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November 18, 2014
Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu
Blog-muay-thai, Fighting, Gendered Experience, Muay Thai, My Best Posts

My Mother’s Shadow – Why She Can’t Understand My Fighting

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - Mother - Patti Gassaway

the above photo is of my mother and me laying on a mat for hours in the middle of Isaan, under the stars, waiting for my fight to come up on the card

For two weeks at the end of October and beginning of November, my parents came out to Thailand for their second visit since I moved here.  The first visit was up in Chiang Mai last year and now they came to Pattaya, where we’ve lived since June of this year.  My parents loved Chiang Mai.  They had mixed feelings about Pattaya.

Part of the timing of this visit was to coincide with my birthday, which is November 3rd.  I don’t believe I’ve had a birthday with my parents since I was a teenager; I just turned 31, so it’s been a while.  It was certainly lovely to have them and my mom made a concerted effort (and effort was required because we were on an exhausting travel schedule) to attend all three of my fights during their visit, and both she and my dad came to watch my training at both gyms on the few days that I had to train between fights.  They want to see what I do.  Were you to collapse the time between the last birthday I had with my parents and this one, you might see a more direct line between the thought-processes of the parents of a teen and the parents of a 31-year-old woman.  Parent’s don’t “get” teenagers and there’s a slightly desperate pressure to guide the little fledglings on to a safe and successful path, but by 31 a lot of decisions have already been made to cut out one’s own path and a parent can only nudge here or there in an attempt to redirect toward familiar lifetime landmarks: having a child, getting a(nother) degree, moving back closer to home, etc.

My mom doesn’t understand fighting.  We’ve been at odds about it for as long as I’ve been fighting, but despite my very clear dedication and the many hours I’ve put into writing about my experiences and thoughts about this path in my life, she still cannot wrap her head around the “art” of what she sees as “violence.”  To my parents’ credit, despite the huge gap in their understanding or appreciation for the nuances of my life in Muay Thai, they have never for an instant caused me to question their support or love for me.  They’re amazing parents.

But it does hurt that there’s this chasm of misunderstanding between my mom and me.  The pain comes from her attempts to graft reference points onto my life-path in an attempt to gain some grip on what can be recognized as “success” from an outsider’s perspective: what belts you win, what names you fight that someone who half pays attention will recognize, what rank you achieve so you can become a teacher in a gym somewhere.  That’s understandable, but it also feels terrible.  Martial Arts in general have a long history of being a process of self-metamorphosis and quite frankly there’s no “end game” in that process.  There is “graduation” in the true sense of the word of continuous increase, but not in the sense that it’s used more commonly as the “culmination” of a number of years spent toward a singular moment of achievement.  There’s a lot of “what’s after all this?” that gets thrown at me from well-meaning folks who want to know what my time spent as a fighter in Thailand will amount to when I ultimately go back to “the real world.”  What will this be used for?  What will I do with my “Thailand fighting experience” degree?

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - Mother - Patti Gassaway - Muay Thai

What’s interesting is that my mom has chosen an unusual path.  She walks it at night, gaining distance in the moonlight.  My mom was brought up in a strongly Catholic household and nearly became a nun; somewhere along that way she realized she had something different in her heart and she changed direction.  Instead of a life wedded to Christ, she spent some time in a joyless marriage before leaving that to start a family with my father – she became a mother to four children and the honorary mother to all our friends who spent endless hours navigating childhood at the Gassaway family house.  She went back to school and earned a Bachelor’s Degree when I was maybe 9 years old and has worked at the University in the same office ever since.  In her free time, which isn’t a whole lot, she has pursued her passions for performance, art, writing, and becoming a Shaman (healing with sound).  That last one isn’t something her mother understood.  Almost none of them is something the family, when the kids were still young, supported.  We do now, of course, but throughout my childhood my mom was doing this largely on her own, without the support of any of her kids or her husband.  We “tolerated” it, I guess.  I’m very proud of her now.  But my mom’s divergence from a path that her own mother could understand is something that makes my mom who she is; it’s also painful to her that her mother could never, and will never (she passed last year) understand.

