Co-Ed sparring

bushidowoman

I was raised my entire life to never EVER hit a female. I honestly would have a hard time sparring with a woman and putting any sort of effort into the strikes. When I spar with dudes we are trying to hurt each other.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for empowered women and have even been known to make a sammich or two myself at times. I just honestly can not get over that deeply ingrained desire to keep a female from coming to physical harm, especially at my own hand.

I know there are a ton of very skilled female athletes who could kick the crap out of me no matter what my intentions were, though.

Is this sexist?

Edit: I have sparred a girl before in western boxing, basically worked on technique and defense. So I guess I have no problem with this, I would just fight a little differently than with a dude.

I don't think this is sexist; I call it being respectful. I appreciate working with respectful guys.

The way I see it, sparring, competing, and fighting are each very different entities.
I don't ever want to fight anyone, man or woman. In a fight, someone, possibly both parties, are going to get hurt. I don't want it to be me, and I don't want to hurt anyone else. A big part of my training is avoiding a fight.

A competition is no fun if the competitors are unevenly matched. I'm pretty small compared to most guys, so I've never been matched against another guy in a fight-like competition. (I have competed against guys in kata/weapons kata.)

But sparring and practicing defense--We are all there to "sharpen our weapons" and you can't sharpen your own weapon if you are putting it against a dull weapon. You would be doing your partner (male or female) a disservice by not putting any effort into your strikes. If your partner is below your level, put just enough intensity that they have to pick up their own intensity. Give them something to learn to defend against. I wouldn't expect my partner to "try to kill me" when we are sparring. Nor would I would try to "kill" my sparring partner, just to prove a point, if I'm paired up against a guy who is below my level.
I've encountered this in class quite a few times, when I pair up with a new guy who is unfamiliar with me. But I'm very intense, I'm there to WORK, and I'm not going to let any partner of mine get by without putting some effort into it.
I've had more than one guy tell me that he enjoys sparring with me. I don't spar like a man. I spar like a devious woman.

ChasingStarlight

This thread has inspired me to swap to a guy partner sometimes. I think the reason why we tend to not go opposite gender is just because we have such an even gender split we don't need to.

But I can definitely see the advantage of getting one of the guys to do a choke hold on me, because if I am ever in that situation, i would be surprised if it was a girl!

Rokwell

Mine does Co-ed sparring.

ChasingStarlight

We were practicing our knife defence today, so we had to walk around the dojang and try to stab one of the people practicing their defence at random. So inspired by this thread I picked one of the guys and he was so surprised he totally failed to do the defence. He got it on the second try and then got all awkward when he had to do the throw and needed to be reassured it was ok! I tried!

grover0ca

Our sparring is co-ed, it has never come up as a issue or something that I have ever really considered before.
Gender/Belt level is not a concern..higher belts will go lighter on the beginners but otherwise we just spar with whoever shows up!

I can say the person who is most agressive with me is usually my son..he is a black belt, has more experience than me/trains competitvely and just get's a laugh out of trying to show mom up and me-well I just liket he challenge of trying to spar with him

Going into a tournament I have never been intimidated by my oppenant so I suppose my history of sparring with a variety of people who are more advanced than me has had it's benefits.