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My Life In Kendo: Gender and Masculinity Across Cultures

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The Positive Experiences of Women in Combat Sports

Women who participate in contact sports often experience great pleasure and affirmation from them. For example, Alsarve and Tjønndal point out that “women exercising mixed martial arts contain a potential to act as feminist role models through their counter-hegemonic renegotiation of norms and views on femininity and, more specifically, the perception of femininity as something fragile and passive”. In Kerala, South India, it was a woman, 76-year old Meenakshi who preserved Kalaripayattu, the traditional martial art of that state.

With regards to kendo, Helen, a participant in Dumić’s study, described kendo as effecting her body like “a drug”:

I got addicted to it [kendo] and now I cannot do without it. No matter how long of a break I took, I was still there. If I made too long of a break, I would have dreams, I would dream of going to competitions, to a training session where I had no hakama [training clothes] and so on.

Merz mentions that when she went to a tournament where “women’s physical power was acknowledged and celebrated, they were not expecting the violence of boxing nor did they realize how strong they were or how challenging it was. The whole charade of an innate feminine fragility was gone and yet femininity itself had survived”. For example, Halbert interviewed female boxers:

[A friend] had received an invitation in the mail to go see a women’s boxing match … and so we went to it. And it was the first boxing match. I’ve ever been to, and I had never heard of women’s boxing, so I was really intrigued. … You know, I thought to myself, “Oh my god. I’ve got to learn it. I’ve got to do it! I want this to be me!”

Nash also described when she attended amateur boxing training in Tasmania. She said:

I was faster and stronger than many of the men. I felt powerful and I loved it. Julian asked me to demonstrate good technique for others. I felt like my gender transgressions illuminated the artificiality of constructions of gender, undermining the sexist undertones of the sport. It felt good to be the woman showing men how to box.

Also, Dumić interviewed female kendoka Helen who experienced harsh and tough kendo training. Afterwards, she felt that full of accomplishment when she survived:

That moment when practice ended and when I took my gear off, that was kinda the most remarkable to me in that period, it was hard, very, I mean physically hard. That was cool to me. I managed to endure the entire practice despite being exhausted to death, red, white, green [laugh]. After that, it was kinda cool.

According to Merz , “Eventually you understand that the physical impact of being hit is not so disturbing when there is no emotion connected to it when it’s no longer personal. That is when you can start to think like a fighter.” Another example from Halbert backs this up, with a female boxer stating:

I love it! I love the training. Boxing gives you an inner strength like nothing else, and no one can take that away from you. I’m addicted. Also, an adrenaline high – a lot of excitement.

Merz also describes that it could be “glorious” to feel the jaw is creaking, to see the eye is bruised, and the nose is broken. Boxing provides women with the chance to enjoy being aggressive, tough, dangerous, and brave. There are also important developments in martial arts regarding the inclusion of transgender participants. However this is beyond the scope of my thesis. relay.urbanzap.space