What you believe may not be relevant in a martial encounter, but it is absolutely relevant to your effectiveness as a teacher.

Katherine
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Old 06-13-2015, 07:50 PM   #19
Cliff Judge
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Or, back to Bacon -- "Nature, to be commanded-- must first be obeyed."
So why is it not YOU disobeying nature when you choose a gender for someone else? How is it that you know their nature better than they do?
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Old 06-14-2015, 03:26 PM   #20
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

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So why is it not YOU disobeying nature when you choose a gender for someone else?
If you are speaking of biological sex, I don't choose; they don't choose, no one chooses -- unless nature does. But nature is not a person and does no choosing. Things become what they become. As things go, sex is a materially determined process of genetic development modified to some extent by epigenetic factors. Sex is caused -- it is not chosen.

Gender began as a grammatical concept. As applied to biological sexes it refers to culturally mediated roles or expected behaviors for each sex. To say that gender roles are more or less fluid between cultures -- this is readily observed. To that extent,one ought not over-categorize such roles in any culture or between cultures. I have not here.

Though fighting is a role ostensibly expected of men in most cultures, women can fight and fight well, especially in a technological age that diminishes the statistically undeniable physical differences between them as a class. But to extend that somewhat movable boundary of expected behaviors of the sexes to the categorical equivalence of or the interchangeability of the actual sexes is simply, to be blunt -- a move toward insanity -- the insistent denial of a plain reality.

Quote:
Cliff Judge wrote: View Post
How is it that you know their nature better than they do?
How is it that they don't ?

Cordially,

Erick Mead
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Old 06-14-2015, 03:35 PM   #21
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

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Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
What you believe may not be relevant in a martial encounter, but it is absolutely relevant to your effectiveness as a teacher.
How so? The teaching is about martial encounters -- so, where does belief enter into it? We're not teaching defense against fresh fruit. Practical arts have to be taught from experience not belief, and Aikido is a practical art. Aikido is effective and people can learn to deploy it effectively. I teach people to become more effective in doing so. This is not a belief because I know it to be so from the facts of experience. What belief is relevant?

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-14-2015, 03:47 PM   #22
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

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Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
I suspect that a transgender person would say that they are trying to *follow* their own inherent nature, not evade it. I have no personal experience in the matter, but I certainly don't see why anyone would take such a hellishly difficult path if they felt any other options were available.
Their inherent sexual nature is physically manifest, and undeniable. Their spiritual dissonance with those facts of their physical being is the cause of the problem. People take "hellishly difficult" paths for all sorts of reasons -- good and bad alike. Judgment lies in determining which is which. Lots of people make poor judgments, about all sorts of things.

Generally speaking, there are good things about being male -- and there are good things about being female. Generally speaking, it is best to pursue the increase of a good by magnifying the goods you have rather than to try to destroy them as a means to other goods you do not possess-- and may not ever gain. The old wisdom is this: "Happiness lies in the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope." Whatever the transgender motivation seeks -- it is not happiness in those terms.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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Old 06-14-2015, 03:49 PM   #23
Riai Maori
 
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

Snookered!

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Old 06-14-2015, 04:35 PM   #24
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
How so? The teaching is about martial encounters -- so, where does belief enter into it? We're not teaching defense against fresh fruit. Practical arts have to be taught from experience not belief, and Aikido is a practical art. Aikido is effective and people can learn to deploy it effectively. I teach people to become more effective in doing so. This is not a belief because I know it to be so from the facts of experience. What belief is relevant?
How can you teach someone you believe to be incapable of learning, or incapable of understanding a particular set of concepts?

This is a challenge of particular relevance in the traditional Japanese arts, which non-Japanese people are sometimes said to be incapable of understanding.

Katherine
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Old 06-14-2015, 04:36 PM   #25
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Re: Trans Inclusive Aikido

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Erick Mead wrote: View Post
Their inherent sexual nature is physically manifest, and undeniable. Their spiritual dissonance with those facts of their physical being is the cause of the problem.
And your reason for this belief is?

Katherine
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