My mom has difficulty seeing my pleasure.  She doesn’t understand where is the pleasure in fighting in a ring.  She’s picking a very small part of what I do to focus on, but I do acknowledge it’s the tricky bit.  She doesn’t seem to have such a hard time understanding that I put myself into challenging situations, or the concept of a warrior facing herself in battle – all the theoretical aspects she can kind of play around with.  But the part she cannot hold in her hand is that I take pleasure in all of this.  She thinks I take pleasure in something she perceives as violent and I think she has an ethical wall against her nose there; she just can’t see around it.  I’ve explained to her before that violence, to me, is one-sided.  Violence is abuse; violence is exploitation.  What I do is get into a space that has rules and codes, and I’m in there with someone who has agreed to the same rules and codes and has prepared for the fight.  None of that feels like violence to me.  I reckon hitting people and hurting people falls into the house of violence – it’s contact and it’s combat, but there’s an ethical divide for me there.  A soldier fighting another soldier feels ethically different to nearly every person in the world than a soldier putting his hands on a civilian.

And I have experienced real violence.  The youngest of four siblings and the only girl, I was outnumbered and overpowered by my brothers in every altercation.  I was picked on.  And I couldn’t do anything.  When I was 11 years old I was assaulted by strangers and not only was I violated and seriously injured, as well as emotionally and psychologically damaged, but I didn’t even know the words to express what I’d undergone.  That, to me, is real violence.  I cannot hold those early experiences and the experiences I have now in the ring in the same hand – they’re worlds apart.  My mom cannot hold the former experiences at all.  I’m her child; to understand it is just too painful.  But because she won’t look at the violence I didn’t choose, she cannot look at the violence I do choose.  For me, I’ve taken the pain and heaviness of those early violences and turned them into something valuable, something that gives me value; I’ve turned lead into gold.  But my mom doesn’t see the alchemy as a complete transformation, she still sees the lead in the gold; she still perceives it as lead.

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - Patti Gassaway - Somdet To JPEG

I don’t know that I need my mom to really understand and love my fighting the way that I do.  But I do need her to understand that it comes out of the ethics and values that I was raised in, that it’s consistent with the values instilled in me through my upbringing.  It comes out of the path she’s been walking in the moonlight for my whole life.  I was raised to believe that you should honor your passions and your love, but I was also raised in a working class ethic of putting in the time and work that is demanded of you – whether that’s the responsibilities of being a parent, or working a job that doesn’t fulfill you in any recognizable way.  My parents have never loved their jobs and I wasn’t raised-by-example to believe that it’s important to love the means by which you make an income.  But because I don’t have children, I’m not obligated to dedicate my hours in sunlight to making a living and save my true passions for moonlit hours.

The other day my friend Zippy, whose values I admire wholeheartedly, shared a link on his Facebook wall that resonated with me.  The link was for a comic strip drawn by comic blogger Gavin Aung Than  in the style of Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, with the words taken directly from a speech Watterson gave at his Alma Mater, Kenyon College in 1990.  I grew up reading Calvin & Hobbes comics (we had anthologies on our bookshelves) and was most definitely informed by their content in a way that has shaped my overall person.  The comic homage below uses a perfect piece from Watterson’s commencement speech to the Kenyon class of 1990 to illustrate the kinds of messages Calvin & Hobbes was teaching me as a kid:

watterson_advice_large.jpg.CROP.article568-large

I read this comic and immediately started crying.  It came to me via Zippy’s page right after I’d dropped my parents off in Bangkok for an early morning flight back to the US.  They’d visited for nearly two weeks and in that time there had been a lot of moments where it was very clear that my parents don’t fully appreciate what I’m doing out here, even though they went to great lengths to witness it, take part in it and support me in it.  It does hurt that the most substantial undertaking of my life is largely misunderstood by two of the most important people in the world to me.  My mom gently pressured me to think about having children (my middle brother is 36 and he and his wife are expecting their first child – and my parents’ first grandchild – by early next year), or turning what I’m doing here into something recognizable on a western “success chart,” like starting a gym or going back to school for gender studies or becoming a trainer… the kinds of things you ask a kid in college: what’s next?  What are you going to do with your degree?  To be honest, these questions make me incredibly sad because I cannot see myself doing any of them.  To engage in the kind of fighting I’ve thrown myself into, the training regimen and the fight frequency against bigger opponents, one has to be either delusional about one’s own abilities or love the work that’s required for improvement.  I love the work.  To ask me what’s next is as sad as asking the mother of a 3-year-old, “so when you’re kid’s gone, what’s next?”

