Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Gender Issues

Even more about gender and martial arts

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Back again to talk more about gender and martial arts. I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I had to slow down the rate at which I was teaching myself because I was messing some things up. For example, I recently re-taught myself the Fan Form because I realized I had forgotten whole chunks of it. Now, I have found out there are a few places that I’m fudging things. In other words, I need to go watch the videos again.

There are two problems when it comes to me learning martial arts forms. One, my memory is shit since my medical crisis.so I forget that which I have already learn. Not all of it, obviously, but enough to make it disconcerting. Weirdly, though, I am not being hard on myself about it. In the old days, I would call myself names and silently (or not so silently) scold myself for being stupid. This is the pressure of being raised in a hypercritical family.

I feel free, light, and airy when I’m doing my weapon forms. Sometimes, though, I feel fierce, strong, and ready to beat the shit out of someone. Not in real life, but in my mind. I don’t want to get into a fight for real, but I want to be in fighting form.

Working on my weapon forms helps with my depression and anxiety. Both have spiked lately, in a large part because of the landscape of America right now. When I can focus my anixiety and anger on a specific target, even if it’s imaginary, it really helps.

I really groove with combining the karambit and the fan. They could not be more different as weapons.. The karambit is a fast, small dagger that is meant to be used in quick movements. It’s fast, and indeed, furious. It’s dangerous. It’s meant to kill quickly. Maximum damage in a minimal amount of time.

The fan, on the other hand, is languid, slow-moving, and stealthy. You’re not going to see it coming in part beacuse you’re not going to think to worry about a fan. That’s just something you use to cool yourself down when it’s too hot, isn’t it? It’s a weapon that will lower someone’s guard and then I can poke them in the throat with it while their attention is on the karambit.

It really is the yin and the yang of weapons. I picked them to go together because they were roughly the same size (very roughly), but that’s it. They just work well together. I can’t tell you why other than what I’ve already said and good vibes.


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Gender, martial arts, and me (and society)

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Am I really going to write more about gender and martial arts? Why, yes, yes I am. Why? Because I can. And because I have more to say about it. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about finding a therapist. Mostly, I focused on how diufficult it is for me to find a therapist, even when I whittle down my epectations. However, as I was writing about it yesterday, I did another quick (five minutes) Google and found someone who fit very well. Except.

E is not a psychologist. I touched on why this is an issue for me yesterday, but I wanted to expand on it more in this post.

Look. I’m going to sound snobby, but so be it. I have run rings around my therapists in the past except for the last one. She was a Jungian psychologist whereas the others were social workers. And it’s easy to see the clear difference in the training. At least it is for me. I was a psych major in college, and I’m very adept at reading people. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.

It can’t hurt to at least talk to E, though. E has a free consultation and does both online and in-person sessions. I would do the former, which is not ideal, but the best I can do at the moment. And it’s better than nothing.

I have been expanding my weapon time because there is so much I want to learn. I got my new fan–the frame is metallic rather than plastic or bamboo. I have to say, I’m disappointed in it because it does not flick open easily. Maybe it’s because of the cold and it’ll be better once it warms up, but I would not count on it.

In addition, it does not close without a hitch, either. So my shitty seven dollar cheapo fan is actually better for the Fan Form than my more expensive metal one. I guess it makes sense given the intricacy of the fan, but I can’t help being a bit disappointed.

I have to pace myself. I was practicing the Swimming Dragon Form (Bagua), and I reached a point where I totally forgot what was next. I had been doing the first few movements on the left side, and I think that was messing with my brain. I watched my teacher doing the form, and it came back to me. Plus, I had to adjust a few movements, too.

I also tried using two fans to do the Double Saber form. That was interesting, but it did not work that well. The vibes were off, and I didn’t gel with the feel of it. It was fun to do, though.


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Even more about gender and martial arts

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I’m still on that gender/martial arts tip. And on that mental health tip. Here is my post from yesterday about how I am smarter than most therapists. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. No, smarts aren’t everything, but they are something. And for me, I cannot respect someone I can manipulate. One of the best things about my last therapist was that she would call me out on my shit. She was a psychologist, which I vibe much better with than the social worker mindset.

