Iris Young's famous phenomenological essay on female bodily movement always springs to mind whenever I am expected to wrestle someone into submission or inflict injury on them during the course of my martial arts practice, karate. This is perhaps becau se I find she is both right and wrong when I come to test her thesis against my own experience. In her paper, Young discusses a number of bodily activities that she claims are performed more easily, freely and openly by men than by women. Her star example is the throwing of a ball. Actually, all of her examples tend to focus on male-dominated activities and that may be why she springs so readily to mind while I'm training.
Young argues an existentialist line that sees women as both subject and object, which means that they experience themselves as conscious human beings at the same time that they are aware of themselves as objects of the male gaze. Because of this awaren ess, women tend to falter at tasks that require unself-conscious and outgoing physical movement. Their attempts at transcendent action are always foiled by their entrapment in immanence. Certainly, then, I am required to throw myself freely and wantonly o n the body of a man I do not know (or even like) in order to succeed in throwing him to the ground by the shoulders, probably with my entire body draped over his, I admit to a certain entrapment in immanence. I cannot forget my body. Or his. This is true of many of the activities I undertake during training, whenever I have to work with a partner.
Of course, when Iris Young points to this phenomenon, she is aware that it is a result of conditioning and that, as such, this conditioning can be changed. It's obvious that women can get very used to shouting, punching and performing punishing snap-ki cks to the groin. However, it's also true that karate was designed with a male body in mind and, for that reason, women do well to take what's useful from its methods and look elsewhere at the same time. The obsession with protecting the groin is one indi cator of who the intended 'karateka' might be, along with the intense focus on upper body strength, developed through an imaginitive array of different press-ups (on the knuckles, on the fingertips, on the outer edge of the hand, one arm at a time and so on). Of course, many of the techniques karate teaches me will work better the stronger my upper body becomes but, again, the presence of the male body is clear in karate's 'design philosophy'.
In spite of this bias, karate is widely practiced by women in Japan and the number of women in my own dojo, while not equal to the number of men, is encouraging. I know I find the presence of women blackbelts, some of them tiny, quite inspiring when I go to train. No doubt these women utilise quite different tactics to those of the men with whom they spar, but it's also true to say that they excel in ways one might mistake as areas of male pre-eminence. For example, one of the female blackbelts is ackn owledged as having the hardest roundhouse kick in the dojo and she's certainly not the biggest or heaviest person training there.
I wouldn't be surprised if you're wondering what the appeal of this sort of apparently violent pastime has for women (or men). Sometimes, when an instructor details the function of a particular move in a kata: the gouging of the eyes, the chop to the t hroat, the kick to the knee joint, karate's place as a violent and potentially lethal activity seems undeniable. But at the same time, I think karate and other martial arts are learnt and practiced by people who, more often than not, are interested more i n fitness, companionship and the (limited) access to another culture these arts afford. For myself, I know I find karate graceful, challenging and mentally stimulating, as well as a way to learn self-defence. Admittedly, I enjoy the vaguely transgressive f eel of punching and kicking and shouting that probably many other women feel when they begin training; because it's true that it's common for boys to play war games, to shadow-box and wrestle each other, while it's rare for girls.
Actually, because of this transgressive element, I think it would be a mistake to lump men and women together in terms of judging their participation in martial arts. For men, training to fight and becoming proficient at fighting draws them closer to t he masculine ideal while, for women, it pushes them further away from ideal femininity.
At the same time, women who train in martial arts contribute to changing notions of femininity, and to a sense of confusion between appropriate male and female behaviour. That's not to say that they simply adopt masculine martial arts behaviour in an i mitative way. I suppose that's what I mean when I use the (usually perjorative) term 'throwing like a girl'. Unlike Iris Young's example of the ball, where the feminine attempt is merely the poor imitation of the masculine, I think of women in martial art s as able to develop ways of training, sparring and protecting themselves specific to their physiques and lives that suit them better than masculine methods. I think martial arts can remind women that their bodies are more important and more capable than the masculine objectifying gaze tries to render them, because I think Iris Young was right when she said women have trouble forgetting the way their bodies look and remembering just to use them. In martial arts, it can be good for a woman to get bigger !
I wouldn't like to imply that martial arts is somehow free of sexism or is an unproblematically positive domain for women. Of course not. Some women may have trouble with the fundamentally combative nature of martial arts and see it as part of a mascul ine world view. Some women may believe women are naturally unaggressive. Some women may resent having to take up 'the master's tools', Audre Lorde's famous phrase. There's plenty there to dispute.
I know I enjoy training and I feel empowered by the discoveries I make about my physical potential. I know that it's possible to develop ways of self-defence better suited to the female body either by reading some martial arts orthodoxy against the rai n, choosing your art carefully or attending women-only martial arts courses. A supportive environment makes the world of difference. In these ways, it's possible to develop skills for self-defence and become more physically confident in other ways. It can be possible to be proud of 'throwing like a girl'!
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Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990
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