I did Florida Special Olympics coaching for Track & Field and Volleyball. I did volunteering in New York for Swimming. SO and Gliding Stars (formerly SABAH) are some of the best athletic endeavours I have ever undertaken.
I will once believed we could figure out a good way to give everyone the exact same opportunities, if only humanity thought hard enough about how to do it.
Having later been diagnosed with a different genetic condition where one mutation unpredictably affects countless characteristics (pleiotropy), I now understand it isn't possible to integrate. There is no contest; nobody who wasn't born with such a steep uphill climb could ever compete with SO athletes. They are extraordinary beyond anything the mainstream could ever conceive. Their accomplishments are cosmic. Therefore, we'll have to settle with treating everyone with respect and human dignity, and if we ever get that far we can look into this again.
There is no one way to say NO. However it's said, it must be abundantly clear, and repeated as many times as it takes. Body language, facial expression, and speech must be in clear agreement.
This video is alarming, as it should be. It's presented in a positive, sterile-white background, but the subject matter is red-light serious. We shouldn't need videos like this; but since we do, here we are, and it begs for discussion on a hundred levels.
Person 1 crosses a physical or social boundary (or almost does).
Person 2 indicates NO through clear body language and/or words that point out the boundary.
Person 1 adjusts their behaviour accordingly.
Saying NO doesn't have to be loud or aggressive, it needs to be clear.
Whose responsibility is it to teach NO?
Can I live with it if I let him take a feel so I can go on with my day? If I say NO I can protect myself, but without addressing it directly, he may go on to do the same thing to others Can I do anything to stop him, and what will it take out of me to fight that battle?
Saying NO is risky and that sucks.
A woman* may be accused of overreacting, misreading. What's worse, it can be dangerous to say no. That danger may be physical, psychological, social, political, and on. It can cost her job and even her future job prospects, and that sucks. She is forced to choose: would she rather live staving off the psychological impact of covert (or overt) sexual assault? Or, would she prefer to live with the social implications of her NO being ignored, or blown out of proportion, to the detriment of her future, safety, and livelihood? That sucks. That's a shit choice.
In the #MeToo movement women come out of the woodwork once an assailant has been exposed. These women have missed thousands of opportunities to protect themselves and others, until one finally did speak up to expose the abuser, often at the cost of her own reputation and/or livelihood.
NO vs. "Yes, but...."
Several of the video's defenses lack a transfer of psychological power, a posturing of NO. The examples appear to say, "yes, but", as in, "Yes, we can take a selfie, but you can't touch my butt." This doesn't address the fact that groping is wrong and it allows the social interaction to continue after a deliberate action had to be taken to prevent sexual assault. She protected herself, but if he tried to grope her, he will do it to others.
Having to step backward twice to avoid a hug is unacceptable. In the video she verbalized, "I prefer handshakes" and he stopped, this is another clear NO and a desirable outcome for her, but
Having to keep elbowing someone's arm so they don't grope you is unacceptable.
The hugger has either ignored or not gotten the message. The onus is on the woman to react in self-defense. If not, she must live with the humiliation or learn to block it out. She must to continue self-defense until it stops by stepping away or verbalizing, "hands off."
Everyone has limits but not everyone knows what they are.
Eventually the woman in the video gets fed up and takes the man to the ground. Deciding when and how to react takes practice. Every situation is different and quick thinking is always best aided by prior practice.
These are just some preliminary thoughts, but a thousand more come to mind.
Know your limits and options before you need them, and hopefully you never will.
Take a self-defense seminar course, even if you don't plan to join a martial arts school. Make decisions when you have time to think them through in a seminar, instead of on the fly in an awkward social situation.
*woman, or man, or anybody in between. As the video intended the audience to be "every woman" I addressed it that way.
I won't say "it doesn't happen in my dojo" because no one thinks it happens in their dojo. But I will say that we go through specialized preventative training, and that, despite my own hypervigilance on the subject, I have never seen it in my dojo. I hadn't realized it surely happens in martial arts because I have never seen it happen there. I have also been sheltered by having only ever practiced in two schools.
The dark side of karate includes "grooming", the act of establishing a relationship with a child to ultimately enroll them in a sexual or otherwise abusive relationship for the gain of a maleficent adult.
A child has no basis for comparison. They are completely helpless against a predator. An adult predator might spend years conditioning them to believe that the abuse is natural, necessary, out of love, wholesome, or anything other than disgusting. An adult child of sexual abuse may not recognize that they were abused until well after a statute of limitations let alone be stable enough to go back and face their abusers.
In our school, for example, we have specialized training required to work with children. A large TV shows cameras during all classes and parents are encouraged to watch. In training for work with children we are taught to spend no more than a few seconds on a correction, to stay as hands-off as possible, and to have someone of the same sex as the student tie their belt. (This is not to say that same-sex abuse doesn't happen, but that this precaution apparently minimizes the risk.) The school invites all students, parents, and staff to training events on prevention of human trafficking and sexual abuse, taught by qualified representatives of that field.
