Originally posted 3 Jan. 2014
By Mriana “Perica” López R.

The information and views set out in this post are those of the author and do not reflect any official opinion of Esfinges.

When it comes to talk about weaknesses, problems and issues it’s always a danger to whoever tries to do it. If the ideas are not expressed correctly we can easily sound like someone who’s just childishly complaining, someone with many complexes and lack of self esteem or a person who cares too much about what others say. Sometimes by trying not to sound like a victim one ends up posing the problem as something that does not matter too much even if it does, this among many more bad results can lead to this specific post, and none of these are my intention. To be clear I will only talk about my personal experience and situations I’ve been close to, so my following writing will not apply to every woman in the world but I bet I will get a few agreements on my comments.

Today I decided to answer a question Jake Priddy made for his thesis… A question I always answer in my mind every time someone asks me about the needs of a female fighter but I never say out loud, and the answers I gave to him were not as near to the thoughts that run in my brain.

When it comes to sword fighting and pretty much to half of the activities I enjoy doing I break many of the regular patterns of a typical girl. I’m from México which is mainly a catholic country and my state is known as one of the most conservative ones, living here means that sword fighting, leather and wood work, starting a small collection of tools and asking for heavy machinery to work with in my Christmas wish list, plus arriving with bruises to college, etc. is everything but the expected and acceptable of any woman. No matter how long people know me, not all can get used to my “strange” activities. With this said, I have to add that I am lucky to have an amazing family who instead of caring about social graces always inspire me to keep at it, yet it also means I’ve been often part of many interesting conversations. Ones where I’m a strange subject of analysis, criticisms, laughter and even sometimes admiration, therefore I feel qualified to talk about this (Even if I’m no psychologist or such).

Now to the Point! The terrible question Jake decided to post in public: And I quote “Does being a woman and a fighter cause something that has to be mentally resolved?” The answer: YES, yes and who ever say no is either a liar, hasn’t realized the surrounding situation, or lives in a very cool community I want to live in.

Humans are social and therefore our surroundings will always affect us, the way we assimilate social pressure has much to do with our personality in other situations, but saying surroundings does not affect us is a big fat lie. When a woman is criticized she can have many reactions, but to shorten them to two we can: either respond and fit again into society so we stop being criticized or ignore the comments and keep on doing what we do, but people don’t understand that the “ignoring the others” part has its own set ups and its own complications. Let’s go by parts.

Girls must act like Girls! (The view of people outside HEMA)

I met this friend, she had a few years in HEMA, she even started getting money to buy armour, and was the only girl in her club. Her family hated her doing HEMA, the only seminar she got to go to was only for one day and with her dad as a companion to check out what she was doing because she’s overly protected (and she was no baby). All she got to hear from her mom was how unladylike she was. Later one she quitted and tried dancing. She still loved to fight, and she bought a steel sword, without her parent’s knowledge. That sword spent more than a month in the back of the car of one of his friends because she didn’t want her parent’s to find out about it, no matter if her parents kind of accepted her like for HEMA albeit  not in a positive way… Now she has nothing to do with HEMA but the friends she made and a sword hidden under her bed.

Now what happens to the ones who get over that social pressure?

Once a lady decides to break the pattern and take the fighter road, she automatically loses her ladylike identity and becomes a tomboy in the eyes of outsiders. Once you are a fighter you turn “macho” in the eyes of many, also at least in my experience once I get to be acknowledged as a fighter therefore macho, the instant next idea of many people that don’t know me well is that this also implies I’m a lesbian. Being called both of those doesn’t offend me at all, I recognize I can be a tomboy on a certain subjects, and I have many homosexual friends who I admire, but it’s just sad how these three concepts need to be together with no exception. There is no place for female fighters who are not homosexual, lesbians, who are not tomboys, etc. This ends up becoming a bad discussion trying to find out if we should promote female fighters as bad ass and feminine, or accepting they are not, forgetting a female fighter can be any kind of women who actually likes to fight, with their own personalities and conditions.

If people know me as a fencer they get surprised that I can like high heels and short dresses, and that I even know how to make up my self properly, those who know me in skirt and painted nails can’t understand I do such a thing as HEMA, unless I have a bruise which often leads into a panic reaction on how can I dare to show marks of my brutality in public. At the same time, being a fencer suddenly means I have to defend my sexuality due to assumptions. Well how lazy and retarded is this! If I’m not offended by being call a lesbian why would I worried about defending my sexuality? Well I’m in a happy relationship in this moment of my life, but think for a moment: if I were single, interested in having a relationship, living in a conservative state, and people thinking I’m homosexual then when in the hell will a random guy approach me to find out I’m not? And even if they find I’m not, how is he going to approach a girl who doesn’t mind walking around with bruises, should I need to change my way of dressing to cover that?

