You need to quit grasping at straws, and taking things out-of-context. I think it's fairly common knowledge there were few women, and children in classes in the early days that Will spoke about. I clearly spoke about the "commercial era" and how things were changing as the business demanded you reach out to recruit students that previously would be turned off by the rigorous training and atmosphere. Kenpo had to become user friendly to succeed in business, as they created Yellow belts for women and children, and began the "quick easy self defense" sale pitch. No more, "if you haven't bled, you haven't had a good class" perspective, that was limited to only a few hardy individuals. It became about the numbers, cause in business numbers equal profits.
OK, I'll take that at face value, as far as the commercial business side of the art goes, in that a visiting instructor who is overseeing several schools and isn't able to be at every school all the time would not be expected to be familiar with the students. I'm not in the habit of attending seminars, and neither does our school tend to bring in guest instructors, so I don't make that circumstantial jump when someone says, "well, it's so the instructor knows the men from the women". I don't assume that there are visiting instructors who might not know everyone. All the schools I've been involved with have had small enough groups that the teachers and students all know each other well enough that there is no confusion there. I think ya gotta admit, without a fairly good bit of extra background info on the specific circumstances in which it might be useful, it really sounds kind of silly to hear someone say this.
I gotta be honest tho, outside of a very few special cases, I just don't see the difficulty in gender identity wrapped in a gi. But if this was Mr. Parker's stated reason for the rule, and if you've experienced some practical benefit from it on those lines, I'm not gonna argue with that. I just wonder if the germ of the idea started elsewhere, and the gender ID issue became a good enough reason for implementing it.
For the record, any search of posts I've made about Al and his brothers will show I've more complimentary than critical. I've stated publicly on many occasions that I never could understand why as successful as they were all on their own, there was a need to take decidedly negative jabs at Ed Parker. Especially since in the early days, they were more successful than he was.
yes you have, and I am willing to give credit where credit is due.
Also for the record, you may search all of my posts, and I don't think you will find a single one where I've tried to elevate any of the Tracys above anyone else. Likewise, I've never ever tried to elevate Mr. Mitose above anyone else, and neither have I ever suggested that the lineages that have distanced themselves from Mitose are missing something that makes them inferior. In fact I've repeatedly, in one particular thread, stated just the opposite of that. I've stated that those lineages obviously have done quite well without making what Mr. Mitose had to offer a part of their system. In that very same thread, I also stated several times that I myself would also have probably acted to distance myself from Mr. Mitose, had I known him at that time.
My involvement in threads about the Tracys and Mitose generally involve me telling other people bashing on them to lay the hell off. I don't start those conversations. I don't bring up the topic. It's a topic that I actually avoid bringing up if possible. But somehow other people here feel like it's OK to freely start talking trash about them and they expect everyone here to agree with what they are saying. Well, I am in the Tracy system, studying under one of the senior-most instructors under Al. So of course I'm gonna tell detractors to lay off. And our system sees value in what Mr. Mitose had to offer, regardless of what others felt about the man. So again, of course I'm gonna tell detractors to lay off. This happens to be my lineage. THere are certain things in my lineage that I'm not entirely happy about, but I can't control everybody else. One's lineage is like Family in that way. You don't get to choose your family. You are stuck with who you get, like it or not. But I've never held it out to be above others.
Do you think I enjoy those arguments? I get tired of them, and it pisses me off when I see people starting them up again. Blanket comments like "when you start believing the Tracys about anything, you are going down a slippery slope" are starting the fight all over again. Do you think you can throw that out and not get some kind of negative response?
But you've also failed to rebut what I said about how it would have been difficult to identify students gender who were not your own in a strange school, or the business necessity for such in a mixed gender hands-on environment.
I've stated that in my own experience I've never had the difficulty, and this includes when I was new in a school. And I live in a neck of the woods where gender-bending and altered sexual identity is fairly common. But that doesn't really matter. It's only my experience, and I can't expect everyone to have the same experience that I have. But of course it's important to recognize where you can and cannot touch someone in a hands-on activity.
Truth is, it's not necessary thanks. I don't argue for sake of argument, I really do have better things to do, and that's not my purpose for being here.
Agreed. I don't come here deliberately looking for fights either and I'm often surprised at how I sometimes get drawn into something that was never intended to be a fight. I guess we all have triggers that can hit us funny, and suddenly the gloves are coming off.
I apologize if I came across as offensive. It wasn't deliberate. It just took a turn down that road.
all the best.