Here’s my issue with finding a therapist. I need someone who understands being a person of East Asian descent living in Midwest America. Then, toss in grief and family dysfunction, and we are narrowing the field rapidly. If I dare say queer, well, we might as well shut this shit down now. I know that I can’t have everything I want in a therapist, but it’s really hard to pare it down to the essentials.

I am a firm believer in therapy. I think it can be so helpful, and I got a lot from my last thearpist. But I had to go through half-a-dozen mediocre therapists before that. They ranged from bad to blah. One was really bad, but it wasn’t completely her fault. Another was nice, but inept. Another I can’t remember at all. My last therapist was the best, but she had her blind spots as well. She was focused on mother issues, which meant at times she was  biased for mothers in a way that was not helpful to me.

But the one thing I appreciated the most about her was the she called me on my shit. As I said, I had the tendency to talk circles around my therapists, but she would not let me do that. She would listen to me talk for several minutes. Then, she would cut me of and say something pithy. Early in our relationship, after one of my long ramblings, she said, “Minna, thinking is what got you into your troubles; it’s not going to get you out of it.” I protested, but she was right. Or rather, she was not wrong. I had the tendency to talk myself in circles without actually getting anywhere. I could get deep in the weeds without even touching on the actual isue. Much like my writing, come to think of it.

My point is, while I believe in therapy, I have a hard time doing it myself. The last time I tried, I looked at a popular website that is pushed by content creators. I was horrified by how it was run, though, and when I did more research into it, I realized that it was not good. Not just for potential clients, but also for the therapists who were working for it.


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More about gender, martial arts, and life in general

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My brother stopped by today to drop off my Premium Elite 2 Xbox Controller or whatever it’s called. I’m being flippant, but it’s by far the best controller I’ve ever had. I was wavering because it’s not cheap, but Ian swayed me because he has it and loves it. Once I got my hands on it, I realized that it was truly several cuts above the rest. Now that I have it back, I’m so happy. I tried it out, and it just felt so right in my hands. My one gripe is the reason my brother had it for a month–the left bumper stopped working all the time. It worked maybe a third of the time, which was even more infuriating than if it didn’t happen at all.

I looked it up, and it was a known problem for this expensive controller. Apparently, they cheaped out on the bumper buttons, which means that people have issues with them. This is, frankly, unacceptable for the amount of money we’re paying for them. Well, I say it’s unacceptable, but clearly it’s not. Would I buy it again? Sadly, yes. Because it’s just that much better than any other controller (expect for that one issue). I will say that it’s somewhat on me because I’ve dropped it several times. Still. I’ve dropped all my controllers several times, and this is the first time I’ve broken a bumper.

The other thing my brother wanted to do was to natter on about his newest obsession–espresso-making. He was not a drinker of coffee for all of his life. Then, his GF inherited an espresso machine, and now my brother is hooked. True to his nature, he bought an expensive machine and an app that monitors it from his phone. Plus other accessories that added up to a prettty penny.

I joked that of course he went hard on it once he got interested because that was how he do. I was also laughing beacuse that’s how I do as well. For me, it’s the weapons. I am so obsessed by them. Right now, I am learning the Cane Form with my saber after watching my teacher’s teacher do it. I have learned three of the four rows, and as I’ve said before, doing the Cane Form with the saber made both forms really click for me.

Here’s yesterday’s post about gender, martial arts, and more.

Listening to my teacher’s teacher talk about the cane and the saber made something go off in my brain. Before, I was struggling with both. Not the forms per se, but with how I felt about them. This is where the arts part comes in for me. The weapons need precision, yes, and it’s definitely martial, but the arts part is all about the feel for me. I’ve talked about how I relate to each weapon–and about how I’m vibing with them.

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Health, gender, and kung-fu fighting

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I have still more to say about gender and martial arts. That should not surprise anyone because once I get stuck on something, I go on and on and on about it. Yesterday, I talked about gender and what I think of it (not much). I’m so tired of talking about it, but it’s a big deal right now given the state of my country at the moment.

I have been voting for thirty years. I have voted Democratic almost every time*. I have not been happy about it most of the time because it’s just the least worst of two evils. The only times I’ve felt joyful about voting was for Barack Obama and Kamala Harris. Take from that what you will. I dutifully voted for whoever had the D by his (and yes, it was overwhelmingly male which says a lot about the Democratic Party, but taht is not what this post is about) name, but I never felt good about it. Or rather, rarely.

