I was going to write about something other than health/weapons today–
By the way. I find it highly amusing that I just wrote health and weapons back to back like they are equal things. Heh. Well, in my mind, they are, of course. Weapons equal health to me–or rather, the former leads to the latter.
A friend of mine asked how I was able to learn more than one form at a time. My very dissatisfying answer was that it’s a vibe thing.. Each wepaon feels different to me so that I do’nt mix up the forms. Not even after my medical crisis. My memory is shit in general, yes. I have to relearn movements from the forms I have most recently learned. Yes. But I don’t mix up forms, which I’m very grateful for.
I mentioned in previous posts that–oh, here’s yesterday’s post. Do with it what you will. I’ve mentioned in previouus posts that I have had trouble loving the saber and the cane, separately. With the saber, it’s because I expected to be the sword–and it wasn’t.Then, when I accepted it for what it was, I grew to be fond of it. Quite fond. But I never felt passionate about it until I started doing the Cane Form with the saber.
Coincidentally, I also didn’t care much for the cane when I first learned it. I think that’s partly because the pandemic interrupted my learning of it, which made it a very fractured experience. Buut, again, it was much different than the sword–which was the benchmark for weapons in general back in the day. I judged everything by the sword, and it was not a smart thing to do. Every weapon is different, and I needed to remind myself of that whenever I got frustrated with one of the weapons.
I love the sword. It is near and dear to my heart for many reasons. One, it opened me up to something that I never would have imagined would be so important to me. I can’t imagine my life without the weapons, and it all started with my teacher’s persistence in insisting that I just hold the sword.
I can still remember the scene as clear as day. I have recounted it several times because it was so important to me. It literally changed my life, and I would not be here without it. So I’m going to tell it again.
A few years after I started taking Taiji classes from my teacher, she mentioned weapons. She said it was time for me to learn the Sword Form. I protested. Vehemently. I was a pacifist at the time, and while I wanted to learn Taiji for self-defense, I could not imagine doing anything as violent* as weapons.
*I have also ranted at length about how women and AFAB people in this culture (and my heritage culture, Taiwanese, as well–even more so, actually) are brainwashed into thinking that the worst thing we could do is dare to be angry at someone. We were supposed to be selflessly (heh. I wrote selfishly at first. Freudian slip) giving to everyone with nary a murmur of protest.
In case you can’t tell, I’m still bitter and angry about this. I’m still unpacking the damage this has done to me, and this is one way I am healing that damage. I don’t talk about it much because most people misunderstand. Whenever I mentioned it on Twitter (back when I acutally used it and it wasn’t a trash heap of shit), I would get responses from men and women that were vastly different–but equally upsetting/annoying/irritating.
Let’s tackle men first. To a man, they would tell me how hot/sexy/cool it was that I studied weapons. They would mention a movie they really liked in which a hot woman did weapons (but not really), and it was gross. It’s like when policewomen have trouble finding men to date (if they swing that way) because men are either afraid of them or TOO attractive to the fact that they carry guns.
It’s hard to explain, but it feels gross to have my love for weapons be sexualized when it’s so much not about that. At all. And it doesn’t say anything about me other than I fucking love weapons.
Women, on the other hand, were disappointed in me that I was ‘so violent’. Huh. I just twigged that it it’s two sides of the same coin. Both men and women were focusing on the wrong thing–how doing the weapons made me look to them. Neither would take me at face value that I liked the weapon forms for the sake of the forms and not because I was trying to be sexy or cool or violent.
To be honest, it was yet another reason I hated the whole gender binary, and it’s one reason I eschewed the label ‘woman’.
How the hell did I get from health to this? I guess it’s a facet of mental health. I wouuld be much more depressed/angry/anxious without my weapon forms, so do not take those from me.
I think my disaappointment was that the one woman who was the most vociferous about her disappointment was someone I thought was really cool. We were simpatico in so many ways, and that disapproval came out of nowhere. The fact that she fundamentally misunderstood why I was learning weapons and what they meant to me was adding insult to injury.
In my lifetime, feminism has swung from eschewing all things feminine to embracing all things feminine, and it feels like you can’t inhabit the space between.. This interaction felt the same in a way. Feminine arts such as knitting, crocheting, and cooking went from being something to be vaguely ashamed of to being something to be celebrated. Which is great! I’m all for it. But not at the expense of me being castigated for doing something I love.
It’s wild to me that something has to be down if something else is up. if I don’t care for feminine things, it doesn’t mean that I disparage them. But it doesn’t mean I want to indulge in them, either. And that should be ok.
I went way off the rails today. Will try to bring it back tomorrow.