About me and this blog

Greetings reader!

The fact that the woman I married is a professional martial arts teacher made me start thinking a lot more about gender roles, martial arts and relationships in general – and it inspired me to start this blog!

So I’ll write about the benefits of martial arts training for girls and women, some common myths and prejudices surrounding female martial arts and also the effect that female martial arts have on stereotypes and traditional gender roles. Hopefully I can also be of help to men who feel confused, embarrassed or even uneasy about women learning martial arts.

Who am I?

I am a 30 years old man (27 when I started this blog) living a fairly “regular” and happy life. I have a rather well paying job that I very much enjoy, a nice home and a beautiful wife – so I’m certainly not complaining about my lot in life.

The martial arts expertise of my wife

The wonderful, sweet and lovely woman I am lucky enough to call my wife has been practicing hapkido, a Korean martial art, since she was a small girl. Today she is an experienced black belt and works as a hapkido and self defense instructor. She is a lot shorter and lighter than me. Yet, because of her expert hapkido skills, she can easily kick my butt in any kind of unarmed combat. I know this for a fact because as we became a couple, out of curiosity I asked her to show me some of her skills.

Female martial arts and traditional gender roles

For me as a fit, healthy man I admit it was a very humbling experience to be so completely outclassed, outmaneuvered and subdued by a much smaller woman. On the positive side, I was very impressed by her skills and it made me admire and love her even more than I had before. But there was also a sense of frustration, embarrassment and even humiliation. This has a great deal to do with the traditional gender roles that are still predominant in the relations between men and women in our society. When a woman has these skills, the traditional gender roles are in a sense turned upside down. But why is that really? And shouldn’t we have come further than that in the 2020’s?