I know that I don’t belong to this time or place, but I also don’t think I would have fit in any time or place. And I don’t know how much fight I have in me to try to change the world for the better. I realize that I’m slipping back to where I used to be, more and more each day.

I know it’s because of inertia and because we tend to go back to homeostasis. In other words, we don’t move in a positive direction without being deliberate about it. Some people like my brother do it almost effortlessly. I envy that about him, by the way. If he thinks something sounds fun, he just does it.

When he was here a few days ago, he was telling me about his adventures in Taiwan and Thailand with his GF. Each day, they had a plan, but then they changed it on a whim if something else looked better. I remembered that from when we went to Taiwan together, and it was a nightmare for me.

I digress.

I tend to stick to my routines, and they work until they don’t. One big example is my sleep. I have always had shitty sleep, starting from when I was a kid. When I was six or seven, my mother would put me to bed at seven or eight, and I would put a t-shirt in the crack under the door so I could read until midnight. I have always liked the night better than the day.

When I went to college, I could not go to bed until 3:30 a.m, even though I had a class that was a quarter to eight in the morning. I would get up at 7:30 a.m. and race to class. I was so sleep-deprived that I could not find my portable alarm clock one morning. I looked for it for five minutes, and it was nowhere to be found.


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Talking more about gender and health

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In the last several posts, I have been musing about health. In general, yes, but also more specific aspects of it. I want to do better with my health, and I have been thinking of ways to do so without going overboard. In the last post, I was talking about how I would be OK with being called a woman if there wasn’t so much damn sexism that came with it. It’s everywhere, and while I don’t think I can escape it simply by quitting out of the gender assigned to me, I don’t want to engage with it, either.

I’m not going to get into anyone’s face about it because it’s not a hill I want to die on, but it’s just tiring to have to think about it at all. In an Ask A Manager thread I was reading, someone mentioned that it took longer for women to get ready because they had to do their makeup and dressing was more elaborate/difficult for men than women. I am not disputing that in general, but I didn’t relate to it, either. I haven’t worn makeup on a regular basis since I was in my twenties, and even then it was even more because I thought  I was supposed to than anything else.

I didn’t even try makeup until I was in my late teens. I hated it because I was allergic to everything and makeup was made of really bad shit at the time. This was nearly forty years ago. I would get rashes from it, and it would itch and make me want to take it off. when I gave it up, it was such a relief. I will fully admit that I was terrible at putting it on, too. Whatever girl gene (and yes that’s fully ironic) there was for putting on makeup, I did not get it at all. I looked like someone had punched me in the face whenever I tried to wear makeup, which is not a good look. Or it could just be me being self-conscious because it felt so fake.

I will say that now, knowing that my motor skills are not great, it makes a lot of sense that I had a hard time putting on makeup. You need a steady hand for that, which I did not have. I was always in fear of poking myself in the eye when putting on mascara, and I never could do it evenly.

I have read/heard so many women talk about why they feel a need to wear it, and I cannot relate to any of them. I can get them on a cognitive level, but not on a visceral one. Besides the sensation issue, I just don’t get why it would be a positive to wear makeup. Again, I’m not talking about in a social sense because I get why someone would do it for that reason, but on a personal level.

This is one of the reasosn I eschewed the ‘woman’ label. Along with wearing a bra. Which, much to my surprise, some women have very strong feelings about it being WRONG for a woman to go out in public without one. This was on a work blog, and the question was about can an AFAB person be considered professional at work if they didn’t wear a bra. They made sure to clarify that they were covering their nipples so the nipples were not poking through their shirt and they were double-covering (with blazers and such). They had taken the bra off for the pandemic (if I remember correctly) and did not want to put it back on again.

Naively, I thought that there would be a robust discussion, but that people would be ‘live and let live’ about it. These were progressive (mostly) women who declared themselves to be feminists. Yes, they may wear bras themselves, but they would probably support someone who didn’t want to wear one. Right?


