In 2018, Mack Beggs won his second Texas state
high school wrestling championship, to the
dismay of many fellow competitors and their
parents, some of whom withdrew from their
matches rather than subject themselves to
almost certain defeat.
Mack Beggs is transgender, and had been on
masculinizing hormone replacement therapy
in the form of low-dose testosterone injections.
However, despite the advantages testosterone
gave him, including increased muscle mass
and strength, the University Interscholastic
League decided that he would be forced to
compete in the girls division, since his birth
certificate wasn’t legally updated at the
time, and wouldn’t be until January 2019.
Mack expressed a preference to compete in
the boy’s division, even though he knew
it would be much more difficult, since his
competitors would have been building muscle
on testosterone much longer than he ever had
a chance to.
Nevertheless, he competed in the girls’
division and predictably took the championship.
Mack Beggs is a talented wrestler, even when
competing against other boys.
The same year as this story, he competed in
the men’s Junior Division of USA Wrestling,
placing third in both Greco-Roman and Freestyle
Wrestling.
Mack’s situation brings up several interesting
issues for martial arts and combat sports.
In addition to weight classes, the WKF, UFC,
Bellator, and several other combat sports
have competitors fight against competitors
of the same gender.
Even in forms or kata divisions, men are judged
against men, and women are judged against
women.
We live in a world where, fortunately, transgender
people are receiving more and more acceptance
and recognition in society.
In many sports, this has led to a backlash
against transgender athletes, who, it’s
claimed, are unfairly advantaged against their
cisgender counterparts.
However, the reasons that are used to make
this claim can often result in complex, difficult
cases, like the following one.
Caster Semenya is not transgender, but many
of her competitors have suspected her of having
a hormonal advantage, and as a result, she
has found herself at the center of the discourse
around a recent rule requiring that female
competitors with testosterone above a certain
level to take medication to lower their testosterone
before competing.
Her assumed natural advantage has been compared
to athletes like Michael Phelps, an Olympic
swimmer with joints that allow him to swim
faster than many competitors, who is still
allowed to swim against other swimmers without
that advantage.
While there isn’t any clear indication that
her testosterone levels are higher than other
female runners, this speculation was clearly
the justification for the ruling by the International
Association of Athletics Federations, especially
since it only covered the 400, 800, and 1500
meter events, all events where she competed.
Transgender women face similar criticism,
with some claiming that their bodies might
naturally produce enough testosterone and
give them an advantage.
Like with other talking points about trans
women, much of this rhetoric relies on a lack
of knowledge about transgender bodies.
I would like to start off this video by saying
that trans women are women, trans men are
men, and nonbinary people are nonbinary.
Additionally, transgender people do not need
to have dysphoria, or pursue medical transition
to be valid in their gender identity.
I want to get this out of the way, since I
know there are a few groups that disagree
with those statements, and there might be
some trans people watching who worry that
I am going to support these trans-exclusionary
or trans-medicalist viewpoints.
If I get any comments that are bigoted, I
will delete them.
Additionally, this video comes with the obvious
trigger warning that I will be discussing
transphobia, transphobic harassment and physical
injury.
I will try not to be too graphic, but if those
are difficult topics for you, please switch
to a different video if you need to, and take
care of your mental health.
With that warning out of the way, I’d like
to focus back on what this channel is about:
martial arts, and karate.
I’ve been training karate for 18 years,
so it’s no surprise that I’ve met several
trans karateka at various stages in their
journey of discovery and transition, and at
various stages of their training.
I’ve also been keeping up with the martial
arts community online, and have run into a
lot of people wondering if karate is an accepting
community towards their gender identity.
These experiences have inspired me to want
to investigate how the martial arts community
treats its transgender members, and what we
can learn from the problems that can sometimes
arise.
I’m the Goju-Ryu Philosopher, and let’s
get into it.
Many, but not all, trans people go through
a process called Hormone Replacement Therapy,
or HRT.
This isn’t a uniquely trans process.
Some menopausal women receive HRT to deal
with problems related to declining estrogen
levels.
In fact, this is the most common use, or at
least the first several results on Google.
For trans people, there are generally two
types of HRT, masculinizing and feminizing,
based on the gender identity of the patient.
Feminizing or Estrogenizing HRT usually consists
of Estrogen and a Testosterone blocker, with
some doctors adding Progesterone which is
said to enhance the effects.
Masculinizing or Testosteronizing HRT is much
simpler, usually requiring only Testosterone
itself, either by injection or creams, gels
and patches.
