I am AFAB and a part of two different cultures that put a heavy emphasis on performing femininity. That would be American and Taiwanese. It’s insidious in both cultures, though in differing ways.
Taiwanese culture, at least through my parents, is regressive, stifling, and has rigid gender expectations. Every time I’ve been there, I have been criticized for being too fat, too American, and (implied), not feminine enough. My parents have very toxic views on gender, and their consistent negativity about how I perform femininity has shaped me in significant ways.
It’s one of the reasons I had difficulties when I first started studying Taiji. I wanted to be able to defend myself because I was a paper tiger. I had many bad experiences up to that point (I was thirty-seven or so), and I had developed a hard shell and an even harder stare that kept most people at bay. I also wore sunglasses and black most of the time, and I did not smile when I was out and about. In addition, I strode as I walked, and I deliberately cultivated a ‘don’t fuck with me’ attitude.
Here’s the thing, though. I had nothing to back it up. 90% of people took one look at me and decided not to mess with me. The remaining 10% (closer to 5%, really) were the problem.
I wanted to be able to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. If someone came at me, I wanted to be able to take care of myself.
Also, I did not want to spend the rest ofmy life in fear. I thought that learning a martial art would help me with that. My first experieence in my twenties was a disaster because the teacher was a disaster in many ways. I took some time to lick my wounds and then started looking for another teacher. I was skittish becuase of my first experience, but I was determined to try again. I was a decade older and
First off, I wanted a woman. This was fifteen years ago when gender was mostly binary. These days, quite frankly, I would have looked for anyone other than a man. It was mostly because of my terrible first experience, but it was also because, to be brutally honest, I was sick of men lecturing me in general (even when it was legit).
So, yes. I was looknig for a woman. I also wanted a studio that wasn’t shilling their own merch. No belts, no gis, no having to pay to earn levels. No microtransactions in my martial art, thank you very much!
I looked at the websites of dozens of studios. Almost all of them were solely or mostly men. My teacher was one of the only if not the only womna of the lot. There was no uniform, whicgh was another plus. She had just started teaching on her own, and I was her first official student.
Now, fifteen or so years later, we have added Bagua to the mix. She showed me walking the circle about three years into my Taiji study. Bagua is about circles (inner and outer), and it’s another internal martial art. When I could not meditate due to flashbacks, she suggested I walk the circle with DeerHorn Knives.
At this point, I considered myself a pacifist. I virtuously said that I would let someone kill me rather than fight back. The minute my teacher gave me her practice DeerHorn Knives, however, I fell in love with them. Much like I did with the sword the first time she made me hold one.
I could feel a change come over me when I walked the circle with the DeerHorn Knives. The gist of walking the circle is that you had to focus on the center of the circle as you walk. You should imagine that it’s an opponent/enemy. I had difficulty with this at first because as I said, I had a hard time imagining that I could ever attack someone.
I was ambivalent on this. I wanted to be able to defend myself, but I couldn’t get over the ‘good girl’ training. My teacher told me that her teacher realized that men needed to be told to CTFO and women needed to be told that it was ok to let loose. Middle-class women are brought up to be pleasing, diffident, well-behaved, and ‘nice’. I got double that because of my parents’ culture (Taiwanese).
My father was an unrepentant narcissist. He didn’t think much of anyone, but especially not women. Women were only good for housework, birthing babies, and fucking. He’s had affairs all throughout the marriage, and he wasn’t particularly sneaky about it. We all knew.
Even my brother commented on how my father dismissed everything I said while at least gave my brother a courtesy listen. My brother is most likely autistic and not good at subtext, but my father never bothered to hide his disdian for women in general and me in particular.
We used to play ping-pong when my brother and I were kids because we’re Asian. It’s pratically mandatory. My father was the best of us and then my mother, then me, then my brother. My father was very competitive as was I. Neither my mother nor my brother cared about winning. I used to play against my father periodically, and he did everything he could to thoroughly trounce me. It didn’t matter that I was just a kid–he was ruthless in his dispatching of me. It was demoralizing, honestly, bceause he didn’t just beat me, he made sure to make me look bad doing it. He was great at spinning the ball, and he liked to hit it so it would spin away from me or drop juuuuuuust over the net and I could not reach it.
I got better as I got older, obviously, and our games got closer and closer. Then, one memorable day when I was in my twenties, I finally beat him. he put down his paddle and refused to play with me ever again. I believe he would have done the same if my brother beat him, but it probably bothered him twice as much that a mere girl beat him.
You see, one of the thing s he said to me when I was an awkward, fat, severely depressed teenager who had never been kissed was advice on how to get a boyfriend. I did not ask him for advice, but he had no qualms about giving it to me, anyway.
His pearls of wisdom were that in order to get a boyfriend, I should raise my voice an octave or two (I have a very deep voice), ask a boy to teach me something (like how to change a tire), and let him beat me in a sport.
I looked at my father for several seconds and said, “If that’s what it takes to get a boyfriend, then I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life.”
I still believe that, but it was a low blow for a severely depressed girl who was already passively suicidal.
I’m done for now. More tomorrow.