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Gender identity, weapons, and femininity

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In talking about my health, I went way off the rails as is my wont. But, it’s related to my health in a way. Yesterday’s post was about gender identity and how I have been shunned by womanhood all my life. Here’s the reason I call myself agender for now. In an ideal world that did not care what a person did in regards to their gender, I would be fine with being labeled a woman. My issues with my body are solely societally-based and not anything to do with my body itself. I love my boobs and my ass (now that I have one!), and I’m fine with my pussy. I like having curves, and the mixture of hard and soft that is my body. I have no issues with the fact that I am not feminine at all (except for my long hair and the shape of my body, the latter which I have no control over). I have mostly masculine interests (weapons, video games, and I used to be very into sports), which bothers me not a whit. I don’t wear makeup or a bra, and I strride rather than walk.

I am more comfortable–let me put it this way. I have been mistaken on the phone for a man–well, all the time. I’m called sir, and I’m fine with that. It’s usually me calling customer service so it did not matter in the least. I have an exceptionally low voice–double alto–and I like it that way.

This is the thing. I like myself for the most part. At least the parts of me that are considered problematic for other people. I am perfectly fine with not wearing a bra, with not wearing makeup, and with being ‘masculine’. If I didn’t find the word androgynous to be stifling (basically, it’s like unisex–it means like a man. Why can’t androgynous include parts of the feminine? Fortunately, it seems to begoing more in that direction these days), I would embrace it.

Side note: This is one of my problems with the English language and the way I think. There really is juust no way for me to explain myself in the common vernacular without sounding precious/pretentious. There’s a group in America (don’t know if they’re still around) called ‘No Labels’. They tried to claim that they wanted to move away from the Republican/Democrat binary, but it was just billionaires who wanted to head an oligarchy.

I really don’t like labels, though, because none of them fit for me. Asian American? Sure, in the technical sense. My heritage is Taiwanese, and I was born in America. But I’m more American who looks Asian. Religion-wise, I’m areligious in that I just don’t give a shit. Sexuality? I would like to just say I’m queer, but that’s been coopted to mean gay. Same with BIPOC meaning black. I always preferred minority, anyway.


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Genderblender, not gender bender

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Talking more about gender. And about dating. Because that’s where I ended up in the last post. And why I am done with cishet white dudes.

I had an argument decades ago with a white dude about reading material. This was when I first realized that I was Taiwanese American and wanted to read literature by Asian American women. This was in college so over thirty years ago. I spent a year solely reading literature by non-white non-men people, so not even just Asian American woman. The white dude I was talking to sniffed and said that I was just practicing reverse discrimination, which really set me off. First of all, that’s not a thing. It just isn’t. Secondly, discrimination in the purest sense of the word is not positive or negative–it just is. And we all discriminate on the regular. When someone chooses to eat burgers for dinner, for example, that’s discrimination (in that they aren’t eating anything else).

We all make choices. No one notices when the choices align with the norms. It’s only when the choices are outliers do they raise an eyebrow. What I said to that obnoxious white dude was that I would bet any amount of money he wanted to bet that even with my then-current year of reading non-white dudes, I had read way more dead white dudes than he had people of color. I was 100% sure of that. Thatt shut him up, much to my smug pleasure.

It’s gotten better. In the year of our whatever, 2024, people are aware that there are more than white dudes out there. And yet. Still. Look for a list of ‘best of’ any kind of pop culture, and still, the preponderance of the people on the list are white men. Music, especially. And video games? There is literally a website that tracks how woke a game is, and something as minor as having a Pride flag in the game gets it labeled woke.

When I heard of this, I thought it was some kind of joke. It was not. When I looked at the list, I just had to shake my head and  feel both pity and disgust for the people who are so threatened by these kinds of things. I mean, seriously. A Pride flag?? Also, these are the same people who told us to make our own games if we were such special snowflakes that we could not handle mainstream games. And when we did that? Or developers realized that they could get good money out of us? (Or, less cynically, developers share those progressive viewpoints and want to include these things in their games! No way. That can’t be true, can it??)

You can bet that most of the people whining about diversity in games are white straight dudes. Again, I will bet any amount of money on this. All the monies.

