My First Time With A Woman

I was nervous. Here I was, taught to respect a woman, treat her with dignity and care, and I had to do THIS? It didn't seem noble. It just didn't seem right. It seemed to degrade her some how, or at least drag her down to my level. It was okay for a man to want to do it, but NOT a woman. Sure, I'd flirted with the idea as a little kid with some of my girl cousins and my sisters, but not with a complete stranger, and NOT as a adult man. I never did it with any of my girlfriends in high school OR college. And now I was expected to do it in front of other people? I had known other guys that had done it, and did NOT have a tough time doing it either, even when it WAS their first time. But some how I just had a tough time doing IT with a WOMAN! What if I ended up touching her breasts?

Yes, it was tough for me the first time a woman and I ever sparred.

Say what???? SPARRED????

Thought I was talking about something else, didn't you?

I was very nervous the first time I sparred with a woman. Here was a great big guy like me, and I was expected to thump on a female like she was another man. Yeah, we both were white belts, but I had some prior training--about three years in taekwondo, one year in tangsoodo, one amateur boxing match, and Marine Corps basic training, in addition to a few real fights. I had a least 100 pounds on her or more. I had the size and strength advantage also. And to top it all of, it wasn't as if she had done anything to me personally! You would have thought that all of the pain I had from dating up to that point would be enough to make me want to punch a female, but that little voice inside my head was making me guilty just for listening to the teacher and putting on the gloves.

These reservations came despite the fact that I had seen women beat men up in street fights. In fact, the way I learned NOT to high-kick in a real fight was when a girl who went to high-school with me, then a brown belt (I was a white belt) saw me fight, then told me to attack her with my kicks, and nailed me in the spheres of life. I even had a girl try to hit me with a brick when I was twelve over an argument about 10 cents! Yet and still, because my mother taught me never to hit a woman, it was tough for me to bring myself to spar with a woman, even though she came to the dojo to learn how to defend herself against men!

I fumbled through. There were a couple of times where I blatantly froze in mid-strike because I did not want to strike her breasts. She was a well-endowed woman whose shape was curvy even through the uniform, and she had her hair very well done; there was NO way I could look at her and NOT know she was a female. The teacher turned his head a couple of times to keep from laughing. She took those opporturnites to try to punch me in the head. Finally, I resigned myself to defensive fighting with no-contact strikes to the "sensitive" areas and light-to-no contact strikes to the face. Even after she had grazed me in the groin after I'd executed a controlled high kick to her head (thank God she missed, oh thank God), I still couldn't hit her. After the match, we took a break. The teacher pulled me to the side, smirked and said "Have a hard time sparring a woman, eh?". "Yes, Shihan", I answered. "Yeah, well," he said, "that is good in the way. Don't hit women. But remember, we are in the dojo. She is NOT your friend in the ring, she is your OPPONENT. She was trying to knock YOUR head off. And besides, if you take it TOO easy on people, you are NOT doing them a favor."

You are not doing them a favor. That planted the seed for working women up to their ability in sparring. But the water came about a year later.

After having to move yet again, I was in search of a school. I decided to go back to TangSooDo after a local Aikido instructor suggested I got a black belt in a striking art before studying a soft style. He felt that since I was halfway there, I might as well finish up. I ended up in a TangSooDo school, started over again at white belt (since my first Taekwondo/TangSooDo teacher did NOT teach forms). So I was a white belt who fought like a higher belt.

The day of awakening came when I was paired up with an older female black belt. This lady was half my size and about twice my age. She looked like she should be hanging out with my mother. "Good", I thought, "at least she's a black belt. I shouldn't have to take it easy on h----".

WHOOMP!!!--"What the--", I thought, "WHOOMP! WHOOMP!" two jabs, then WHOOSH--instincts prompted me to duck. "Get your guard up!" she yelled. WHOOSH--I dodged a front kick. "Come on!" she yelled. A few parried blows later, she continued. "Good!" she yelled, "now attack me! Come on!" My kicks went nowhere, so I had to use the hands. Thank God I boxed for a hot minute, or I wouldn't have gotten ANYTHING in. Afterwards she said, "Man, you're a good workout. You're better than I thought. Studied before?" "Yes ma'am," I said, "didn't get a black belt or anything. Got a green belt, but didn't learn forms for TangSooDo." "Don't worry" she said, "you look like you catch on fast. You'll do fine. Besides, it's good for me to work out with someone new, and someone your size."

Since then, I've had a couple of other women tell me that they appreciate working out with a big dude so that they won't be afraid in a real situation. Are they getting a false sense of confidence? I don't think so. While I don't try to pound them into the ground, I DO make sure I do my best to penetrate their defenses and keep from getting hit myself. Yes, I still believe that a male has an advantage in a confrontation, regardless of what her rank is (except if she's a master), because size and strength matter, and most men are more conditioned to deal with physical situations. However, women tend to be more resourceful. If the man underestimates the situation for even a millisecond, he will end up getting TKO'd, knocked down, knocked out, thrown under a vehicle, hit with a shoe, stabbed, or scratched so many times that he looks like he walked through a pack of hungry wolverines.