I visited an Aikido dojo up in Seattle this morning and observed the morning lesson.  I met Roy, the teacher in the morning, who besides being rather on the quiet side, seemed fairly nice and had a good sense of intuition about the sorts of things I'd want to know.  After the lesson was over and we were able to chat a bit, among the first bits of information he gave me was that there is another girl who trains with them in the morning.  He also informed me that the morning group is fairly diverse in ability levels, and that if I manage to find myself in a lesson where I am the only (or one of very few) of the more inexperienced students, not to feel as though I'm interrupting the lesson by asking questions.  He told me that I should expect to be paired off with a more advanced student for many of my first lessons to practice the basics, and that teaching is part of their training, so this would work out perfectly.

I'm still not certain about how comfortable I feel with training in a martial art.  I trained in kickboxing for a couple of years in high school, and despite my complete lack of sparring experience, I have had occasion to prove to myself that the training stuck, and that it's nowhere near subtle.  Aikido would be a "softer" form of discipline, focusing primarily in disabling and defensive maneuvers, and less on doing lasting damage to the other person.  This may be good for me, if only to prevent me from doing lasting damage to myself or someone else if put in the position to defend myself.

Nonetheless, even just sitting there, I could feel the rush of power that I used to get when training in kickboxing.  It's fun.  What can I say, I'm used to being percieved as a non-threat.  It's nice to be in a place occasionally where there are people who recognize and observe how much I'm not a non-threat.  It's a respect thing, I suppose.  In five years since high school, I've been put down many times for my non-threatening demeaner, feminity, and (ridiculously enough) my youth, most often by men (there have been a few women too, who have felt the need to take that power-trip).  Mostly this has been in relationship to graduate schools, jobs, and generally career-related anything.

That's just the thing, though...  it's a power-trip.  I know I can defend myself physically if need be (in most cases, but certainly not all), and generally I avoid any situations that might involve me proving this again.  But knowing that I can do it is quite a power trip.  I kind of miss being a bad-ass.  But I also know that being a bad-ass didn't solve the real issue.  I can defend myself physically...  but do I have the courage to defend myself orally?  And does being able to hurt someone physically really make me that much more respectable?  Even if these same men who have disregarded me before start to treat me with some semblence of respect, does that really mean I'm respectable, or does that just mean that I'm buying in to their power game?  And how does a young woman like me combat their neanderthal "she's just a woman" attitude without buying in to the relentless and exhausting power struggle?