Both types of HRT affect fat distribution,
and trans women begin to grow breasts, though
usually this takes a long time and has limited
effect.
Testosterone increases muscle mass, while
blockers can diminish muscle mass.
There is some controversy over whether estrogen
and blockers actively decrease muscle mass,
but they make it harder to regain should the
muscle atrophy.
Changes on HRT aren’t immediate, but most
changes are partially or fully irreversible.
Generally, after being on HRT for a while,
trans people have hormone levels more or less
consistent with cisgender people of the same
gender.
However, HRT can’t change bone structure,
and though it can impact height and foot size,
this is because of changes to ligament structure.
There are also several conditions, such as
baldness, facial hair growth, and menstruation,
that are affected but may or may not go away.
This isn’t a complete list of the effects
of HRT by any means, but hopefully it can
serve as a useful starting point to understand
some of the common physical experiences of
trans people, and will get us starting on
the same page.
According to the USANKF, transgender athletes
are not barred from competing in karate at
the national level.
Their guidelines to trans athletes are based
on the 2003 Stockholm Consensus on Sex Reassignment
in Sports, and include the following provisions.
First off, trans people who began their medical
transition prior to puberty, who generally
have not developed the secondary sex characteristics
associated with their sex assigned at birth,
are eligible to compete in the division corresponding
to their gender.
Those who transition after puberty are treated
differently.
The rules only cover trans men and women,
so non-binary people, whose gender experience
and transition may look vastly different,
are not represented very well.
Trans men are only required to declare that
they are male to compete in the men’s division,
but trans women are restricted from the women’s
division until their testosterone has been
below a certain cutoff for 12 months, with
any deviation above this amount resulting
in 12 months of ineligibility.
Additionally, while this does not seem to
be the case for their male counterparts, trans
women are not able to change their gender
declaration for 4 years after declaring themselves
women.
The guidelines also single out cis women with
hyperandrogenism, or higher than normal levels
of testosterone.
These women are barred from competing in the
female category if their androgen levels are
“in the male range” unless they have androgen
resistance.
Should a woman not qualify for the women’s
competition, she is allowed to compete in
the men’s division.
This is a similar situation to Caster Semenya,
as we discussed in this video’s introduction.
From these regulations, we can see that the
USANKF takes a similar view to transgender
identity as many other sports governing bodies,
which is that gender is to some degree hormonal,
and must be proven through hormone tests in
certain ways.
What’s especially telling is the difference
between rules for trans men and for trans
women, in which the latter are much more heavily
scrutinized than the former.
This seems to align with a common fear than
men are attempting to gain an advantage in
sports by pretending to be transgender, and
competing with a biologically superior testosterone-based
body.
Of course, these rules only impact martial
artists who take part in competitions, which
not everyone does.
Later, I’ll look at this idea that trans
women are secretly better suited to sports
than their cis female competitors, and I was
very intentional in opening with a story about
a trans man rather than a trans woman, which
I feel demonstrates that this fear is somewhat
misplaced.
But for now, I want to look at transgender
people’s experiences in martial arts outside
of just competing.
Some dojos are very accepting, and some are
not, just like any type of community.
I’ve recently stumbled onto the budoblr
community of martial artists on Tumblr, which
has been very accepting of martial artists
of all LGBT identities.
In fairness, Tumblr communities are often
progressive and accepting of LGBT identities,
but the outpouring of support was inspiring.
Martial arts communities can be accepting
towards trans people, and quite simply some
don’t care.
Martial arts classes which are co-ed, as the
majority that I’ve been to are, don’t
distinguish training between genders in any
case, and it would make no sense for them
to do so with transgender martial artists.
Some dojos do teach “women’s self-defense”,
which can often include some inaccurate portrayals
both of women’s capability and of appropriate
self-defense techniques, as channel hard2hurt
made an excellent video on.
This can be a factor that really impacts both
cis female and closeted trans male martial
artists, leading them to be taught ineffective
techniques, an in general stigmatizes all
female martial artists.
There are some “transgender self-defense”
techniques as well which I worry can fall
into the same trap of misrepresenting and
stigmatizing trans people’s capability and
varied experience.
On the whole, however, trans people in martial
arts can be treated as acceptingly or unacceptingly
as the community decides to treat them.
A video I found while researching this topic
discusses some of the ways that being partially
closeted as a martial artist impacts their
training.
As with being partially or fully closeted
in any setting, the constant misgendering
can wear a martial artist down and make them
feel uncomfortable in the martial arts.