Adding to that I’ve often heard from many males that they would not like to date a girl who can defend herself and needs no protection, or even worse they can’t date girls who are stronger than them. Now the regular answer for me is why in hell would I like to date with people with this way of thinking? Of course I would not, but not everyone is me, also I’m used to those comments since I’m small… what about the people who are not used to that?

Once you decide to become a female fighter, for some of us it also means to choose to deal with this all the time as well, and this can be either something of little care or something very exhausting depending on personal situations and personalities. I’m not saying males are immune to social pressure, of course they aren’t, especially those whose parents want them to be doctors and not fencers, but In a general idea: a male who decides to fight, just goes and fights, a girl who chooses to fight, also has to fight society’s old fashioned ideas.

Gender difference means you will always be a weak fighter

Oh yes my dear friends I’m stepping up to that horrible subject! Well this time I’m not coming with my personal assumptions only!

Months ago my friend Maxime Chouinard arrived with a little jewel as a present, this present was a magazine called Skeptic, this magazine had an article called Gender differences. Through the reading I had nothing else but to agree with what the author of the article said on it. This article of skeptic (http://www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/18.2/) quoted different scientific articles from psychological to genetics, from chromosomes mutations to brain functioning, etc, etc. concluding how even if science can show certain difference between male and woman the great majority of those so believed differences are a social creation rather than a reality, showing the fact that many achievements that male and female do in certain areas is greatly affected mostly because of set up ideas rather because they can or can’t actually do it, so to say female will develop the vest in “female stuff” because they feel more secure in it because it is “female stuff” and vice versa.

I’m aware of physical gender differences, my mother is a physiotherapist I have many friends studying medicine and of course I also know many smart friends in the HEMA world, so I’m very aware of the magic weight, stature and bones can do. But ok, let’s ignore this and say still bone structure and all that it’s to noticeable and that god is great and by no reason genetics can make female a little male boney or inverse etc, etc. Because I’m by far not someone with a manly body structure.

In male dominant activities it’s not strange to see that many martial art instructors focus with a lot of dedication on the bone structure to adapt techniques in the best way to fit them but they don’t realize that if there is such a thing as bone structure difference there should be also adaptations for the female bone structure. One cool example was shown by my brother while watching Chinese kung fu movies. We all know actors of Chinese kung fu movies actually know kung fu, and if you pay attention to these films, males and females release the most in different parts of their bodies while fighting (girls in legs and hips, guys in arms and chest) putting them in a similar level of conditions during the fight, yes, yes they are movies!! But they are doing something many instructors don’t, adapting things to everyone’s needs so differences turn into advantages and not disadvantages, such as happens to small people who don’t know what to do with their smallness in a fight and such. Well why someone would put himself to think about working on this difference if, we just teach the same to all and understand by the very beginning that women are weaker?

Stop! Did I just say women are weaker? Hold on! It’s too soon to hate me!

Society! For ages all we hear is females are weak, well if these have been said for centuries it must be right, no? Well actually no, for centuries we have believed many things that year by year have been proved wrong, earth being flat, atom being the smaller particle to find in the universe, and that yawning without covering your mouth can make your soul go away from your body.

Imagine that since you were born even if not at home, you hear all the time “women are weaker”: let’s play lucha libre! “No, how boring, women are weaker” let’s make running races! “I will win, women are weaker” I lose “It’s ok, women are weaker” let’s swordfight with sticks in the tree house “ok, but don’t fight her to hard, women are weaker” let’s have a sparring “I don’t fight women, women are weaker”she likes to dance “women are weaker, they do weak activities” I want to do this “you have no chance, women are weaker” I like this “are you sure you want to do it? Women are weaker” I love to fight “wow, I admire you, girls often don’t do that because women are weaker” I accomplished this “it’s a great achievement considering women are weaker” I won! “No I let you win, you can’t win if I do my best because women are weaker. You have no chance against me”. Every time, every day, at home, at school, at work, in the street, in the commercials, in the regular conversations, since you born until the moment you die, It does not matter if your parents don’t tell you so, someone else will do it for them someone will send the message of how women are weaker. After 15, 20, 30 years of hearing that, even if you don’t believe it, take a weapon, put yourself to work, fight, fail and try to avoid that message popping up in your mind to give you a fast explanation on why you failed, every time, every single time you fail until you either get over it, or fall into it and use it as your way to not feel bad with yourself.

Ok let’s say you are awesome and that idea doesn’t pop into your brain, still someone will say that for you, the moment of failing it’s frustrating it will always be on a certain level, all you need is to get those words instead of something that gets your energy back on track. To make a strange comparison: The idea of women being weaker is inserted in society the same way the idea pink is a girly color.

