a simple game: keep your hands on their wrists and their hands off your wrists. succeeding at one task means succeeding at the other. exceedingly simple with a tiny dose of resistance. most of the time, people don’t think they can do it.
the conventional approach to teaching wrist releases in self defense is to show the technique, where neither person can move in relation to the other. outside of context, outside of opposition, outside of reality.
the kicker is that we’re all a little stronger than we think.
you probably only need 50% of the information to do it yourself. play, not prescription.
to me, combat sports interlaces with the transformation of gender transition. like any social taboo, it exists right on the edge of the acceptable. to pursue something bestial, primal. it destroys the assumption that we have moved past all this, societally. the truth is that you’ll never get rid of us, the same way you can never annihilate aggression.
i was a confused teenager with sexual trauma, an unstable identity, and a childhood marked by displayed at all times. and every day after school, i bowed onto the mats and chose to get the shit kicked out of me by grown ups. there was nothing nuanced about it. it was healing. i loved it more than anything.
it’s not domination, it’s trust. it’s not submission, it’s expression. a boundary. every tap out may represent metaphorical death, but every time the round timer buzzes to zero, you get brought back to life. you can destroy yourself safely here. you choose your demise alongside friends.
i fell back in love with combat sports around the time i started going by a new name, new pronouns. taking medicine to remake myself. what better reminder that you yourself are art–
–than the notion that you could remake yourself into a weapon? or a paintbrush? you are an instrument of creation and destruction alike–
–trans people make art of their own bodies, and so do warriors. the overlap rests in a simple idea: if society refuses to recognize you, you make yourself unrecognizable–
–you choose the battlefield with aggression. turn every loss into a victory–
they break the grip. they establish their own control. the first step of liberation is control. control over yourselves and your oppressors. knowing when to attack, when to let go, when to run.
the first step to embracing peace is taming violence. that is the nature and viscera of combat, that mastery over violence gives you a choice in how you wield it, or not to wield it at all.
to all the trans kids out there, young and old. choose liberation. make your body into art, but also into a weapon. it will be seen all the same, so i’d rather be dangerous too.
June Zhang (they/she) is a trans-femme New York-based martial artist, dramatist, and organizer. They currently train at Chop & Chops MMA in Brooklyn, New York and teach at Dragon Combat Club in Queens, a volunteer community organization that offers free dynamic self-defense training to combat racism and bigotry. You can learn more about June’s writing at junezhangwriter.carrd.co and follow her Instagram @ohshootitsjune.
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