However, this video is at least an encouraging
look into the possibility of trans people
being accepted by their families in the dojo.
That said, not every dojo is as accepting
or lenient.
In 2018, Vortex Sports Academy, a martial
arts school in Leander, Texas, caught a lot
of flak for their policy of referring to people
by the pronoun that refers to their “biological
sex”.
Many of the arguments made by the school and
its supporters have been heard as criticisms
of transgender people before in a variety
of contexts.
The school’s owner said that the policy
was intended to not expose kids to the “social
challenge” of transgender existence, citing
the uncomfortableness of parents as the impetus
for this policy.
He referred to his school as one that taught
“traditional values”, and said that allowing
people to be referred to by the pronouns of
their self-identity would be “pandering
to the transgender children”.
The policy was brought to light when a trans
woman offered to teach a class, since she
had received a black belt from the school
before her transition, and was denied, leading
to a public argument.
She states that the school’s owner harassed
her over text, and had at one point attempted
to dissuade her from being public with her
gender identity by mentioning the rate of
suicide among transgender people.
One of Vortex’s parents said that the martial
arts school needed to be “G-rated” for
the kids, and that it was parents’ jobs
to teach their kids about trans identities.
However, another parent refused to send her
children to the academy, saying that trans
identity is not a complicated thing to explain
to kids, nor is it inappropriate in any way,
and that “anyone who thinks kids can’t
handle that aren’t giving them much credit.”
I’ll be using this example as a framing
device partially because there’s a lot of
information on it, and partially because I
think it speaks to something very important
about trans identity.
First off: biological pronouns.
Many much smarter and more established YouTubers
than me have talked about the ridiculousness
of claiming that the essence of pronouns is
biological.
The very short version is that pronouns have
existed long before biology was understood
to the degree it is today.
The use of pronouns is almost always to designate
the social role someone fills.
Some trans people “pass”, meaning that
they look like cisgender people of their same
gender to strangers, or otherwise intuitively
seem like the gender that they are, even to
people who might not believe the abstract
truth that trans people are the gender they
say they are.
To check whether a woman or man is trans might
require looking in their pants, taking a medical
panel, or acquiring their birth certificate,
depending on the status of their transition.
I don’t think I have to say how those things
could be considered invasions of privacy.
I also have personal experience with the fact
that pronouns aren’t biological in a simple,
stupid, and straightforward way.
As you can see, I have long hair.
Because of this, I’ve had many people assume
I’m a girl and call me ma’am, miss, or
that girl over there.
I present male in public, but even this small
attribute has caused people to attribute different
genders to me.
Once, I heard a child ask “who’s that
lady over there”, to which their mother
corrected them “no, that’s a boy”.
However, neither of them knew anything about
my biology.
If pronouns were biological, how could this
mistake be made.
How is anyone supposed to check what the ‘biologically
correct’ pronouns are?
Next, there’s the clear implication that
the existence of trans people is somehow predatory
or sexual.
This is the reason behind the controversial
‘trans bathroom bills’ that were passed
and struck down in several states in America.
This is usually a criticism aimed at trans
women, who critics view as predatory men looking
to invade women’s spaces and commit assault.
And I could talk about how there are very
few incidents of people claiming to be trans
to assault anyone.
I could talk about how this position infantilizes
and disregards trans men.
But since the point I’m trying to make is
that trans identity isn’t inherently sexual,
I’ll just point out that this line of reasoning
is very similar to the exclusion of gay and
lesbian issues from children’s media under
the Hays Code and other similar ideologies.
While martial arts contain physical contact,
that contact is entirely unsexual.
If trans identity was a sexual fetish, martial
arts, especially ones without grappling, would
provide absolutely no satisfaction of that
desire.
Not to mention that in the context of this
school, the first reason that Vortex’s owner
had to create this policy was a child student
asking to be referred to in a gender-neutral
way.
The idea that this topic is too mature or
difficult to introduce kids to is ridiculous
when the kids themselves are dealing with
it and bringing it up.
Not to mention the fact that simply referring
to a trans person by the pronouns that they
ask you to is not ‘teaching kids about trans
identity’, but interacting with trans people,
who are already a facet of the world these
kids live in and will grow up in, as people.
If anything, it makes parents more likely
to teach their kids about trans identity on
their own, since it gives them an example
that they can understand.
Finally, there’s the idea of traditional
values.
Whenever this is brought up, it’s worth
asking what the traditions are that are being
referred to.