I have a degree.  My four years of college resulted in a Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts along with crippling student loan debt.  If I didn’t have such high student loan payments each month, my husband and I could stay in Thailand indefinitely.  It’s my choices on the normal timeline of go-t0-school-and-get-a-job that are limiting my current endeavors.  Nobody else is benefiting from my degree – I’m not benefiting from my degree – but I’ve received literally hundreds of messages from persons around the world who profit from what I’m doing now, from what I share online, my writing, my videos, etc.  Going to college was an expected next step after high school, but it wasn’t practical.  I had wanted to become an epidemiologist when I first entered school and became strongly interested in prison reform (that would likely require a law degree) in the later years of my studies.  I don’t think my mom understands either of those subjects in a meaningful way, but because one has to go to school for them and acquire letters after one’s name to practice them, the appreciation takes care of itself.  But college, for me, was largely just an experience.  I think it’s that way for the majority of students who aren’t certain that they want to become a doctor, surgeon, lawyer, chemist, etc.  I came to Thailand to become a better fighter, then ultimately to become a “good” fighter, and I’ve been more diligent about that goal and process than I was when I decided to go to school.  I’ve produced more in my nearly 3 years here than I did in my 4 years of college, and my studies required graduate-level papers for undergraduate studies, so it says a lot that I’m outdoing my former academic work!

But my point here is that while college is an objectively successful path with an assumed direction or end result (the accomplishment of graduation, a degree, or moving on the graduate work or a job in one’s field of study), that’s not the reality of a lot of college graduates.  The speech that Bill Watterson gave at Kenyon College’s commencement in 1990 recognizes that the greatest parts of a college experience are those unplanned spurs of creativity, the social relationships one builds, or the moments in class when you think on an idea you’ve never considered before and it opens your mind or inspires you to take up a more detailed study.  Those were the most meaningful parts of my own college experience, and it’s taking those moments and turning them into a daily practice that I’ve accomplished by moving to Thailand to transform myself by the daily grind of training and fighting full time in a world to which I am an outsider in practically every way.  And I love it.  It’s a constant learning experience.  Within a couple months I expect to have 100 fights in Thailand (over the span of a little under 3 years), an endeavor and accomplishment that no other western woman (or man, that I know if) has done.  And I’ve shared every fight, in video and in writing, as well as my training, experiences, investigations, failures and successes along the way.  This is not a phase in my life; this is my life.

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - Monkey - Mom

While it does pain me to know that my mom might never understand or appreciate fully what it is I do, I also recognize that I have always been my mother’s “shadow” in the Jungian sense, her dark opposite: Jung wrote, “Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”  My mom’s great undertaking has been to be a mother, which was important to her, and to become a healer through shamanism.  In both cases, she is a caretaker.  My path as a fighter is ultimately selfish and abstractly inflicts damage, both to myself and my opponents.  In this sense, I am the blackest, densest shadow to my mother’s self.  While she reads my blog posts and watches my videos, she does not see the community that my page often hosts, or for which my page acts as a nexus point.  And I don’t know that she will be able to see it, because she’s not part of that community and because the shadow of fighting is so deep.  I am very much like my mother and shaped in her image, but I’m an evolved version.  Certainly when the next generation emerges from the shell with new wings or a different beak, the mother bird thinks, “what are you?” even while loving nonetheless.  My mother’s nickname for me (among a few) has for most of my life been “Wretched Little Creature.”  That may not sound as endearing as it is, but I think it adequately expresses the way in which I am her little monster, this thing that she can both love and fear as one.  The only girl after a string of sons, the expectations my mother must have had built into my gender and my bond as her daughter, like a birthright to be like her, must be immense.  And I suppose it’s always like this.  For all the ways I am like my mother, I’m grateful; but for the ways in which we’re different, I’m also grateful, because limits are broken by failing to agree to them.