As a Catholic I am no stranger to the story of grooming by people in positions of power. The news is filled with discoveries of sexual predation from the church that ruins the lives of its victims and their families for generations.
Hamlet says, "do not spread the compost on the weeds/ [t]o make them ranker" (3.4.171-173). Briefly, he means, don't add trouble to an already bad situation. I don't know how to acknowledge or discuss these unspeakable abuses. Given parts of my own history, I have an added sensitivity which often gets in my way. But I'm trying to make sense of what I can do to get a foothold of this problem.
When I hear about these abuses it messes with parts of my identity. What can I do as an adult, non-parent, Catholic, survivor, martial artist? What comfort, empowerment, or comment can I offer without adding to the Internet's weeds? Not much thus far: there are no excuses or valid reasons for this, anywhere in the world, ever.
I am seldom without words, and I feel strongly compelled to say something, but I have no idea what to say. Here are some preliminary thoughts, which fall egregiously short:
1. If I see what appears to be child abuse, I absolutely will report it.
2. If I come upon an adult child of abuse, I will believe them and behave compassionately toward them.
3. I will refer to every resource I know to help someone in crisis.
4. I will maintain confidentiality for absolutely as long as it is safe to do so.
5. I will take care of my own self separately.
6. I will not participate in grooming.
7. I will not internalize the guilt or the abuse in the Catholic church--or anywhere in the world--as a failure on my part, but I will accept personal responsibility of taking steps to not contribute to the abuse, and to speak up or stop it when I see it.
8. I will take steps ensure that my time with others is as safe and positive as it can be.
Abuse happens everywhere, and it seems particularly rampant in the church and in sports. I will do my part to be informed and aware.
After my teeth are brushed and prayers are all said, lullaby sung to myself in my heart (yeah, really), if'm still awake I review karate bunkai (applications) in my head.
But tonight, I'm thinking about how challenging it is to perform a kata from my power-assist wheelchair, where if you touch the rim you go far, and fast. Different types of chairs need different bunkai, maybe.
Higaonna-Sensei would approve, I'll bet, as long as all the bunkai would work in the street. Karate is for everybody.
If you think I'm amazing, you should meet my siblings. They enable, coach, cajole, and butt-kick me, so I can do a lot of the amazing things I do. Now we are about to go through something very hard.
My mother's loss of her beloved husband, the greatest love story I've ever observed in my own family, is going to change our family dynamic again, among three states. We're going to work together to help her through, while finding our own ways to grieve what John meant to us, too. Because we're all really strong, we're going to butt heads. But we are also going to work together. It's going to be okay.
And that, my friends, is family. Blood, or choice, or dojo, battalion, classroom, that's family. If you need an image to work with so you recognize it later as a focal point, that's the image. Use it well.
Rest in Peace, Papa John. You are dearly loved. I am already feeling the pull of missing you. Thanks for the boxing tips.
My karate is like my faith: it's just a part of me, making me more complete, whether I'm in the dojo or church, or somewhere else. I've just got to make sure I don't dress for the wrong one - ha! Short post today. Thanks for visiting! Be well.
[Video description: YouTube video of very young children in China dribbling basketballs]
Some students at our dojo start at age 3. Instructors work through non-verbal and minimally verbal communication, tantrums, freshly emerging physical development, shyness, hyperactivity, nervous parents, rogue bodily fluids, and more. Instructors receive ongoing training to understand childhood development and the role of martial arts in that process for our students, through adolescence, all the way into adulthood, and beyond. Because they started early we now have a bunch of junior black belts of exceptional ability, and they'll be waiting for several years for their adult Shodan (1st degree black belt) test.
Meanwhile, they continue to develop the maturity and awareness that it takes to have the character of a black belt. Their classmates look up to them as role models for technique and character. Their Senpai (senior karate practitioners) depend on their energy and generational commonality to motivate the adults and to connect with the younger students, respectively. In my humble opinion, too young is not an issue with the trainee, but with the trainer.
Even the Bible tells us that youth is not a barrier (I Tim 4:12*). As the youngest of three I was often excluded from activities because I was too young. It has forever isolated me from my cousins, who are all at least ten years older than I am, which I deeply regret. I missed out on a lot, and I never quite managed to pick up the pace and catch up to wherever I suppose I could have been by now. I've had to learn to let that go, and to manage my pace, because Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome does not allow for controlled burns of energy without at least double the recovery time of an average person. Any less recovery time bears consequences, like depleted energy stores, internal organ dysfunction, or increased dislocations due to fatigue and physical stress on the connective tissues.
It will surprise me if I ever see myself able to pace myself--my body's abilities and limits are moving targets. All I can do is push for early opportunities and early interventions. This does not mean that one should place a child under tremendous pressure to perform a task, whether it's karate, piano, maths, or anything they don't want to do. Encouraging and giving support are okay. Force is not okay. I don't know that "too young" is a thing. Too old isn't a thing in our school. Too disabled isn't a thing in our school. We work with what God gives us.
Thank you for joining me here in my blog today.
Be well.
*1 Timothy 4:12 King James Version (KJV) 12 Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