In this case, it is unclear whether the traditions
are related to the martial art or traditions
of the culture of Leander, Texas or America.
Transphobia in East Asia and East Asian martial
arts is its own topic, which I will not be
covering here, as is the United States’
history of LGBT discrimination.
However, I will simply offer the insight that
traditions can and do change.
Practicing karate in a gi is seen as traditional,
and yet it was only adopted around a century
ago.
When people make appeals to ‘traditional
values’, they are assuming a shared tradition
that usually translates to their personal
politics projected onto history.
What counts as traditional to someone, might
not seem traditional to another, so appeals
to ‘traditional values’ have to either
explain and justify this, or be seen as ad
hoc appeals to shared bigotry.
Fortunately, there are many dojos that are
not like Vortex, and some trans people are
even able to make careers in martial arts
as instructors.
In my sources, there are a few stories of
people being recognized and supported by their
dojos during transition.
Hopefully, for any trans martial artists in
the audience, these stories will be able to
demonstrate that you can be safe and out in
your dojo or gym.
Next, I’d like to take a look at transgender
competitors in professional combat sports.
One of the most popular podcasts that I’ve
heard about on through YouTube is the Joe
Rogan Experience, and its host often covers
martial arts and combat sports.
Beginning in 1997, Rogan was a commentator
for UFC, a position he held on and off for
almost 20 years.
His podcast began in December of 2009, and
has been running through to the present.
He recently signed a licensing deal with Spotify,
which will begin offering the podcast in September
of this year, before it becomes exclusive
in January 2021.
Back in 2013, Rogan addressed the transgender
UFC fighter Fallon Fox, who was forcibly outed
to the UFC community in March of that year
after having fought professionally twice before.
Fallon transitioned in Thailand in 2006, and
had been living as a woman since then, but
Rogan posited that, having gone through “male
puberty” had given her advantages such as
“bone density”, “bigger hands” and
“shoulder joints”, and “thicker wrists”
that let her “punch… much harder than
a woman can…”
Other public figures joined onto the criticism,
including UFC’s CEO, Dana White who obviously
cares about the safety of UFC fighters.
Due to the publicly available information
about Fallon’s transition, it’s almost
certain that she’s lost any of the benefits
of a testosterone body, but it is certainly
correct that transition doesn’t change bone
size, and the only common surgery that deals
with bone structure at all is facial feminization
surgery, which doesn’t impact the ability
to fight.
However, claims about trans women having higher
bone density are contradicted by some medical
studies, which state that “lumbar spine
density was lower than in reference men but
similar to that of reference women”.
Nevertheless, the controversy around Fallon
continued.
In 2014, she fought Tamikka Brents, and in
the first round, Fallon won by technical knockout.
Tamikka was injured during the fight, suffering
an orbital fracture and concussion, and required
seven staples to the head.
Tamikka later expressed her opinions on the
fight, claiming that she felt more overpowered
than ever before, and was unable to move around
in Fallon’s clinch, as a way of calling
into question the propriety of her fighting
in the women’s division.
People used this fight to push the opinion
that Fallon was dangerous, with some even
suggesting that she fought in the women’s
division as a sort of male aggression, and
that she wanted to get paid for beating up
women.
As it turns out, orbital bone fractures happen
in MMA, both in men’s and women’s fights.
Tony Ferguson and Miesha Tate both suffered
orbital bone fractures in UFC fights, with
the latter going on to win the fight despite
her injury.
However, the severity of the injury Fallon
inflicted on Tamikka was used to fuel scaremongering
about her overwhelming advantage.
Despite this advantage, however, Fallon Fox
had lost her fourth professional fight to
Ashlee Evans-Smith, indicating that perhaps
there was more to her victories than a simple
bone-structure advantage.
Famous UFC fighter Ronda Rousey claimed that
she would be able to knock out Fallon despite
her “unfair advantage”, but such a fight
never materialized, and Fallon retired after
her bout with Tamikka.
Quite frankly, a lot of the discourse around
Fallon Fox was quite vitriolic and transphobic,
with many people discussing the status of
her genitalia.
I’ve chosen not to include footage from
Rogan’s 2018 reflection on the controversy,
or any of the nasty quotes from Rogan, White,
Rousey and others, but there are several links
in the description of this video if you’d
like to watch that video and read articles
written about the situation from several perspectives.
Trigger warning for, among other things, footage
of severe injury, transphobia, transmisogyny,
and PragerU videos.