I’m including Watterson’s entire commencement speech below, because in the greater context of his speech the comic above is made more complete.  I felt affirmed by the quote in the comic, but Watterson’s entire speech resonated with me in a way that made me feel validated.  I feel validated because I have become exactly what I was raised to value.

 

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED
Bill Watterson
Kenyon College Commencement
May 20, 1990

I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I’m walking to the post office on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don’t have my schedule memorized, and I’m not sure which classes I’m taking, or where exactly I’m supposed to be going.
As I walk up the steps to the postoffice, I realize I don’t have my box key, and in fact, I can’t remember what my box number is. I’m certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can’t get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to Middle Path, racking my brains and asking myself, “How many more years until I graduate? …Wait, didn’t I graduate already?? How old AM I?” Then I wake up.

Experience is food for the brain. And four years at Kenyon is a rich meal. I suppose it should be no surprise that your brains will probably burp up Kenyon for a long time. And I think the reason I keep having the dream is because its central image is a metaphor for a good part of life: that is, not knowing where you’re going or what you’re doing.
I graduated exactly ten years ago. That doesn’t give me a great deal of experience to speak from, but I’m emboldened by the fact that I can’t remember a bit of MY commencement, and I trust that in half an hour, you won’t remember of yours either.

In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book.
Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints, and I could work for several hours at a stretch.

The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn’t finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn’t much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry.
The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, flowery English poets didn’t seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.
My friends and I liked the finished painting so much in fact, that we decided I should ask permission to do it. As you might expect, the housing director was curious to know why I wanted to paint this elaborate picture on my ceiling a few weeks before school let out. Well, you don’t get to be a sophomore at Kenyon without learning how to fabricate ideas you never had, but I guess it was obvious that my idea was being proposed retroactively. It ended up that I was allowed to paint the picture, so long as I painted over it and returned the ceiling to normal at the end of the year. And that’s what I did.

Despite the futility of the whole episode, my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.

It’s surprising how hard we’ll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I’ve learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it’s how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.
If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I’ve found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I’ve had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.
You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.
For me, it’s been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I’ve been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.
A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you’ll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

So, what’s it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don’t recommend it.

I don’t look back on my first few years out of school with much affection, and if I could have talked to you six months ago, I’d have encouraged you all to flunk some classes and postpone this moment as long as possible. But now it’s too late.
Unfortunately, that was all the advice I really had. When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I’d drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia.

Boy, was I smug.

As it turned out, my editor instantly regretted his decision to hire me. By the end of the summer, I’d been given notice; by the beginning of winter, I was in an unemployment line; and by the end of my first year away from Kenyon, I was broke and living with my parents again. You can imagine how upset my dad was when he learned that Kenyon doesn’t give refunds.
Watching my career explode on the lauchpad caused some soul searching. I eventually admitted that I didn’t have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my firs love, comic strips.
For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job.

A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.
It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.

It’s funny how at Kenyon, you take for granted that the people around you think about more than the last episode of Dynasty. I guess that’s what it means to be in an ivory tower.

Anyway, after a few months at this job, I was starved for some life of the mind that, during my lunch break, I used to read those poli sci books that I’d somehow never quite finished when I was here. Some of those books were actually kind of interesting. It was a rude shock to see just how empty and robotic life can be when you don’t care about what you’re doing, and the only reason you’re there is to pay the bills.
Thoreau said,

“the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

That’s one of those dumb cocktail quotations that will strike fear in your heart as you get older. Actually, I was leading a life of loud desperation.

When it seemed I would be writing about “Midnite Madness Sale-abrations” for the rest of my life, a friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea.

I tell you all this because it’s worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It’s a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you’ll probably take a few.

I still haven’t drawn the strip as long as it took me to get the job. To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.
Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn’t in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.

Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn’t what I caught. I’ve wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I’d be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions.
To make a business decision, you don’t need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.

As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons.
Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values, rules and rewards.
The so-called “opportunity” I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I’d need.
What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts.

On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we’ve been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.
Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it’s going to come in handy all the time.

I think you’ll find that Kenyon touched a deep part of you. These have been formative years. Chances are, at least of your roommates has taught you everything ugly about human nature you ever wanted to know.
With luck, you’ve also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight or interest you’d never had before. Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.
Graduating from Kenyon, I suspect you’ll find yourselves quite well prepared indeed.

I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your achievement.

 

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - Patti and Steve Gassaway JPEG

 

If you liked this article you may enjoy reading:

Sarah Conner & My Egg Donation: The “Sacrifice” of My Body For Muay Thai

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Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

The Author Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

A 103 lb. (46 kg) female Muay Thai fighter. Originally I trained under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) and Kaensak sor. Ploenjit in New Jersey. I then moved to Thailand to train and fight full time in April of 2012, devoting myself to fighting 100 Thai fights, as well as blogging full time. Having surpassed 100 fights in 3 years here, my new goal is to fight an impossible 200 times in Thailand, as much as I possibly can, and to continue to write my experience.

1 Comment

  • Flora
    November 16, 2015 1:27 am

    Just sent it to my mom, she answer “I got the message”. Thanks for this article, it is wonderful.

    Reply

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[Update May 2015: Here is my account of the Backward Facing Tigers I received next] above video: my thoughts on just coming out from the 2 hrs of tattooing my sak yant. As one can see, I was significantly affected by the experience, but was in good spirits. It is a lot to digest. What This Sak Yant Meant to Me People may not realize it from the fact that I post online and blog, and even sometimes write about very personal things, but I’m an extremely private person. And even though I have probably put more out there about

When are you ready to fight Muay Thai - sylvie

How Do You Know When You’re Ready to Fight Muay Thai?

A few months ago I wrote post titled Game Day: Why You Should Fight Muay Thai in Thailand.  This is a follow up or “part two” to that post on the subject of how you know when you’re ready to fight, in Thailand or otherwise. When Are You Ready? Not long ago a fellow who I met through my Facebook page and who made it out to Thailand to train at a gym that is also in Chiang Mai came by Lanna to train with us.  After a full session including sparring he started talking about how he expected to

Sylvie's Tips - Muay Thai Tips, Techniques and Helps from Thailand

Sylvie’s Tips – Muay Thai Tips, Techniques & Helps from Thailand

  This is a new feature I’m going to try my hand at. I’ve got a lot on my plate out here, but it feels like it would be a shame to waste some of the small technical Muay Thai know-hows I’ve run into, so I’m going to try to stop and film them in short segments when I come across a new one. Sometimes it will be something I’ve discovered in my own struggle to synthesize all the amazing technique that is surrounding me, but mostly I hope it is short pieces of instructions or help from those teaching

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - training Muay Thai

Why Your Muay Thai Dreams Might Not Come True in Thailand – The Two Great Fears for Fighting

(above) my video introduction the common fight fears of gassing out and shin pain, the video below shows Den talking about what to do for fight conditioning Some Tough Talk One of the advantages of training non-stop in Thailand for so long is a sense of perspective I’ve gained on people who come with Muay Thai dreams. I’ve met maybe 100 people over the past year and a half who have come through the gym with serious aspirations to fight. They arrive very enthused, but less than a quarter of them actually do fight and none of them – not

The 80 Percent Fight - female Muay Thai in Thailand

The 80 Percent Fight – A Hidden Story Behind Western and Thai Match Ups

Any westerner fighting in Thailand has an interest in portraying their Thai opponents as being the best and fighting at the top of their capabilities.  And, to be fair, we assume and hope that this is true in our own minds.  We come here to train hard and fight hard, and from our understanding of fighting in the west we assume quite fairly that our opponents are doing the same.  But in Thailand, things are very often not what they seem; perhaps especially when gazing with western expectations. My experience of fighting in Thailand started over 5 years ago now

