• Archive through December 04, 2000 December 04 - 03:28 am [27]

Women & Martial Arts/Policework/Firefighting:
To set the record straight (for those who feel that women are inferior in any of the above fields):
There are women who are quite able (proficient) in the above fields -- & martial-arts proficiency can be a plus in police work (think about it).
I saw the initial batch of women recruits for the Inglewood (California) Police Department back in the '70's; then, the recruits were mostly raised up on Barbie Dolls & were without policewoman role models -- in other words it was a totally fresh idea & their lives hadn't been geared for it. Many couldn't handle it & washed out in training. Some were great (my dad likes to brag how one of his trainees shot another officer from a great distance with her revolver during a love-triangle disput -- not the best for an example, but it was a start). A few made it & set a precedent for others to follow. Nowadays a young girl has plenty of role-models & can prepare from an early age (both body & mindset).
Male officers mess up too (& royally at that). I recall a gunfight which claimed the lives of four California Highway Patrolmen (yes, MEN). One was found dead next to his unexpended shotgun cartridges which he had pumped out in a panic (in his mind he may have thought that he was actually firing); had he fired them instead, then the battle may have gone to the CHP.
I've got a firefighting female cousin who could carry a Jesse Ventura -- & she just firefights seasonally for fun & "something to do." There are plenty of capable women out there (& conversely, there are some women & men less competent who are also in uniform; standards were lowered, but the cream still rises).
Throughout history there have been all-female fighting units who scared the bee-jeebers out of other, all-male units -- because of their martial proficiency. In WWII many Russian women were accomplished fighter pilots & snipers (just ask the Germans).
I recall an old Russian painting of the Napoleanic Wars in which (in the background) a large Russian woman has grabbed a small French soldier by his hair, lifting him up as she's about to plunge a knife into his neck or upper torso. I don't doubt that such a senario could exist in any day & age.
In the Vietnam War, men, women, & children killed & maimed many a U.S. serviceman (servicemen armed to the teeth & looking for trouble). Your best bet is not to get cocky else someone "below your station" (in your own little make-believe world) will surprise you -- pleasantly or otherwise.
WHY REPLY to such a statement? If not for the education of the one making the initial statement, then for others who may otherwise read such & incorporate it into their own mindset if it stood unchallenged. I encourage all readers to reasoning out things based upon what's real.

Type-o:
Last line (above) should read "reason," not "reasoning."

hey dudes

so women can't fight at all.. hmm.. the best exponent of Tomiki aikido (and a judo + kenjutsu master) is Lee Ah Loi.. 7th dan, a woman and a serious badass.. i've seen her perform the tomiki randori(a non cooperative free fighting) against three+ guys and, basically, kickass them all over the dojo... btw she is held in very high regard in Hong Kong martial arts circles so despite ones opinion of aikido she still deserves major respect..

as to IMA not being applicable for fighting.. one of Lo de Xiu's old school buddy's was Su DOng Chen.. I heard a story about Hung I Hsiang bailing a drunk & disorderly Su Dong Chen
out of a jail to fight in a full contact open tournament... despite being aged 14 and inebriated he still manged to win against adults... and his major occupation since has been as a bodyguard for Japanese businessmen.. you can see the knife and bullet scars on his body.. IMO that says a lot more about the practicality of the IMA for fighting than any mock-shmock UFC

ok..peace

Yusuf

i have to qualify this by saying that i still have not recovered from a Indian Mum chuan (cross between a tsuan and backfist) that i got twenty years ago

How about three guys that aren't her students. Maybe just Tank, Fry and Shamrock at once.

Or D.L.(Tank)Abbott, Mark Kerr, and Ken Shamrock?

Or Tim Cartmell, Bob Shores, and Former San Soo Practitioner?

i don't think Shamrock et al would be found together.. apart from in the make up truck prior to "no holds barred" ...oh And the three in the tomiki randori were from a competing organisation...

