My Martial Arts (Mis)adventures

照ノ富士の上手投げ

So because parkour is such a ridiculously male dominated sport, the "correct technique" for a lot of these movements that you're taught when you become an instructor plays to a male body's strengths: upper body strength, higher center of gravity, etc.

She demolishes this course by moving in ways that make sense for her body. She doesn't muscle her way up to her over a wall, she just throws a leg up over the wall. She doesn't use upper body strength to do the salmon ladder, she uses her hips!!! And it's fucking incredible.

So many girls and young women walk away from parkour because every movement caters to the strengths of men, because doing what makes sense for their bodies is seen as "bad technique" to be trained away.

It’s sung to the tune of The Ants Go Marching One By One song!!!

Oh, my god. I’m already crying with asexuality included.

Now you’re telling me other groups feel the same way?

There’s legit tears down my face.

The drag queen is holding a BLM sign.

There’s a Hijabi on the all races float (and if you look closely at the flag, I think the owl is indigenous).

One of the babas is disabled.

They could have just stopped at including all the flags.

But no. They said “I don’t care if they’re animals. I’m going to make it very clear we’re including all races and disabled people.”

And it’s such small details, but they’re there.

And I consider myself pretty versed in queer identities, but even I don’t know what some of these flags are.

Which really shows that you’ve never had the opportunity to feel validated like this, and that makes me love it even more.

Pride, Progress Pride, BLM Progress Pride, Lesbian, Gay Man

Trans, Nonbinary — Dolphin wheelchair user, Top surgery beaver

Gender Queer, Genderfluid, Intersex Demigender, Demiboy, Demigirl, Bisexual, Pansexual, Asexual, Demisexual, Gray Asexual, Aromantic — Blind bird

Bigender, Genderflux, Omnisexual, Neutrois, Maverique, Pangender, Drag — llama(?) with prosthetic leg

and in a KIDS show, like that’s insane, people will finally grow up knowing it’s ok to exist

“You? Wanna battle me?“ 

Real-life Hung Gar practitioners, Sharif Bey and Bobby Samuels, pay homage to the Shaw Brothers style of fighting in this fight scene by Art School Dropouts.

1. It will make him angry.

I should hope so. I’m not sending him a friend request. If I kick him hard enough, there’s a good chance I’ll render him unable to act upon his anger. That’s my goal. His feelings are his problem.

2. It will make him hurt you worse.

Statistics say otherwise. And anyway, he’s already demonstrated his desire to hurt me. Why should I give him carte blanche to decide how much he’s going to hurt me? I’d rather be an active participant in that decision-making process.

3. Groin kicks aren’t really that devastating; I’ve seen lots of guys get hit in the balls and it hardly fazed them.

This response (almost universally from men) is so common I’ve come to think of it as “groinsplaining”—you can see it many of the YouTube comments in the videos linked above. These people rarely volunteer to demonstrate their own iron balls in a real kicking situation, but they confidently assert that men in general can shrug off all kinds of damage to the groin. All I can say is, I’ve seen two-year-olds take down grown men via the groin, and toddlers don’t even have any training. I do. I like my odds.

4. We shouldn’t be teaching people how to kick men in the balls; we should be teaching men not to do anything that would make us have to kick them in the balls.

Hey, that’s a great idea! Do you have a detailed, research-based plan for teaching all men everywhere to behave themselves all the time? And do you have funding for your efforts, and buy-in from politicians and community leaders, and a network of trained, experienced instructors who can effect this change? If not, better get started on your grant proposal. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here teaching people how to kick guys in the balls. That’s what I do.

5. Telling people they should kick an assailant in the balls is the same as telling victims who didn’t kick their assailant in the balls that they did something wrong.

No, it isn’t. It’s a practical way to reduce the number of future victims by giving them more viable options to disrupt and survive an assault.

Fact: We have the power to damage the bodies of men who try to hurt us. You’re saying we shouldn’t let people use that power. I’m offering people more choices; you’re trying to take them away.

6. Kicking a guy in the balls just makes the world a more violent place.

Maybe, in the short term. But if it stops him from killing someone, or putting them in the hospital, isn’t that a net win for non-violence? The Dalai Lama thinks so.

okay, so!

There is a trick to it. You do NOT want to soccer kick the dude because that’s a little projectile aiming at a littler target.

It’ll do in a pinch, and it’ll hurt, but it won’t incapacitate, which is what you want. You don’t want “ouch!” Or even “FUCK!”

You want him puking on the floor, and this is how we do:

There’s two ranges where a groin kick works: close and mid-range.

Say someone grabs you face to face, or pins you to the wall, and your hands are blocked. Now you’re close-range. What do you do? You come in closer, as close as you can, and with every ounce of adrenaline and aggression in your body, you do a can-can kick.

You know the first step in the can-can, where you raise your knee up as high as it’ll go as strong as you can?

Do that, as hard as you can, repeatedly.

If that doesn’t work, here’s the alternative. You’re going to take your hand, grasp between the thighs underhand. Its going to feel like you’re “cradling” the testicles. Dig your fingertips into the fragile skin BEHIND the scrotum. Then, once you have a good grip, you turn your hand into a vise, with your fingers digging inwards to the material. If you do it right, you should feel the testes INSIDE the scrotum. You want, whenever possible, to hook your fingers under them.

Then, with your hands in a claw and your fingertips latched behind the testes, you turn your hand sharply, as though you were turning a doorknob. Simultaneously, haul your elbow back and up as hard as you can.

If done properly, this technique can tear the scrotal tissue, and done with enough force, can tear the testes out of your attacker’s body.

No matter HOW pissed he is, he’s gonna drop. I’ve tried this technique on guys wearing cups and even with protection, it is not a fun feeling.

If you’re mid-range and have enough room for a kick, the goal becomes to use your shin. The shin is actually called the tibia, which ounce for ounce is one of the strongest bones in your body. So, here’s what you do, my little bloodthirsty beaus:

You aim, you scream “DO NOT COME CLOSER I SAID NO!” (legal purposes, because now you’re officially exercising your right to self-defence). Maintain a 360 degree awareness, just in case he has friends, and then, when he’s close enough, connect your shin full on soccer kick with the delicate squish of his testicles.

What you want is as much upwards force as possible in combination with as much momentum as you can manage. When he collapses, which he will, then stomp on his groin again, and then run.

The latter has less of a trick to it. It’s primarily about momentum and force.

Remember, if you’re close enough to put your hands on him, use your knee. If he’s coming at you, use your shin.

If you can smell the nachos he had for dinner, rip his fucking balls off.

It’s easy to do, they’re tiny little squishiness wrapped in a delicate flap of skin about as thin as a toenail.

“What would street fights between guys look like—or professional fights for that matter—if one could go below the belt? For one, there’d be a lot more collapsing. Two, a lot more writhing in pain. Three, a lot less getting up. All in all, it would add up to less time looking powerful and more time looking pitiful. And it would send a clear message that men’s bodies are vulnerable.“

…

“So, men generally agree to pretend that the balls just aren’t there. The effect is that we tend to forget just how vulnerable men are to the right attack and continue to think of women as naturally more fragile.”

And:

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2017/07/31/i-argue-that-men-avoid-ball-kicking-to-protect-the-myth-of-masculinity-men-respond-in-the-most-surprising-way/