Sarah Conner - Sacrifice - Body Muay Thai

Sarah Conner & My Egg Donation: The “Sacrifice” of Body For Muay Thai

In the world of athletics and motivational memes, the word “sacrifice” gets thrown around a lot.  All the things that one must sacrifice in the name of greatness, the hardships of waking up to train, missing out on nights of drinking with friends… whatever.  I know people use this word without truly dissecting the concept, it’s just part of sport-speak.  But I don’t use this word because it means a lot to me. When I think of the word “sacrifice” I think of giving up something of immense value – sacrifice is painful, not unfortunate or just hard.  Abraham willing

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - Waiting Before the Fight - Muay Thai

What the First Year of Fighting Means – a Husband’s Point of View

this space is Sylvie’s space, where she writes her record. But with the first year of fighting completed I felt I wanted to add my thoughts, as a husband. In part because Sylvie is fighting for all of us, a family.    guest post, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu I’m a pretty quiet guy around the gym and at fights, so much so people tend to not get past the exterior. But when they do one of the things they ask me is “Do you ever get worried when Sylvie goes in there?” This is such a natural thing to ask a

Under the Bottom Rope - Sylvie and sakyant-001

Stories of The Bottom Rope

I’ve written about the bottom rope before (articles at bottom) and this is my response to it coming up again recently. Interestingly, it was reintroduced by an American coach who was saying that his female fighters have always and will always go over the top rope, even in Thailand. Unfortunately, he had some other things to say about why he encourages his fighters to disregard this custom that, to me, smack of a particular racism and sexism that fantasizes about the exploited Thai female body that wasn’t something I could get behind. Firstly, a lot of people in the west

Lewish Pugh by Terje Eggum

The Myth of Overtraining – Endurance, Physical and Mental for Muay Thai

This piece flowed out of my experiences that led to writing The Fragility of Western Masculinity, and responses to this post lead to me writing Endurance is a Skill. Read All My Articles on Overtraining Preface – I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long while and two things happened recently that have allowed me to finally pull it together. The first thing was writing to Lewis Pugh, who is an incredible athlete and ocean advocate who swims in extreme conditions in order to draw attention to the effects of climate change on the earth’s oceans.  (Picture swimming

Gwang-Chon-Gambling-Beetle-Fights-Norther-Thailand-w1200

Underground Gambling, Beetle Fights, Heart and the Clinch of Muay Thai

File this under The Culture of Muay. If you are to understand Muay Thai, I mean really understand it and see how it grew out of Thai society, and the forces that sustain and feed it today, you have to appreciate Fight Culture. It is not just the techniques and gyms that make up Muay Thai in Thailand, but rather a whole system of beliefs and experiences the pull together the karma and excitements of gambling – gambling on contests of body and soul. Part 1 on the Battle Beetles of the North is here: Muay Thai Clinch is Not

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Sylvie’s Tips – Muay Thai Techniques

Sylvie's Tips - Play Knees on the Bag - Pattaya Muay Thai

Sylvie’s Tips – How I Improved My Knee Bagwork | Rounds of Play Knees

“Play Knees” – Sylvie’s Tips video above The other day I put up a video of “play knees,” bagwork that Muay Thai legend Sakmongkol taught me at WKO, here in Pattaya. He was displeased with me merely doing counted, repetition knee drills, the traditional Muay Thai camp endless knees on the bag that everyone knows. (These are still good and useful, by the way, just for stamina.) He wanted me to do play knees, to move the bag around in fight simulation action and energy. It was something I’ve never seen before, but I did my best to adopt it.