I have heard it all. It’s pandering. It’s giving into the minority. They don’t want pronouns in their game. They don’t want to play as a black woman or anything other than a white straight man. Hell, they don’t want it to exist in their games (probably their real lives, too). Awwww can the poor widdle baby not handle the mere existence of a trans person in their game? Or having to actively choose ‘he/him’ as their pronouns when he starts the game?

Who’s the fucking snowflake now?


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Let’s talk about gender…again

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Let’s talk about gender, shall we? We shall because it’s my blog and I can do what I want. Also because gender is important–and yet, I wish it weren’t. Let me hastily add that I don’t want to take gender away from anyone for whom it’s important. My BFF, K, and I have discussed whether or not ‘they’ will take over gender proclamations in our lifetime (instead of he and/or she). This was before the election, by the way. All bets are off now.

We were both hopeful that we were moving towrds a society in which gender was not as emphasized as it is now. Or rather,, that the toxic, sexist ideas of gender would subside.

I can’t help but laugh bitterly at that idea now after said election. Never in my lifetime has equality seemed more like a dream. I have read about queers hastily marrying before the exchange of power because they fear that marriage equality would be repealed.

This should not even be on the menu. Civil rights should never be able to be voted away/legislated. And yet, here we are. Marriage equality became law in 2015. Almost a decade later, we are fearing that it will be whisked away again. Before it became the law of the land, I was talking about it with K. I did not think it would happen in our lifetime (I was the doubting Thom in our friendship) while she was convinced it would. I begrudgingly said maybe, but only when we were in our seventies or eighties. It was less than five years later when it became a reality. I was stunned, in a good way. It honestly happened faster than I could comprehend, but I willingly accepted it as a positive thing.

I did not care about marriage equality persosnally because I don’t believe in marriage (for me), but I cared about it from a social justice perspective because I firmly believe in equality. If straight people get to be miserably yoked together, then so should queers! I kid, but not exactly.

I honestly do not understand why straights are so against marriage equality when it has nothing to do with them. But wait. This post was not going to be about that–but it’s related. Those who have rigid ideas about gender are more likely to be anti-queer, too.

See how I tied it back to the point of this post?

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More about labels because I can, part two

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I’m still on the label trip because that’s the way my hyperfocus works, and by the way, can I say that for all the bashing hyperfocus gets, it can be really useful, too. I have over 10,000 words on my NaNoWriMo project, and we’re barely into day four. I give all credit to hyperfocus. When I first started learning Taiji weapons, I fell in love with the sword. Once my Taiji teacher placed it in my hand, I knew it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I pushed her to teach me the Sword Form as quickly as possible as I was obsessed with it. Once again, hyperfocus did me a solid.

What? I’m not supposed to be appreciative of hyperfocus? I’m supposed to say it’s bad and makes me lose time when I should be doing something else? That’s not wrong, of course. There are times when I’ve put hours into something I shouldn’t have. Such as FromSoft games. I have made a rule that I can’t start playing one after midnight because there is no way in hell that I will only play for an hour.

On the other hand, it’s a good thing when I use the pressure of something exterior to me to get shit done, such as NaNoWriMo. I have not been able to write (except here) for several months. Many months. So many months. NaNoWriMo was coming up, and a few weeks ago, I thought, “What if I use it to jumpstart my flagging writing?” I decided that was a good thing and started planning what I wanted to do in NaNoWriMo. In the past several years, I had been doing NaNoRebel because that was more my style and I was bored with NaNoWriMo.

Interjection: In yesterday’s post, I wrote about why I don’t date and what labels I could affix to that. It made sense when I wrote it. That’s all I can say in my defense. Back to my musings.

This year, I decided to go back to my roots precisely because I had not written in months. As the old saying goes, writing at all is better than not writing. It was time to go for the basic ‘write 50,000 words in a month’ and call it a day. I had all these ideas of what I wanted to write about with my NaNoWriMo project, but I wasn’t sure how to do it gracefully.

I had planned on doing two simultaneous projects, but now I’ve smashed it into one. A quick description of it would be mystical/surreal, murder mystery, autofiction (memoir because I like alliteration). To put it in friendly vernacular, I threw everything including the kitchen sink. Why? Because I wanted to. Also because I can. Also because why not? Wthi a healthy dose of ‘you can’t tell me what not to do’.


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