Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu
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Posts posted by Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu
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4,000B/hr with Saenchai. But you can do privates with some of the other fighters for less than that. The price list is here: http://www.yokkao.com/bangkok/muay-thai-camp-price-list/
That is a really cool pricelist! But wow, 2,000 baht with Manop?! smh.
Might be interesting if Nak Muay Nation wants a Saenchai private, maybe they would spring for it.
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The fighter girl is Fah, she's Manop's daughter (Manop is Saenchai's trainer). I worked with Manop throughout my entire session and he was really great, I'd definitely recommend going to train with him. He admitted himself that the gym is very expensive. It's 500B a session and they don't seem to offer a monthly or weekly price. Instead, they offer blocks of 20 sessions, but since you're only doing 10 days, this might actually be better for you.
lol - yes, not Saenchai's daughter. #braincramp - Though Saenchai's daughter is looking pretty badass herself! Interesting that the top Thai fighters spar with all the westerners very cool. If I remember right you said that a private with Saenchai is 5,000 baht?
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I know Yakkao is central, but is it just foreigners? I dont mind a bit of travel on the BTS....
I know that Emma Thomas just went to Yokkao and had a very good experience, better than she anticipated. I've also off-handedly heard this from several people. I'm guessing that it is a very expensive, western gym, though Manop (Saenchai's daughter who is 17) trains there, and she's said to be a top female Thai fighter.
If you are looking for a much more old fashion style gym and willing to travel a bit (it is NOT central) I'd recommend Dejrat Gym, which is the home of the Thai National Team, and is just amazing. Perhaps it would be worth a visit for a day or two. It's a very small gym attached to the house of Arjan Surat, and several top Thai women train there when they are in Bangkok and getting ready for a fight (Loma, Sawsing). There will not a lot of English spoken, but the Muay Thai there is classic in style, and very fight oriented. It's a gym that is largely unknown to westerners.
Here is Sylvie's 1 hr private with Arjan Surat.
Here is Sylvie clinching with Sawsing there.
Here is Sylvie's interview with former MMA fighter Kaitlin Young who spent a month there, along with video walk through of the gym.
It's extremely Old School, but the interesting thing about it is that Old School is often not very pro-female. In this case though Thai women train there sometimes, as did Kaitlin who had a wonderful experience.
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@Kevin, is this the article you are looking for ? here a full link : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmri.20656/full
or maybe this one : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703661/pdf/nihms-486669.pdf
the brain scan you posted are from a poster, usually poster are presented before the actual study/article is published
The first link doesn't work for me, the second one is a 2013 paper but does not seem to be a study that Jiraporn Laothamatas is associated with. I'm really interested in the presentation that looks like it was given in May of this year by Jiraporn Laothamatas: "Advanced Diagnostic Imaging and fMRI of the Brain in Thai Pediatric Boxers". I suspect that that Symposium presentation is what produced the recent surge in articles.
This is the link to the brain images. Brain imaging is also found here in this June 16 (2016) presentation abstract which focuses on memory performance, with Laothamatas listed as an author. Here the control sample is simply described as "age matched".
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I feel that as long as the kid wants to train and fight it should have a possibility to do that.
This of course is the crux of the entire ethical question. How much agency does a child have? How much agency does an economically limited child have? And how do we weigh that choice in the context where children work, in fields, in food stands, as part of the family, and can take pride in their contributions to the family.
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The IQ thing I think is unrelevant because of the different lifestyles a kid that trains and a kid that doesn't have - or that's what I assume :D A kid who doesn't train is usually pushed more and more into studying, so they learn patterns to solve tests and stuff like that. A child that spends the minimal amount of time on learning will do things more spontanious and doesn't follow a "pattern", so it might not do as well on tests.
I completely agree with this possible IQ testing concern, which is why not being able to read the paper itself, especially on the specified nature of the control groups, makes me worry about the broad conclusions that may be drawn, not only from the study but from article headlines like these.
From one excerpt I found this is how the subjects were described:
"We performed brain MR imaging with 3.0 T scanner in 323 pediatric boxers and 253 age-matched normal control subjects." - age matched? Were the IQ tested subjects only age matched?
Also mentioned were memory performance differences, which seems substantive.
What we are really left with mostly are these kinds of highly technical pieces of evidence, without qualitative conclusion:
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On 6/27/2016 at 9:54 PM, muaythailand-jitsinbrazil said:
Experts fear boxing children risk brain damage
link:http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1014717/experts-fear-child-boxers-risk-brain-damage.
