Letter as a small women in a Muay Thai gym
I've been training in Muay Thai & boxing for about six months. This letter is to convince you to go do martial arts. Any type. Because…
It's not all about the aggression
Muay Thai became a type of meditation for me. The easiest type. If the whole of meditation is to be present, martial arts will give you that immediately. Why? Because you're getting punched in the face. Nothing matters when you're under a rain of attack, not my crush, not the time I told my CFO to focus on our conversation and got told off, not the assignments three days past due but I haven't started. Survival instincts kick in. Every neuron ever exists now focuses on protecting the body from getting hurt and comebacks. Sometimes blocks and kicks exceed my consciousness of them. This is the flow state.
It's also not about aggression, because only inexperienced fighters throw hard punches during sparring sessions. My coach, a several-time national boxer champ, told me this when I was afraid of going to the ring with ultra-experienced fighters. Once you know yourself and the opponent, it becomes more like a play.
It's not about aggression, because the more aggressive, or on the opposite end of that, scared I become, the less efficient fighter I am. In Muay Thai is pain, fighter Kru Bunpot explained that once your heart is scared, it beats faster, you breathe faster, and get more easily tired. To fight well, I learned to step back, take three deep breaths, control my heartbeat, then step in again.
It's not just a men's sport
If I'm home, aunties & my dad will start to tell me to stop because martial arts is too aggressive, too manly. If I'm in the US, they'd think I'm cool for attempting a manly sport, "breaking the gender barrier." Or some would think I don't actually know how to throw a proper punch, that I just went for a good workout and wanted to sound cool. Point is, no matter where I am, it is male territory. The gyms I went to have at most 1-2 women beside me at any session.
And I indeed wanted to become a man when I went to a martial arts gym.
I didn't realize this until one night, lying in bed with my roommate, he told me he didn't want to view himself as a man. He didn't see himself in all the manly values - being strong, being able to provide and protect
"I do," I said, "I want to be strong, to protect people I care about and provide for them."
An intuitive utterance that surprised both of us.
I wanted to be strong, because when I was 15, when a man on a motorcycle drove fast to my left and grabbed my boob, I couldn't do anything. I left frozen, then blurt out a scream. My voice reached the void. It didn't turn into anything else, fortunately. But that's also why I didn't call it a sexual assault until now because it was "nothing." But I still remember the venomous look on his face after the act, when he turned around to look at me, a 15-year-old girl, trembling.
Now I could do something. I'm confident in my ability to do something, because, in the ring, there were bigger, more experienced fighters, men. But I didn't back up; I didn't stop throwing punches. And as long as I keep throwing punches, I know at least one will land. One good punch is the least I could do to protect myself.
More importantly, I didn’t got scared. I step back, take three deep breaths, slow down, control my heart rate, then step in again.
Then I think about my sisters, mother, and female friends in a body often forced to be fragile by beauty standards. Now I can protect them too if we ever face a big man, or two.
Last semester, a car slowed down on my left as I walked. I noticed my heart didn't stop a beat, a slight panic didn't settle in. I was proud. It felt like my head was finally above the water for the first time. I can breathe now, no longer caged in only fear.
But I'm still caged in rage. Sometimes in heavy bag drills, I taste the sweetness of violence, imagining if the bag was that someone. I could see but didn't let myself get lost in that rage.
Then Youtube algorithm called me out. It classified me as a toxic male one day. What a plot twist =))
It terrifies me that only a few Muay Thai technique videos could lead me to this niche of pick-up artists trying to perpetuate some misogynistic beliefs (despite years of my leftist preferences lmao).
In a movie called The Power! by Naomi Alderman, the women were the dominant sex through the ability to kill with electric touches. It reverted sexism to the other end. The premise is physical power == power. Now that I train Muay Thai, it makes so much sense. Because even in the most civilized workplace, at the back of your mind, knowing that in "worst case scenarios," you won't get coerced, you won't have to agree, you won't have to accept violence. This gives so much comfort and confidence.
I encourage any woman, especially anyone who has ever been in any type of abuse, to pick up a pair of gloves. Meet with kind coaches, many of them good men, I hope you can leave the gym feeling lighter, too. Like nothing matters much, like you could protect yourself with at least one good punch, like there are good people who wouldn't abuse their physical power to hurt you.
This is the blog #3 in 30 day publishing challenge I’m doing with MỞ - Mơ và Hỏi | Facebook’s course, Writing On The Net 2 (#wotn2). I’ll publish everything on this Notion page and Substack, and send a summary of 7 posts on Sunday.
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Thanks for accompanying this journey! Till our paths cross again.