“I Don’t Overburden the Women [But] I Don’t Make It Easy for Them”. How Martial Arts May Transform Relations Between Men and Women?

Abstrakt

The following article is focused on the intersexual sparrings in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The article reveals the results of the ethnographic research conducted from 2016 to 2019 in one Brazilian jiu-jitsu club in Warsaw, Poland. For the purposes of confronting women, male practitioners created a separate style of fighting, which included limiting physical advantages (such as strength or body weight) and significantly less oriented towards rivalry. The development of such a style, prevents from turning the intersexual sparrings into the ritual acts of “male domination”. It is related with the new idea of male identity. However, occasionally the manifestations of hegemonic masculinity appeared: when women were close to defat men or had a discernible advantage during sparring session.