Some real issues and concerns on this topic ,being a father and muay thai fan I struggle with what is right.
thoughts?
I've been following this study by Jiraporn Laothamatas for a few years now. The original study, about 4 years ago, seemed to have very few examined young Nak Muay (if I recall, maybe 20, working from my memory) so the results seemed inconclusive when compared to a control of over 200 non-Nak Muay, apparently adjusted for age and socio-economic class. Then from reading various new sources in 2014 she seemed to have more results, and updated her study (I believe with around 100 young Nak Muay). And now in May she seems to have presented a new paper, with over 300 young Nak Muay examined. So while I was predisposed to doubt the application of her original findings, she seems to be on very solid ground here. The problem that I have with the study at this point is that as I can't read the paper itself it's very hard to assess just what she's discovered. The only qualitative conclusions that I've seen drawn are related to IQ tests among the longest range sub-sample (fighting for 5 years). I've seen small excerpts which include brain scans which show neurological changes (including the increase spatio-temporal development), but it is difficult for a layman to judge just what risks are involved, at a qualitative level: ie, what is the Quality of Life (QoL) change reflected in young Nak Muay brain scans? This is a really important lack in the studies, though I understand that this may be the hardest to measure. The ethical issues is essentially one that hinges on of QoL,.
I think this is an amazing ethical question because it pulls on so many threads of social judgement: how middle and upper class Thais view lower class Thais (Muay Thai is a sport of the lower classes largely), how westerners view Thais, ideals of childhood and development. As a westerner who has seen a lot of cultural good coming out of the very fabric of Muay Thai how does one weigh the development of children in the art vs the value of the art itself? There is no doubt in my mind that Muay Thai holds its very special place as the supreme combat art, a living martial art, because Muay Thai is fought at a young age, and has been for many decades if not centuries. It allows fighters a very early inoculation against the fear of contact, something that just cannot be mimiced. And it allows the sport itself (all the techniques, both in terms of pedagogy and of fighting) to develop in the real context of fights. The fact is: it is dangerous. And the Thais are the best in the world, raising a sport to the level of art - a living art - because they are exposed to danger early.
If we took it in another direction, by analogy: If there was a (mythical) country which 200 years ago had the best sailors in the world, and the art of sailing was raised especially here because high-sea sailing began at a very young age, exposing young boys to many potential hardships, injuries and even deaths, the height of the art of sailing achieved in that country would be through the risk to children. Muay Thai reminds me of this. It has the best fighters in the world because and through this reason of risk. How does one balance the QOL of living within an art, a woven piece of your culture, with real, but unqualified diminishments?
As a natural bias, I am suspect of much of the Western ideology of the Innocence of Children which has grown out of it's own unease with 19th century industrialization: The Victorian Cult of the Child. <<<< To understand the full scope of the ethical question, and how we have inherited particular perspectives of childhood (and how it relates to Industrialized Capitalism), do read this piece.
Which is not to say that motivations for the protection of children are wrong, but insofar as they come out of pictures of childhood like those of Victorian/Industrial motivations, they should at least be critiqued. There is something about how middle classes everywhere project concern for lower class children that gives me pause. The bottom line for me is ultimately found in meaningfulness. How meaningful is Muay Thai? Unlike just blanket poverty, or disease or lack of education (in the general sense) - all of which tend strongly towards meaninglessness, suffering without redemption, arts like the fighting art of Muay Thai feels meaningful. It's an achievement of a people, a culture, embodying high values, praiseworthy states of mind and body. And largely its an achievement by the less economically advantaged of that culture. It's pretty amazing.
This isn't to say that there is nothing worth critiquing or plain worrying about when it comes to young Nak Muay. Surely there is. There no doubt are many situations of great risk and injustice within the ad hoc system of youth fighting as it exists today. There are nefarious, cruel realities within the sport at the local and wide-scale levels, but I resist the sense that just because there is risk, or even in this case documented damage, it is simply judged as "brutal" or "bad". I come from a place where I feel that the fighting arts are noble, and their nobility is born of their engagement and ultimate mastery of risk.
I do wonder if Muay Thai for Thai children is getting younger (perhaps there is more organized or prevalent gambling opportunity now?). I have no evidence to support this other than it just a question being raised. I see fighters from the Golden Age say that they began fighting when they were 13 (Karuhat) or 11 (Sagat), but I've never heard of legends say that they began fighting at 8, which seems sometimes the case now. This could of course be a difference in description, when people mark the beginning of their fighting, or anecdotal difference. Only people who have lived through it could say.