Sylvie's Tips - Improving Your Muay Thai Elbows Using a Wall

Sylvie’s Tips – Improve Your Muay Thai Elbows Using a Wall

Making Your Elbows (Hooks & Crosses) Fast, Direct and Accurate This is a pretty simple technique and you can find a wall anywhere, so we can mark this down as one of the most accessible tools there is. Basically, I have been alerted to the folly of how my arms launch away from my body when I throw strikes, which is detrimental to both power and control. Sagat is the one who really explained trajectory to me [<<watch that session to see what this philosophy of strking is about], showing how a wind-up is just wasted space, energy and time,

Sylvie's Tips Arm Position Angle on the Muay Thai Kick-w1400

Sylvie’s Tips – Arm Position on the Kick, A Different Arm Angle

a cross position and slash motion on the arm swing The Muay Thai Kick Arm Swing Angle One of the things you learn when you come to Thailand longer term is that there are many, many ways of doing something. You may have learned that there is “one” way, or been corrected away from a “wrong” way, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, but technique in Thailand is developed somewhat individually, over a long period of time, influenced by different styles and elements from trainers. It is not uncommon to be corrected in different directions by different trainers,

Low Kick Counter - Round Kick Counter - Dieselnoi

Sylvie’s Tips: 2 Wicked Dieselnoi Knee Counters to Muay Thai Kicks [GIFs]

The Sylvie’s Tips feature is a collection of techniques and tips I’ve picked up in my time in Thailand, from some of the best trainers in the world. I’ve never seen these exact counters before, and they come from the greatest knee fighter in history, Dieselnoi, during my filming of a nakmuaynation.com private. You can read about that private here. Unique Knee Counter to Round Kick I’ve actually been on the receiving end of this knee to the hamstring a number of times, but only from my trainer, Pi Nu, during padwork. He thinks it’s hilarious and usually calls out boran!

Sylvie's Tips - Training the Long Guard on the Bag

Sylvie’s Tips: Training Long Guard on the Bag | Firming Up

above, my short Sylvie’s Tips on how I’m practicing Long Guard on the bag lately Everything little thing we do on the bag is repetition, even unconscious things can be “trained” into you. Simply taking a time out and walking back from the bag to reset during your rounds is that kind of small element. The further I get in my Muay Thai journey, the more I’m examining my bagwork (and shadow) for unconscious elements that I’m accidentally, or even non-efficiently training. It’s about awareness, so that I can figure out how to get my training into the ring with me

Different Kinds of Muay Thai Knee Techniques - Sylvie's Tips

Sylvie’s Tips: Different Kinds of Muay Thai Knees

In my Dieselnoi Instruction post I made a video demonstrating some of the different sorts of knees used in Muay Thai. I’m not an expert in any of these, but I felt it might be good to just present an overview as a single, “proper” knee does not so much exist in Muay Thai, and there are many different techniques used for different purposes. Sometimes the focus is damage done, or accumulating points, or even just making sure the knee is clearly visible to the judges. As I say in the introduction to the video, these are all variations on knees and,

How to Crush the Head in the Thai Clinch - Crush the Head

Video Tip: The Hand Position in the Muay Thai Clinch Lock – Bank Petchrungruang

How to Crush the Head and Neck Kru Nu’s son Bank has a terribly strong squeeze in the clinch, and ends up just crushing me most of the time when we practice. He just turned 14 and earlier this year began his Lumpinee career. So today I asked him to show me the hand position he uses, and learned that all this time I’ve been doing it backwards, leveraging with the wrong arm, and wrongly using the face of my wrist instead of the blade of my forearm. You are basically crushing the opponent’s forehead into your own shoulder, with

How to Practice Muay Thai Knees on the Rope - Sylvie's Tips

Sylvie’s Tips: How to Practice Knees on the Rope: Goh Teaches His Daughter Bai

The real instruction doesn’t come until minute 1:40 but the thought to record Bai jumping in to practice knees with the boys was simply because it was pretty cute.  Then her dad came over to correct her form (she was imitating the boys, mostly one who is a few down in the row).  Bai is 9 years old and has a few fights; this drill is something all the kids do at the start of training as a warmup and conditioning drill.  I’m pretty sure they do a thousand repetitions.  As Bai first starts out, her father Goh (who is

Muay Thai Low Kick - Where to Kick the Thigh - Sylvie's Tips

Sylvie’s Tips – Low Kick: Where to Kick the Leg – the Sensitive IT Band

Kick Where it Hurts This is another installment of Sylvie’s Tips where I seek to share some of the things my Thai trainers are teaching. The other day Kru Nu landed a couple leg kicks on my right (back) leg during padwork.  He’s got a good low kick and his Thai students have really whippy, nasty low kicks as well.  The first one hurt and all, but the second one – which was a good 10 minutes after the first – landed on just such the perfect spot, with just enough force, and while my weight was on it that