And not only women are weaker in people’s minds, sometimes women just rely on themselves being weak instead of researching how to work with what they have so they can improve and stop being weak, instead of realizing maybe it’s not weakness but just a wrong way to train to accomplish what they want (well as long as they are not afraid of getting stronger by thinking getting strong means looking all bulky which would make no man in the world like her). I strongly believe that we will never be able to prove women are weaker until we reach the moment where no male or female believes and teaches such a statement, without that mind set up maybe things would be different.Once again don’t read me wrong I’m aware of physics differences and how it affects, muscle mass and such, but we have to be aware not every one give the right approach tho those differences and we have to understand difference are not weaknesses and that calling some one weak will not let her reach her maximum point of strength weather it’s more on less that the male general.

To make it just better some girls not only struggle with getting accepted on the outside but also on the inside of their fighting communities even if people don’t mean things to be that way. I’m aware I’m not the best HEMAist in the media, but for the past 5 years my old club lasted to my new club which is about to start we have been the only HEMA club that ever existed in my state, and more than once since I started teaching in my club, many people have thrown away the idea of training with us because the instructor is a girl. Do I want people with that mentality in my club? No. Would that affect me even if I don’t care about it? Yes. I ended up needing to be more “authoritarian” and “grumpy” in my way of teaching guys, compared to my brother who’s also an instructor, just because otherwise I didn’t get as much respect, so this way some of those who said “bah she’s a girl” reacted and said “oh maybe she can”.

Once again I’m not saying everyone is like this, and once again I’m talking about female fencers in martial arts or fighting sports in general. Thankfully HEMA is a very inclusive community, we don’t “suffer” most of the things other girls in other martial arts or fighting sports suffer or at least not as much. I have female friends who do weight lifting, who are in the wrestling team of her colleges and such, and they are more exposed to the points I’ve  heard myself in a HEMA tournament: a guy saying he would not fight a girl under any circumstances because he might hurt her, just to mention a few situations. But let’s just remember a HEMA fighter does not live only in the HEMA world, we also live in the regular life of every day society, our community is very refreshing when it comes to gender situations and the silly ideas that have subsisted with the time. Still we are not free of failures, no community will ever be and it is no harm to know, more like I strongly believe people must know all the processes some have to work on within their process to be a martial artist. Either for males or females, getting into martial arts is not only fighting the physical but the mental. But when the mental is gaming with an entire cultural idea… doesn’t that make the fighter even a better fighter?

Many girls have shown up at my HEMA club, and with a few exceptions it wasn’t weird that once a girl showed up her first training day was more about fighting herself about whether she should be doing that or not because she’s a girl. Scared of practice with a guy because they are stronger, thinking the techniques shown are impossible for them to make because they are girls, most of the times they run to wherever I was asking me to work with them, and trying to find from me an answer on how to survive the things they couldn’t do, my response was to do the exercise with the guy club member who looked the biggest and most bad ass to show them they can do it, and half of those times instead of feeling sure they can do it the answer was to think I was an exceptional strange unique specimen. Feeling silly or weird about doing such a thing as fighting; I agree martial arts are not for everyone still wouldn’t it be different if those initial ideas weren’t in your mind?

I even know situations of girls who train but don’t fight because it’s not ladylike!

Many other girls I know like martial arts, but will never take up on them no matter how much they see other girls doing it, because even if they like it they “know “ its “not a female thing” specially when they arrive to a place full of testosterone, smelly strong bad ass boys (and that’s not bad that’s how it often is). Well for me that’s heaven but even guys can feel out of place when they arrive to a place full of bad ass experienced fencers, now imagine a girl who just by going is carrying hundreds of prejudices on her back.

A male who decides to start training and fight will go train and fight, a girl who decides to train and fight has to train, learn to teach herself not to think she’s weak for being a female, not to let herself accept outside comments to explain her faults by saying being a girl makes her weak, learn that her actual weaknesses have to do with other things that are not her sex. Then fight, and repeat all the process again.

Some of us have gone through all this and more, some of us have only suffered a small part, some other girls maybe haven’t felt this at all, but it would be a lie to say all of this doesn’t make many girls not feel confident enough to start on Martial arts, secure enough to keep at it, or good enough to improve. I don’t want to paint girls as accomplished sad rabbits who have to cry tears of blood and all female martial artist are martyrs I just want to let people know that Yes, being a woman and a fighter causes something that has to be mentally resolved and to tell girls it’s okay to accept if they have to go through that and that it sucks, and then just take up our weapons and kick ass.

My question to give back would be… if by knowing this, whoever is reading it, would change something in the way they act: certain clubs, classes, general attitudes or way of teaching or approaching fighters?