The problem with this issue I think is that most of those who oppose child fighting in Thailand seem to do so from a very powerful, and emotion place. So it is difficult to come to a point of agreement, or a direction forward. I will say this. The sort of motivated resistance to child fighting seems to resemble the long time resistance to females fighting. This is not to equate the two ethically, there are clearly important differences, but only to diagnosis some of the gut-level judgement that may be involved.
I'm not a father of a child, and if I was I may be moved to think differently, but I've often thought that if I did have a kid having him/her be raised in a camp like kaimuay I've seen a few western boys experience, seems like an amazing childhood to have, even if there be risks. Of course being able to pick and choose what camp, or which caretakers to watch over a boy (or girl) is not a luxury that many Thai parents have.
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Sylvie just asked Loma. She says the fight is at 51, Loma says she's 47 today.
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The idea that Loma has fought only 46 times is pretty funny. But recently Phetjeejaa's record showed "30" on a televised fight, when she in fact has probably over 150 fights already. But yeah, probably a pretty big weight difference. Loma just fought at 45 kg at the IFMAs, while Kim's preferred weight is stated at 53 kg. I'd guess that the big question will be how Kim handles Loma's throws, and how throws will be scored. I pray this one will have video, but I'm guessing not. :sad:
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Holy sh*t what a total sweetheart tough guy. Thank you this was beautiful.
It's hard to overstate how sweet the guy is. It's kind of amazing. And as he's gotten older he's developed some movie star looks, so people are clamoring over the rights to him.
The film also was shot and made by a Thai which seems to, at least to me, give it a different feel than very similar films made by western eyes.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfnZ-WdK4FI
This is just a wonderful short documentary on the Petchrungruang star fighter PTT. It's very hard to encapsulate how sweet and kind a fellow PTT is - hey, he absolutely loves Jaidee - but he has an aura. Sylvie wrote about him and his story that is hinted at in the film - but the film itself in its very simplicity, and in how his words in translation guide the basic themes, I just find very moving. What a cool dude he is. It's only about 8 minutes, give it a watch.
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Those were big issues for sure. Not having an identifiable schedule or bracket system were the most traumatic for me as one of the fighters. The cramped waiting spaces weren't fun, but we made some new friends in the cuddle puddles. I was there waiting to fight for 12 hours on Friday, 12 hours on Saturday, and 14 hours on Sunday. I had no idea when or if I would fight, when I could eat or when I should find an empty space to hit pads. It was mentally and physically exhausting.
It's over now and I got my money back, so all I can do is warn others about what my team and I experienced, and for them to consider registering for future events very carefully.
Sounds like such a complete and utter nightmare. Even in just local shows in NY the weirdly cramped aggravations somehow all felt inhuman in fight shows to me - a reason why we really wanted to move to Thailand - this sounds like that x100.
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It does seem like it all depends on who you get as a trainer. So much variation in skill and intentions, and then also personality, style, vibe and so forth. Thanks again, yeah it would be really great to hear of someone else's experience at Samart's.
This is it totally. You can be at a crap gym and if you got the right trainer with the right intentions this could be incredible for you. Or you can be at a famous amazing gym, and if you got the wrong trainer, ugh - nightmare. I just talked to Sylvie, we are about to get in the car to drive to a fight up in Chiang Mai, but she said she does know of a woman who went to Samart's gym, and more or less loved it. She'll try to contact her.
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That's good to know. From what I can tell by online research his gym is the only option in that area (there is a place called MuayThai Institute that gives out certificates, I don't think that is what I am looking for).
The Muay Thai Institute once was a cutting edge gym for women. Sylvie wrote about the history of the gym in this piece on Thai Female Fighters in the 1990s. It was the host of the first Thai female fight team, and the founder built the first and only female oriented stadium in the Bangkok area. Yes, they do offer certificates, but I think that is largely due to its connection to early government efforts, and even present day ones, to formalize Muay Thai. I'm not sure if it is still connected to the IFMA/WMC, but I believe it used to be. Not too long ago it was a destination gym for many. But...who knows what it is like now? Gyms can change dramatically depending on the Krus there, but it is at least worth taking an investigative look at. It has a long history of training women.
I seem to remember that someone on this forum was at Samart's gym, I believe it was a woman. I'll see if Sylvie recalls who it was.