Do you think the skills that make these guys good showtime fighters are the same as the skills needed in real situations. Why do you think people teach Ba Gua, Xing Yi et al if all you really need is to shoot the person's legs and stick him in an arm bar???

ok.. i've go go lie down in a dark corner

Yusuf

{ok..i've go go lie down in a dark corner}
Yusuf

Could you go sit in a dark corner instead?
Oh, and don't forget to put on the dunce cap!

hey anonymous always dubious..

that's the sort of intelligent reasoning that always wins arguments... wishing you well

Yusuf

So this is a year old thread and nobody's interested now. So then it must be time for my opinion. It's this: Martial Arts and Fighting are two totally different things. A psychotic alcoholic with one eye, blown knees, and an impressive criminal record who doesn't think twice about kicking a dog to death cause it growled at him is is a top class fighter. A martial artist is someone who is technically proficient, healthy, and has some kind of commitment to a training lifestyle. The two things are just different categories. Some people maybe have a foot in both sides, but I bet they are more schizo because of it than wholistically completed. Oh, and contact sports are martial arts not fighting. Thats why there all those ex hooligans out there testifying that martial arts saved their life cause it gave them a way out of the lifestyle. Anyway, this is just my two cents.

i guess $.02 is not worth much these days.

Jeff,

I think a psychotic alcoholic with one eye, blown knees, and an impressive criminal record.... is a good fighter.

But an identical psychotic alcoholic with one eye, blown knees, and an impressive criminal record who decides to seek the 'art' of fighting (martial means fighting.... martial arts is 'the art of fighting') from dedicated practice and self cultivation is going to dominate if ever in a face off with his previous, unfocus,
phychotic self. And would probobly testify that seeking the 'art' of fighting gave him a way out of that drunken, one-eyed, wabbly-kneed, impressively criminal past. Not because of the art... but because he learned to channel his energy.

Guye,

Well I guess I would have to agree with you in principle. But the problem is what actually happens, cause I bet there wouldnt ever be any "face off" here. What I would predict is that while the martial artist was waiting politely in the ring for the "fight" to start, the psycho would be out in the parking lot putting sugar in his gas tank, or doing something more creatively non-cooperative and maybe even less playful. Its like, why does don king make all the money when he can't box for sh*t? Whos the master of submission in that particular reality?

Jeff

Jeff,

ring? I don't think your one-eyed psychaholic could make it to a ring event. I was assuming they are in a crowded bar arguing over who can drink the most Ripple and which has the best tattoos of Stone Cold Steve Austin prior to the face off.

In a bar, in a ring or in a parking lot with a fistful of gas tank sugar- I think your maniac would lose to my maniac because they both have the same anger, the same toughness, the same determination and grit- only mine has the advantage of trained knowledge of what they both do- fight.

Don King never made a dime as a fighter but made millions as a Promoter. That's a whole different job, hobby or gift. Don King wouldn't make it as a fighter.... and Mike Tyson wouldn't make it as a promoter. The two occupations are completely unrelated. (except for the fact that Don King uses his promotion prowess to promote boxing events).

what do so many people put an ugly stigma on stomping a dog to death? My neighbors just freak out about it whenever it happens. F*ing pansies.

James LaFond (an author of books on the reality of street fighting) has done something, to my knowledge, that no other author of similar works has done before. He spent a considerable amount of time and effort to collect statistics on real fights, how they started, what happened during the fights and how they ended. The following are his stats on 200 subjects that were involved in street fights:

Inexperienced trained fighters almost always had unsatisfactory first experiences with real violence.

Nonfighters also got negative results the first real fight.

'Punks' (referring to those that instigate violence) were victorious about half the time.

Women who fought back did suprisingly well defending themselves except when attacked by sober sexual predators.

Athletes in all categories fared better than nonathletes (they were in better shape).

Experienced, untrained fighters reported the highest ratio of indecisive encounters (and the firmest belief in weapons use).

Experienced, trained fighters were almost always successful in all of their violent encounters.

Violent criminals had an almost perfect success rate (won all their fights), and always selected vulnerable prey.

'Habitual' fighters were all exceptional pyhsical specimens, always fought while drinking and chose opponents that put up "light to pathetic opposition." (We've all seen these guys in bars).

The general consensus is that actual fighting experience is most important, and trained fighters with experience are the most successful.

A couple of other important points are that athletes that train and participate in combat 'sports' are almost always better able to defend themselves in real fights than martial artists that do not engage in noncooperative, contact sparring practices. And finally, when things are close to equal, size makes a great difference.

Hi Guye,

The way I see it, pro-motion and pro boxing are about as unrelated as your job and your paycheck, or as the 4000 dollar hongbao some evil psycho alcoholic gives his buddy in the cambodian mafia and the fact that the brilliant martial artist who kicked such righteous ass in the parking lot got mysteriously shot while he was walking to work a month later. Duking it out in the playground or knocking teeth out at a frat party is one thing, massively victimizing people when they least expect it is another thing, and maintaining control over people and populations so that they serve your interests is a third thing. At least as far as my limited understanding of this sad world of red dust goes, fighting seems to more get involved with the second and third equations than the first. Martial arts is a righteous lifestyle, but it aint never going to set nobody free. The don kings of the world will see to that.

