The gender conundrum

I was practicing a kata wherein the shidachi begins in a squatting position (both knees up) at an American sempai's dojo.

"Women put one knee down," he admonished me.

"I'm a hermaphrodite," I replied.

I tell other people this story and get knowing snorts in response. They know me, so it's funny. They also know the American sempai, who's a great guy, but is also something of a stuffed shirt (stuffed gi?), so that also contributes to the laughter. But the story also brings up, in a small way, the subject of gender in budo, and how it is treated, both here and in the Old Country. This is not my favorite subject. I circle back to it from time to time, because I have to - gender issues in practically anything is the gift that keeps on giving, whether I like it or not.

To return to my story, I explained to my sempai that I was well aware of the one-knee-down kamae for women (which, by the way, also exists as an option for anyone with knee problems, male or female), but I teach men. I have a little trouble maintaining the two-knees-up position because I have a lot of tightness in various leg muscles, so I *want* to practice it, the better to teach it to my male students. He was fairly satisfied with this explanation, or maybe he wisely did not want to make an issue of it, and practice continued, with me being a "guy" the whole way.

The same difference in kamae occurs in kendo sonkyo, but, when I began practicing, being the only female in my group, I learned the same sonkyo as everyone else. Even my Japanese instructor did not bother to explain it; it took a different Japanese instructor to tell me after the first one went back to Japan. But he didn't insist. My American sempai, on the other hand, did.

I practice in Japan with a large group of people. The group is probably about 1/3 female, with many senior practitioners represented. Most of the women take the one-knee-down kamae, but no one seems to care whether I do it or not. Some (male) sempai have taken care to point out this kamae to me when I am first learning a kata where it comes up, but they don't insist either. For my part, I try the kata that way, then I try it the other way. For me, as I said, it's a pedagogical issue. I also can't help but notice that personally, it seems more difficult to rise from a one-knee-down position rather than a simple squatting one. One other female foreigner who holds a menkyo in the style *never* puts her knee down. No one at the Japanese okeiko seems to care one way or the other.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was practicing in the US with a large group. At first, the instructors (all Americans) pointed out the difference in kamae, but said that we should simply be aware that the difference existed, and the women present could use their own judgment. The second day, they flatly stated that two knees up for women was considered "immodest." Of the 6-8 women present in a sea of men, most of them complied, while I did not.

I don't do this to cause trouble. I realize there are customs everywhere. If I were to be at a dojo in Japan with an old-fashioned teacher who insisted, of course I would comply with his wishes. But I practice in Japan with a liberal-hearted teacher who seems to feel that it's more important that we practice, rather than to insist on gendered kamae. On the days when I have a stiff knee, it's knee down. Other days, both knees up. I have an older male student with knee trouble who does the same thing.

I find this generally to be a problem from time to time with Japanese art forms that make the jump across the pond to the US. There's a lot of mythmaking that focuses on minutiae rather than on the substance of practice. Sometimes it really expands - one of my original sempai once told me that, in Japan, it was considered "not proper" for women to learn Japanese sword. Our teacher, who was Japanese, had welcomed me warmly in the dojo, so I decided my sempai was, to put it simply, full of it. And since then, of course, I have met many Japanese women who hold dan rankings in swordsmanship. Sort of like Bruce Lee's famous finger-pointing-at-the-moon line, if I had listened to my old sempai long ago, I would have missed out on a lot of heavenly glory...