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Hi! I might be in Rangsit for work August-December and am looking at gyms in the area. Anyone trained at Poptheeratham, Samart's gym? Or recommend other gyms in the area? Looking for positive energy, female-friendly, focus on improving technique. I have 2-ish years of MT training, mostly pad work and technical sparring.
The only thing I ever heard about the gym is that Samart isn't very involved with the training (who knows, this may vary). Only reason why I mention it is that he is one of the big reasons why people do go to the gym. This is totally off topic, but as you may be in Rangsit, this is where Sylvie's sak yant Arjan, Arjan Pi, has a home that he works out of. If you are inclined towards such a thing it might be an opportunity that you'd want to take up. He is amazing.
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I paid to fight in two rules sets. One never happened because I was the only one that actually registered for it. They said online when i registered if there were no opponents in a bracket that they'd close it and refund - but they had names on the bracket sheets. Turns out they were random fighters from other classes and weights who they also posted in that division without telling them until they got their 60 second On Deck warning. They ended up scrapping that division when the first fight got called and the coaches realized the girls were different weights and rules. I feel I definitely deserve that fee back.
In full rules we had a four girl tournament. They other three were bigger than me, but I was happy to fight up in weight if I could fight. We had the first two bouts Saturday. Never got to fight for the belt. Even walked around WITH my opponent on Sunday to each officials' desk asking to please let us fight. We waited for over 14 hours that day alone. I feel like I deserve at least half of that fee since it was their mismanagement that kept me from having the second fight.
My team had ten fighters each in two divisions and NONE of us fought Friday. The event started four hours late and even then they often had one fight happening at a time when there were three full rings. Started 90 minutes late in Saturday, though they did have some forward momentum. Sunday some of my teammates had to fight 5-8 times because they were so far behind with brackets. Some had brackets of 10-12 guys and they didn't start ANY of those until Sunday and made them bash out multiple rounds.
Never again.
That is absolutely incredible. Organizing an event like that seems like a logistical nightmare, I'd think. But that is way, way out of control. Imagine, walking around with your opponent begging to fight for your championship match. You guys should have gone outside and fought, and filmed it. And awarded yourselves your own belt of some kind to the winner.
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Excuse my French, but what a fucking shit show.
One of my divisions was cancelled due to clerical errors,and the second was cancelled because the event ran 8 hours past its contracted end time and security shut it all down. I could write a book about how completely and utterly mismanaged this all was.
I would not recommend this to anyone.
So both of your divisions were canceled, one way or another?!
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My head coach is a westerner, and interestingly he makes me go under the ropes in a fight. We don't have a ring at our gym so I'm not sure if he would still make females go under in a training setting. I'm not sure how I feel about it as a feminist, but I do have deep respect for my coach and my understanding is that it's part of the Thai tradition and he just wants to keep it that way on the night. He definitely has no problem with men and women sparring and clinching together (often regardless of size and experience) and gives equal attention to both sexes when it comes to fight training.
Interesting! Well, how do you feel about it as a feminist? The preservation of the custom, divorced from the beliefs that produced it, in the west is complex. If it becomes gathered together with other things like the Wai Kru/Ram Muay, prajet, mongkol, they potentially just become ornaments of an Asian culture.
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Sawsing vs Farida Okiko (WMC and WPMF champ), August 2015
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When we got there it wasn't long before it we noticed that the Polish guys were doing fine against our guys, but the Polish girls were getting crushed against our girls. After a while we found out that in Poland the men and women aren't allowed to wrestle each other, and the limitations showed in their performance.
I think some of this can be seen in the overall fight styles of many Thai female fighters, a lack of opportunity of experience, due to cultural beliefs. For instance some female Thai fighters can really struggle with western aggressive, punching attacks, just because they have trained differently, not "trained like a man", so to speak, sparring hard. There could be a valid generalization there. But, where you can really see it is in clinch among Thai female fighters (which parallels your story about wrestling in Poland). There are serious cultural issues with females and males being physically proximate, especially as adolescence sets in, so lots of Thai female fighters are not very strong in clinch, despite being from the land of the best clinch technique in the world. They don't clinch with the boys. And even if they do, it's not the same pedagogy of focus. Sylvie's growth came specifically from that opportunity, clinching like a Thai boy. There are some very good female Thai clinch fighters. Loma (world champ), Phetjee Jaa, have incredible technique and timing. But these are rare exceptions. Usually these are females who found themselves training at an early age among boys - for instance Phetjee Jaa trained right along side her brother, who is a pretty awesome clincher. Now, western female fighters generally aren't very strong in the clinch either, but for different reasons, most of it having to do with the limits of clinch instruction in the west (lack of deep knowledge or practice).