Jeff.

then keep seeing it that way.

I didn't realize we were discussing money, professional sports, the Cambodian mafia or massive victimization. I thought we were discussing something else

huh? Jeff are you on crack?

Guye,

Maybe you thought we were discussing martial arts?

I just think there is a big difference between the kind of thing that goes on inside the metaphysical perimeter that makes something an 'art', and what goes on outside of it. Reality just wont fit into a cage, no matter how much you try to bend the rules. Because, when there really arent any rules at all, when there isnt any boundary on whats going on, then things will get out of control in every way possible, and the necessary means expand to include any relevant form of non cooperation, economic, political or non conventional, limited only by the creativity, ruthlessness and practical resources of the involved parties. And effectiveness in such situations is more about having a solid grasp of reality than having a trained technical capacity to incapacitate an unarmed or lightly armed individual. I am not saying that the skills of martial arts dont sometimes become relevant in certain particular cases, but I dont think it is wise to live in a fantasy world where one mistakes the king of the ring for the king of the world. Any kind of misconception about the nature of reality is a liability, and martial arts practice seems to have a dangerous potential to generate a form of ignorance leading people to think that being able to kick ass makes them powerful.

As far as the kinds of situations where martial arts are relevant to fighting, Mr. LaFonds study sounds quite interesting, thank you Tim for providing such a useful review of it. It brought to my mind Mas Ayoobs Ayoob Files books, which are collections of forensic case studies of gunfights, along with some relatively recent US government statistics on assaults (1996 Statistical Handbook on Violence in America). Documented assaults occurred in the US at a rate of about 18, 000 per day, with an average of 6,000 those resulting in injury and 65 resulting in death (all concentrated overwhelmingly in large urban centers). It is interesting to note that other places, like Russia and Mexico for example, have a frequency of violence about double this. Total assaults in the US involved no weapon 26% of the time, firearms 25 % of the time, knives 18 % of the time, and other weapons 31 % of the time. Only 35% of these incidents involved people who did not already know each other.

Anyways, thanks for the dialogue,
Jeff.

let's have a moment of silence for the concept of "having a solid grasp of reality".


(moment)


Thank you.
Roberto Numero Dos, III

I think the distinctions here are fighting vs brawling, combat vs sport, trained vs untrained.

In my eyes, someone who uses physical violence to preserve themselves is fighting. Someone who uses that same violence to prey on a weaker or unresisting opponent is merely brawling. Likewise, someone can use martial arts skills in a combat (unconstrained) situation, or in a structured sport application. Finally, the kind of training or lack of it an individual may have comes directly into play.

I think that a person who has trained specifically to bring down a larger opponent in an unconstrained combat scenario, who goes up against someone whose experience consists of sparring for points and beating the crap out of weaker, frightened opponents in bars or on dates, that person stands a damned fine chance of handing the bully his own teeth.

My two drachma.

My favorite topic re-animated! Thanks Chris. Now I am going to gleefully disagree with you

What about snatching the little children from school for a leverage in the negotiations? What about 90 days of saturation bombing to soften up the ground assault? What about that vanload of guys with shotguns parked outside your house? What about dropping a nuclear bomb on a city full of civilians?

Does it make sense to think about these things in terms of fighting vs. brawling, or trained vs. untrained? Or are these things so totally unrelated to "martial arts" that it takes somebody on crack to actually bring them up in a discussion on a martial arts board? Are they in any way related to "fighting"?

Begin dead horse flogging: "Fighting" is simply the act of destroying the ability/will to resist of the people in the way of your objective. And to achieve this, it depends entirely at exploiting human weakness, in any place it can be found, by any means that are effective. When victory is what matters (as opposed to "how you play the game" ), then the closer you are to a "fair fight" the more of a strategic moron you are. Of course, morons are not uncommon. Some people fight for stupid reasons. People that fight for stupid reasons are stupid people, and what they do is generally not worth emulating. Martial arts are great if they help make you a smarter person. And there is nothing like combat sports for fitness and personal growth. But dont get so into the game that you actually start to believe that tapping someone out or "handing a bully his own teeth" is the end of a fight. Theres always tomorrow, everybody has friends, and when the goal is important enough to fight for then teeth, joints, or men are a price people are willing to pay.

"Truth comes from argument among friends,"

Jeff.