Of course, Fallon Fox is not the only transgender
person in the combat sports world.
Patricio Manuel, a boxer and trans man, became
the first transgender boxer to have a professional
fight in 2018, against Hugo Aguilar, who was
very respectful of his gender identity.
Though Manuel hasn’t fought professionally
since then, in 2019, he was made the face
of Everlast, a universally acclaimed boxing
brand.
There seems to have been comparatively little
controversy about his victory, especially
looking at the utter hatred and vitriol that
Fallon Fox received.
This section of the video is going to be many
times shorter, merely because there’s very
little to talk about.
But this brings up a question that I think
is interesting.
Why do trans women receive so much scrutiny
in martial arts and sports, whereas trans
men don’t?
As I mentioned towards the beginning of this
video, the USANKF only requires trans men
to declare their gender, but has specific
requirements for the hormone levels of trans
women looking to compete as women.
This, I think, is indicative of a trend in
the discussion of trans people in sports,
which is the shockingly common assumption
that trans women are really men looking to
gain an advantage by competing against women,
who they are supposedly advantaged over.
The Mack Beggs example that I opened with
demonstrates that this might not be the most
appropriate concern.
Taking testosterone may improve an athlete’s
ability to compete when compared to cisgender
women, whereas trans women often undergo hormone
therapy that results in their physical abilities
and hormone levels being on par with cisgender
women.
A lot of scrutiny is placed on trans women’s
bodies in professional sports, and they are
almost always treated as men’s bodies rather
than women’s bodies, regardless of the state
of their medical transition.
I believe that this is an example of the way
that trans women are treated, on the whole,
as predatory men by transphobes, whereas trans
men are often viewed as confused or boyish,
but ultimately harmless, women.
Here’s where I start quoting philosophers
on a channel where I call myself a philosopher,
so strap in.
In her book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
borrows from the Hegelian Master/Slave Dialectic
when discussing the relation between man and
woman.
Women, she claims, occupy the second sex since
femininity is how the masculine defines itself,
by enumerating the things it is not and projecting
it onto the other.
De Beauvoir opens the first chapter of The
Second Sex with the idea that women are “a
womb, an ovary”, terms that are viscerally
uncomfortable to read for anyone aware of
the modern trans-exclusionary radical “feminist”
movement.
However, she immediately problematizes this
idea of the role of the female sex by discussing
many other species who reproduce in a variety
of ways that fall beyond this anatomical definition,
as well as the history of conceptions of reproduction.
Simone de Beauvoir’s thoughts on sex and
gender are, by modern standards, not the best,
but the important thing to note is that she
posits that men consider women to be the Other,
a group with definite and innate traits that
are mostly, but not entirely, undesirable.
By this definition, they seek to define maleness
as the set of traits that are opposite to
the traits they ascribe to women.
I think that this has some validity to it,
especially in how it explains how society
sees masculinity as the default, or even superior
condition.
We can see this in the differing treatment
of women who act “tomboyish” and men who
act “effeminate”.
Neither is particularly normalized by society,
but the latter is often much more heavily
stigmatized than the former.
To be masculine, for a woman, is in some ways
seen as an attempt to assume a positive, active,
strong role.
There are limits to what society considers
as acceptable masculinity in women, but even
then, they’re seen as attempting to assume
a male social or sexual role.
Butch lesbians are often assumed to be rejecting
femininity as a surrogate for rejecting male
attention, and adopting masculinity as a means
of assuming the ‘male’ position in a partnership.
While this is largely bogus, it’s also not
as inherently dangerous as the treatment given
towards feminine men.
If masculinity is considered the default,
then some amount of masculinity in women can
be attributed to chance or their default behavior.
However, it also brings the assumption that
if a man is in any way feminine, that was
an active choice to stray from the default.
Furthermore, since the implicit notion of
masculinity is strength of body and will,
to a lot of bigoted minds, femininity in a
man can represent a degradation of the nobility
and worth of a man.
This specific stigma is clear from many common
insults used against sensitive, kind, or generally
non-toxic men on the internet.
The funniest of these is, in my opinion, ‘soy
boy’, which rests on the false assumption
that soy isoflavones have a feminizing effect
on the body.
Masculinity in women is stigmatized, with
women, especially women of color, often called
mannish and volatile as a means of beating
them down.
I don’t want to minimize this.
However, the slightest little aspects of femininity
are often mercilessly criticized in men.
The most extreme example is the idea that
ordering a desert, having any skincare, or
knowing how to do laundry is somehow indication
that a man is feminine, often paired with
the assumption that they are gay.