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So, whereas a lot of women only experience the bottom rope when they're getting into the ring to fight, it's a very small part of their experience. This is something they do maybe 20 times. But I got to witness on a twice-daily basis that I was excluded from aspects of training. The men would go into the men's ring for clinching or sparring and I would quite literally be left out of it. When western men who were barely serious about their training and certainly weren't going to fight...
This is the really compelling point about the experience. Even though Lanna was an extremely western gym, it may have been the only fully westernized gym in all of Thailand that kept a separate Men Only ring, out of a sort of cultural conservatism. Don't hold me to this, but I would not be surprised if it was the only such gym. Being at Lanna long term I think provided a unique keyhole into the sexist nature of this custom, something that just wouldn't be seen if you are training at Thai gym as a woman and the only thing you come in contact is the request that you enter under the bottom rope for fights (instead of, say, through middle ropes). What's the big deal, right? That's how it is done. But, when you see the remnants of the beliefs that underwrite this strongly conditioning daily training experiences in a gym like Lanna, something you have to deal with every single day and work hard to overcome, then the rope takes on a different weight, a different meaning. In this way, some of Kirian's rant is focused on important things - albeit in an unfortunate tone, and uninformed beliefs. No, Thai female fighters don't suck because of the bottom rope - they don't suck at all, they are VERY good - but there are built in ceilings for HOW good they can be because of the beliefs that surround the bottom rope.
Almost every day of the week Sylvie had to see western men being pulled into the Men's Ring to do what could only feel like "man stuff". This is where most sparring was done, and almost all of the clinching. Some of these men were very good, serious fighters, but it didn't matter at all. Complete nubes would find themselves in the ring getting the work that Sylvie as an incredibly active fighter was desperate to have. She needed sparring, she needed clinch. In fact, I would say that one of the reasons Sylvie began fighting so much - and there were many reasons - it was because she could NOT get the kind of live action dynamic work in in training that she needed. She, instead, fought her way to knowledge and comfort. Here she was, a fighter who was becoming a clinch fighter, and she literally could not clinch regularly in the gym to improve in clinch. Instead she just had to muscle it in fights. So you have the westerner who was on her way to becoming the most prolific western fighter in Thailand history not having access to training that others who didn't even want to fight would have, only because she was female. It wasn't because Sylvie wasn't respected in the gym, she was to a high degree, her training and fight dedication was a high standard all others were compared to. It wasn't because there was some sort of decision made about what is right for women in training, and right for men. It was just a matter how how it just lazily shook out because of how the gym was set up (in space, in practice) based on beliefs nobody was really thinking much about.
As time went by she found lots of ways to try to circumvent and partially solve this problem. She's a very non-imposing person, especially in those days, but she had to force herself to ask, or even beg for clinching/sparring, day after day, asking trainers or potential partners to leave the men's ring and come over into the mixed ring. What was regularly and frictionlessly awarded to ANY male in the gym was given to her as a kind of exception, an exception she would have to fight for. Almost any day she wanted to clinch it was a result of her having to press for it. She hates calling attention to herself in this way, but the truth of the matter was that if she didn't very little sparring or clinch would ever get done. As her husband I know this because I had to every day check with her if she was able to get any of this work in, and if she didn't, I would have to pressure her to stand up for herself. It was a current of in-oppportunity that was based on gender she had to swim against continually, and it was a huge, repeated, aggravating circle of communication that characterized the time there, and when we finally found Petchrungruang where clinch was encouraged and easily had, it was a stark and relieving contrast for us, especially because Sylvie had developed into a clinch first fighter. When she got to Petchrungruang she realized pretty quickly that she didn't even know how to clinch, despite being a "clinch fighter" and training towards clinch for 2+ years in Thailand already. This is a firm and concrete example of how institutionalized custom based on seemingly benign but still sexist beliefs, had controlled the access to knowledge and experience for women, even though that was not its purpose. And even Petchrungruang, because it too is a traditional kai muay, has its own gendered current which Sylvie swims against regularly, in order to get the training she needs and wants, despite its embrace of her as a clinch fighter.
