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Alicorn comments on Cheat codes - Less Wrong
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I have a friend who says this is why she won't take martial arts. She invariably wears a skirt, so if she were ever called upon to actually defend herself, she'd have to do it in a skirt; yet no dojo will permit her to learn while wearing a skirt in the first place.
I forget, what's our term for 'counter-arguments which are bogus and not actually why a person disbelieves what they disbelieve'? I'm sure we have one.
Anyway, this is a classic example. First, her argument is internally weak. What, the physical conditioning will be of little benefit? The hand strikes will simply not be useful? The reflexes cease to operate when she is in her mufti? The skirt reduces any footwork (not even talking about kicks here) to utter uselessness? And so on. Risible.
Second, not to insult your friend, but either she knows very little about martial arts or she hasn't asked anyone who does have a modicum. There are plenty of martial arts which have uniforms functionally identical to skirts. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakama#Men.27s_hakama :
(That's two empty-handed arts right there, which are both quite popular and common in the US.)
I suspect you are thinking of true rejection.
Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that she wouldn't wish to stop wearing skirts during practice either. I don't know if hakama "count" in her book.
That's... very strange. Sounds almost autistic, actually, in the refusal to wear something other than skirts. (Doubly so if hakama don't 'count'.)
I asked her about hakama. She had thought that they all had divided legs, but seems willing to accept an undivided hakama as a sufficiently skirtlike item.
Tell her to look into Krav Maga.
That surprises me. I would have though there were dojos out there that were a bit more pragmatic. At very least I would expect them to allow her to wear a white skirt over the top of the pajama uniforms.
Obviously it would rule out several schools of martial arts. Karate and Taekwondo would be out for example - too much reliance on kicking. I don't see why she couldn't learn judo, aikido or krav maga with that handicap though.
Then there are options available to her to learn to defending herself while wearing skirts despite not wearing them in practice. There is skirt choice - shorter skirts, fragile skirts and skirts that are easily removable all provide little penalty in combat. Practice in removing, cutting/tearing or moving the skirt to an unconstraining position would also serve her. But even ruling out those options she could simply have training in one of the practical martial arts and just not use any kicks higher than the assailant's kneecaps. Kicks are overrated anyway.
My rule of thumb is that if my knee cannot reach the average person's groin, my clothes are too restrictive.
Depending on how long the skirts are, they could be restrictive even for low kicks, for ground fighting, stand up grappling... Long skirts are really not combat appropriate attire.
They interfere with punching rather a lot too.
Obviously. And they are even worse attire for running away (my preferred option if it is available). We have to the best we can with what we have.
I'd go as far as to say that not being a tall well built male in his prime wearing dragon skin armour and wielding an assault rifle is inappropriate for combat. ;)
I remember someone once asked my Krav Maga instructor what he would do if someone threw a grenade at him, and he said "die?" (after he stopped laughing). While that's not strictly true-- there are ways to minimize your chances of being killed by a grenade-- it expresses a good point, which is that there are certain circumstances that martial arts aren't really designed to protect you for. Thankfully, though, those circumstances are unlikely to occur in civilian life, and knowing martial arts does help against the random drunk/crazy guy and the like.
This reminds me of a Hungarian TV crime series "Linda" in 80s, where the policewoman Linda Veszprémi always had to take off her shoes before fight. But she did it rather quickly, so it did not decrease her fighting abilities.