When we consider the difference in the ways
that gender non-conformity is treated, I think
we can understand the disparity in why trans
women are treated so much differently than
trans men.
Transphobes assume that trans women are really
men, and trans men are really women.
This sort of bigotry can come from many angles,
leading to vastly different understandings
of their psychology, all of which are wrong
and harmful.
Many “gender critical” feminists, that
is, transphobes who believe that they are
feminists in the context of cis women’s
existence, assume that trans men and some
nonbinary people are lesbians whose internalized
homophobic shame at their same-sex attraction
has led them to believe they are simply not
women.
This, of course, not only erases all gay,
asexual and bisexual trans men, or nonbinary
people who are not exclusively attracted to
women and femmes, but also disregards the
experiences of many cis lesbians.
However, what I think the core of many of
these misconceptions is traces back to the
idea that women are societally perceived as
worse than men, or that lesbians are unfeminine.
TERFs think that trans men are victims of
societal prejudice, which they are, just not
in the way these people think.
However, trans women are often seen as predators
themselves.
Since the assumption is that masculinity is
something which one would never give up, trans
women are often seen as men who have sexually
failed.
Not truly masculine, they’re not able to
assume the role they were “supposed” to
have.
However, they can never be truly feminine
in the eyes of transphobes either, leaving
them to be considered both failures as men
and as women.
Simultaneously too feminine to be a man and
too masculine to be a woman, trans women are
societal rejects of the highest degree.
We can see this conception in the popular
image of a trans woman in female sports.
As a ‘failed man’, she is clearly no match
for male competitors, but as someone who is
more masculine than a woman, she’s seen
as supernaturally advantaged over women.
Since women are the second sex, it would make
no sense for a man, who occupies the position
of societal dominance, to willingly lower
himself to the level of a woman.
Thus, the transphobe constructs a narrative
where even the most feminine parts of a trans
woman are expressions of masculine domination
over women.
And for trans women who choose to take part
in martial arts, their desire to live as a
woman full time, even in the octagon or on
the dojo floor, is seen as a sublimation of
the “masculine” desire to violently dominate
women.
I think this is why transfeminine people receive
the brunt of scrutiny in the debate over trans
people in sports.
If they were viewed as a woman trying to compete
against men, as trans men are sometimes viewed,
they could be viewed as an inspirational story,
proof that women can be equal to men despite
any ‘natural disadvantages’.
But trans women are viewed as men ‘lowering
themselves’ to the role of female.
And if they’re willing to undergo this ‘humiliation’,
they must be looking to gain some advantage
out of it.
In sports, this is usually the testosterone
advantage, which is presumed in trans athletes
regardless of their actual hormone levels.
And outside of sports, this is often assumed
to be predatory or narcissistic.
Martial arts should be a space that is open
to transgender people.
In fact, given the prominence of hatred towards
trans people, and trans women in particular,
I think that self-defense is especially necessary
for the trans community.
This is why I think it’s important to understand
transphobia and transmisogyny in the community,
so that we can work to combat it.
Martial arts can be a source of empowerment
for all of those who are stigmatized by society,
to be able to improve oneself without submitting
to the idea that one’s gender, race, or
class makes them less worthy of success.
And that includes transgender people.
Fortunately, the state of societal acceptance
of transgender people is increasing, with
more people being introduced to their existence
in a way that hammers home that trans people
are just the same as cis people, in terms
of their fundamental personhood.
But there’s still a long way to go.
The next time you’re in the dojo, take a
moment to reflect on the shared humanity of
everyone training with you.
And for those karatekas out their specifically,
don’t forget that “Karate begins and ends
with respect”.
And that includes respecting trans people.
This was certainly a long video, and it was
majorly stressful to research, since the subject
matter is really dark.
If you made it to the end of the video, congratulations,
and I hope it was informative.
Please give it a like if you enjoyed it, and
if you’re a trans martial artist, or if
you know a trans martial artist, I would greatly
appreciate a comment about how that has shaped
your training and community.
Please add the hashtag #karatenisentenashi
to your comment so I know you made it to the
end, and while I usually don’t have to worry
about this, I’m going to repeat that if
I get any bigoted comments, I will delete
them, since I want this video and my channel
to not be a dangerous space for trans people.
I would also greatly appreciate it if you
subscribed to this channel and hit the notification
bell so that you see when I post new videos.
I’ve been the Goju-Ryu Philosopher, and
stay safe out there.