Now, Lanna is a great place to train. An awesome gym, and an awesome group of people. I can't even say that is isn't a good place to train as a woman, in fact, it probably is a very good place to train as a woman because it has benefited from the presence of Sylvie for two and a half years, carving out a space of extremely serious work and expectations, just like Sylvie herself benefited from the very hard working Sylvie Charbonneau before her who was at Lanna for 5 years, had a 50 fight career, and who set the precedent for high volume female fighting. Examples change possibilities. It is a gym with a legacy of long term, serious female fighters for really a decade now. But people should know that the Men's Ring approach that they have is incredibly rare among western friendly gyms (not as Kirian seems to believe, generalized or common), and I would guess among Thai-first Muay Thai gyms it is no norm. But this is the thing. Here is a segregation of the actual training space, based on beliefs that are not even really strongly held by anyone actually IN the gym. The last Thai who seemed to really care about the sanctity of the Men's Ring was a trainer named Wung. He hasn't been at the gym in years. The present Thais (the last time we were there) don't seem to really care about the distinction, though they will enforce it if a female accidentally wanders too close to the Men's Ring. There is some pleasure of the Men's Ring being a "man space" especially during man-testing time (clinching), but this is something that is almost not thought about in any big way. Nobody, including all the western men there, would even think that this segregation would have any impact on female fighters. But in fact, day to day, it had a huge impact on Sylvie. This is almost by definition institutionalized sexism. Men don't even notice it, women really notice it, because it has systematic impact on the real potential of women.
Now, the number of women significantly affected by this Lanna policy have been very few. But the experience of it I think really gave a unique insight into the bottom rope issue for Sylvie, one very different than what most other western female fighters have faced. Yes, going under the rope to enter a fight is a ceremonial nuance that certainly can be done with no skin off your nose. But I would wager that in Thai spaces where you have to enter the under bottom rope for the training ring (or of having a ring that is off-limits all together), there are a set of beliefs about gender which will limit what you can achieve as a female fighter.
One of the things I'll never really forget is seeing Phetjee Jaa look around briefly to make sure that nobody (her Father) is watching, and quickly enter the family training ring through the middle ropes. It's just an unvarnished moment of a young fighter, 13 then, seeing the bottom rope prescription as superfluous, and even in a moment of adolescent independence, something to violate. Endlessly she climbs under the bottom rope in the family ring, for years now, you would think she was used to it. But she was very happy to skip through the middle ropes unscolded, with a small smile. It was not without some irony when I would listen to Sangwean, her father, rail against Thai bias against women, that fighters like his daughter would not be allowed to fight in so many contexts, all the way up to Lumpinee - the family dreamed of her fighting there as a champion one day - not even realizing that the beliefs that anchor those limits of his child are very much the same beliefs he self-enforces on his own daughter, in his own ring at home.
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Would it be better to choose a gym in a more touristic area for what I'm after?
You have some good gyms there, but as to the above I can't imagine that it would be easy to become a sponsored fighter in a non-tourist area. If you are going for a year though, perhaps it is best to try a few gyms, spend 2 weeks at each and see how they feel, see how receptive they are to you.
An interesting alternative is perhaps the new Pumpangmuang gym in Lampang. We haven't a clue about the training there, as it was just being set up, but it is very connected, and as it seems like they are trying to develop a fight team up there, and may be open to sponsoring a fighter with less experience (a unique situation).
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To me the rope thing reminds me a lot of the Christian and Buddhist religious institutions which reserve the highest of ranks for men. The practice suggests a lesser status of women, but I have always been under the impression that it is just seen as a harmless practice by most women.
That sounds to me like a very astute parallel. It's the kind of thing that within the culture is almost invisible, in the sense that it just is the way it is, and nothing profound even really seems implied by it. But then if you go about unpacking it big ideas start to appear.
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The ranter managed to get his digs in at Western female fighters fighting in Thailand and strip Thai female fighters of their agency at the same time.
This is the interesting thing. I'm sure the guy sees himself as a pure protector of female equality, even a champion of women. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even see how much disrespect towards women he managed to dish out, while jumping up and down about how awesome it was that Nakamoto defiantly went flying over the top rope. And yes, it's a great image.
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Loma Lookboonmee vs Kim Townsend
in Open Topics - men and women - General Muay Thai Discussion and News
Posted
Someone sent this to Sylvie this morning, just watched it, so appreciative that the promotion put it up! It's great to see female fighters doing their thing. Sylvie will probably have a post up on this fight today (she's at training, will watch it when she gets home). Must be so frustrating to Kim. Loma fights the fight in a whole different place. Not striking. Space. It's a very simple approach, but not simplistic in the least. Difficult to crack.