Martial Arts From the female perspective

Within sports, conversations around sexism are usually limited to pay, physical ability and overall resources and popularity. However, with close-contact sports such as martial arts, sexism becomes much more complex and nuanced. The dynamics between trainees and the overall ultra-masculine culture within such sports create toxic and unwelcoming environments, particularly for women. 

Macho culture surrounding sports viewers and players themselves has always existed and been criticized in the past for being unhealthy. But for martial arts specifically, strength, violence and fighting have been ingrained into the sports themselves, which only generates more toxic masculinity.

When starting judo at age five, I was excited to be in a space where I felt empowered and respected by my peers – both girls and boys. Regardless of gender, they judged me purely for my skills and attitude. As the sport became more competitive, weight and gender did naturally come into play. Despite this, judo continued to be an environment where I was virtually shielded from the gender norms so embedded into daily life otherwise. It was only once I became a teenager that the gap between the majority-male judokas I trained with and I, one of the few women and only teenage girl at my dojo, became apparent. It wasn’t so much the “classic sexism” where people directly undermined my abilities or made sexist comments, rather it was a shift in energy and the way I was perceived.

Prior to this, I was so young that I felt my fellow trainees were almost unaware of my gender, and I was content as they treated me equally to my brother and his friends. It made me feel powerful. Now, I felt how uncomfortable the older men became when faced with me. I was avoided during open sparring, and on the occasion that a man approached me, he was either über-aggressive so as to prove something or gave up completely, as if I was not even worth the effort. 

Going against the extremely combative type would usually get me injured, and the indifferent type would provide futile training. I would leave practice feeling dispirited and dread the next practice knowing I would overcompensate in my performance to feel any acknowledgement. But why did I suddenly seek so much attention from men who were less skilled than me and who didn’t even respect me?

While my account might be due to the lack of teenagers at my dojo, the overall dismissal of my skills directly reflects the way macho culture has shaped martial arts and the dojo environment. It is difficult to ignore gender in a sport in which weight, muscle and physical ability affect performance greatly. Most gender divides are thus only based on objective evaluations used to make fair competition. Despite this, this divide carries into the dojo atmosphere and proves itself to be a problematic matter, despite its more subtle nuances. Sharing stories and opening up uncomfortable conversations beyond obvious sexism will certainly make women feel heard in their struggles, and ultimately make martial arts more welcoming.