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Interview with Anne Lieberman Who Researched Female Fighters in Thailand

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu
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Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu Fellow Traveler

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

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An excellent interview of Anne Lieberman who conducted her Fulbright research in Thailand, in part, interviewing western female fighters, including myself (back on my first visit in 2010). She's a great voice for female fighting and is a Muay Thai fighter in the NYC area now. One of the first people to inspire me to research and study Muay Thai and not just live it.

https://www.themuse.com/…/fight-like-a-girl-the-role-of-wom…

an excerpt:
"...But there's another layer to training as a woman in Thailand—one that is more controversial—and that's about the sexual politics at play, especially between male trainers and female fighters. Few farang female fighters come and live in Thailand for extended periods of time. I had the opportunity to interview several of them, as I felt that their experience was integral to how female fighters are viewed in Thailand and how they constantly negotiate their place in a male-dominated sport.

Many of them expressed that they felt some kind of sexual pressure from their trainers. The intensity varied: One woman I interviewed was almost raped, another was verbally harassed and made uncomfortable by a trainer's advances; several ended up dating their trainers. In some cases, if a woman wouldn't sleep with her trainer, this affected the kind of training she received.

This is not unique to Thailand, though—these kinds of sexual dynamics take place everywhere. (The story of the woman raped by her Jiu-Jitsu instructors in Maryland is a prime example of this.) But what was unique to Thailand is that there seemed to be this perception that farang women were promiscuous partiers and that white women would (and wanted to) sleep with almost anyone. This is one of the many ways the fraught relationship between tourism and sex and sexuality in Thailand bubbles over into the Muay Thai world..."

 

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