Of young girls in Judo, 75% drop out in the 11 to 13 age range. 75%. Girls drop out of Judo at an alarming rate. Women don’t try or stay in Judo at an alarming rate. In my old Krav Maga school, at least half if not more of the students were women. Not in my Judo dojo, or any Judo dojo I have been to (which is admittedly limited). But even if I’ve been to a limited number of Judo dojos, the statistics remain the same.
Girls don’t stay in Judo.
And the ones that do… that’s been a difficult topic for many years. It took fighting for one of Kano’s prominent female students, Keiko Fukuda, to receive her 9th dan black belt. She was a 5th dan for 30 years, because there was just no precedent to promote a woman beyond that. Keiko was one of the few students Kano selected and trained to be ambassadors of Judo to other countries, and eventually moved to the US where she lived the rest of her life, teaching Judo.
In recent years in America, it seems that the women who succeed in Judo succeed by becoming “one of the guys.” They are aggressive and competitive and they play like the men do, they train like the men do. There is strength in that. There is strength in bucking the traditional views of femininity. I applaud them for doing it, and I applaud them for living their lives the way they want to.
But I do not want to be “one of the guys” to improve in Judo. I am gentle, caring, soft. I am not aggressive by nature, or very competitive. And I don’t want to be.
Humans enjoy classifying things. It is normal, to want to find people like yourself. To find similarities. It is how we make connections. It is observed in babies, showing preference for stuffed animals the babies believe like the same snacks as them. We like things that are like us. And we figure out things are like us by classifying them. Stereotyping them. Fitting them into neat little boxes. It is human nature.
So now we have women in Judo. They originally fit into the box of women Judoka by being told they couldn’t have families. Keiko Fukuda did not have a family. She gave that option for herself up in exchange for a love of Judo. And then Rena “Rusty” Kanokogi came along. Kanokogi dressed as a man to compete when women weren’t allowed to, beat all the men, was stripped of her medal, and eventually was the first woman to train the men’s division at the Kodokan. In a time where women Judoka did not have families, she got married, had children, and still was the pioneer for Women’s Judo in the Olympics.
The new stereotype of women Judoka is that they have to be one of the guys. It makes sense to us as humans. They do a man’s sport, heck, they beat the men sometimes in the man’s sports. But they do it by being one of the guys.
And for us women, the ones that don’t want to be that stereotype? We don’t stay in Judo.
American Judo is strong. It is aggressive. It is angry, almost. It is, as most American things, quintessentially American.
And this story, while not exact between my Martial Arts sisters, is similar to other Martial Artists.
Which brings us here. What Gentle Tempest was created for.
I do not want to take the strength out of American Martial Arts. I do not want to take the aggression out of it. Those are good things.
But the world does not exist in one color. As people, we should not exist in one way. And as an art form, Martial Arts should not be only masculine or only feminine. As in all things, there should be balance. And currently, American Martial Arts holds heavy on the side of masculinity.
I do not want to completely change Martial Arts. But I also do not want to be shoehorned into a role of masculinity that is not who I am. Men and women are different. Even our brains are different; recent studies show that the structure and function of women’s and men’s brains differ. For instance, women tend to have verbal centers on both halves of the brain. In women, the right half of the brain tends to be bigger, and in men, it’s the left half of the brain. Women tend have more communication between brain halves, and therefore a larger corpus callosum than men. Men tend to have more communication within the individual sections of the brain.
None of these make either sex smarter. In fact, we’re not exactly sure how this impacts thought, processing, or even behavior, but we think it does.
What it does mean is that women have something special and different to bring to Martial Arts. Our perception and experiences offer something to the sport and art of Martial Arts, just as men’s do.
I do not want to completely change Martial Arts. I do not want to be “one of the guys.” I want my thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and style of Martial Arts to be acknowledged and respected for what it is without putting it into a box of masculinity, or comparing it to masculinity.
Femininity has something great to offer to Martial Arts. Kano knew that. His principle of Jita-Kyoei, mutual benefit and welfare, is typically considered feminine. Focusing on the good of the group, benefiting all, rather than winning at all costs, is a feminine quality. Femininity has always been a part of Judo. Of Judo, and of many other Martial Arts.
In Tai Chi, for example, Gerda Geddes and Sophia Delza were pioneers of Western Tai Chi. Both dancers, they learned Tai Chi while in China, and brought it back to their Western countries, England and America, respectively. They saw Tai Chi as a way of holistic healing. In fact, Geddes was working on a way to combine dance and psychotherapy when she discovered that Tai Chi essentially did that. They were able to train Tai Chi, which was a feat in itself when many Martial Arts schools did not allow Westerns to train at all, and brought it back to their home countries. Delza used public demonstrations to gain students, and eventually taught Tai Chi at Carnegie Hall and the United Nations in New York. However, as masculine Martial Arts rose in popularity, Delza and Geddes’ holistic, “soft” style fell by the wayside. Although they pioneered Tai Chi in the Western world, they are hardly mentioned anymore.
Women have always been a part of Martial Arts. Though women’s contributions have been downplayed, or altogether unacknowledged, they have always been there. Gentle Tempest was created to promote that conversation. Promote the conversation about women in Martial Arts, have the contributions of women acknowledged, and encourage women to join Martial Arts with their unique perspectives. And to stay.
Women belong in the dojo. We want to get them there, and help them stay.