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Sylvie’s Tips – Working On Your Teep

We got a question on the Muay Thai Roundtable forum the other day that I reckon is a pretty common issue. When I first started taking Muay Thai from Master K, he described the teep as the “electric fence” around every other technique. Teep comes first, basically – the first line of defense and keeping your opponent out of your space until you want them there. And I sucked at teeping for a really long time. It’s only fairly recently, in the last 1.5 years maybe, that my teep has become a favorite technique, and it didn’t become that way because

Jatukam showing the Matrix style Muay Thai

Sylvie’s Tips – Train the Matrix on the Bag – Jatukam Petchrungruang

  Just a little bagwork drill/game that I ran into in the gym by one of my favorite young fighters, Jatukam. Jatukam is 14 or 15 years old and just crushes his competition at Lumpinee and Rajadamnern.  He’s one of the best fighters at 40 kg (88 lbs) and has a really clever, muay femur style, which is the tricky and evasive style mostly associated in the west with Saenchai.  He’s Southpaw and has a nasty teep, but that doesn’t stop him from getting in close and smashing my face with solid left crosses when we spar.  He’ll smile the

Sylvie's Tips - Counter to the Wall of China-w800

Sylvie’s Tips – Counter to the Wall of China Block and More

n Sylvie’s Tips I try to capture on video various small techniques that I run into while training. The way that it happens in Thailand, things are seldom taught to you in the form of formal instruction, rather they come up suddenly in training and then are gone. I’m pretty shy, so it’s hard actually go around and request these things; I don’t want to stop everyone and have them repeat things for the camera. In this case though we arrived at O. Meekhun gym to find organized instruction being given to Phetjee Jaa and one of the boys named

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For Clinch Purists – The Technique of Tanadet’s Long Clinch and the 9th Limb

This post is in the spirit of this site, showing things in progress, as if passing reading notes so others can think along (and even train along) with me. I’ve thought a lot about this clinch since first witnessing it about 3 years ago. I’ve finally gotten myself to the position where I can teach it to myself. I first wrote about Tanadet (Poda) 2 years ago.  The extended film clip below Kevin made as a study film for me, so I could figure out just what it is that Tanadet was doing. If you want a very good sense

Some of My Best Posts

Violence in Muay Thai

The Importance of Violence in Muay Thai

I’ve written before about how Muay Thai and fighting, to me, isn’t “violence.” My argument was that I have experienced real violence, the above is the story of my rape as a child, and that the consent and preparation involved in fighting isn’t the same. There is, however, a flavor of violence in Muay Thai – it is, as my old boxing coach Ray Valez would say, “the hurt business” and ultimately any fighter pushing for the highest form of the art of Muay Thai has to embrace this. Yesterday there was a young woman at my gym, Petchrungruang, who

Capture2

The Fighter and Unconscious Tension – Recognize and Release

I just had to do my annual visa run, which requires sitting in a van full of total strangers for the 11 hour drive up to the border with Laos, an overnight stay, then the 11 hour drive back down to Pattaya. It’s grueling. Sitting in a car or a plane for this number of hours takes a toll on anyone. It’s astonishing how tired sitting on your ass makes you. I’m not very social, so I always put as many hours of podcasts and audio books as possible on my player so I can leave my headphones in the

Mental Training - People Pleasing and the Fighter

How Many Fucks? Zero. The People Pleaser and the Fighter

Apologies to my younger readers, this post is laced with profanity. Sometimes profanity has a special power to describe things in ways other words can’t. The plastic stool underneath me is too far out from the actual corner and my body kind of tips backwards as my cornermen lift my legs into their hands and rub icy cold water on my thighs and shins. I try to balance myself on the ropes but it’s more awkward and I reposition my forearms to the tops of my thighs; the cold water is going over my head now, which feels nice because

Chiang Mai Best Female Fighting in the World

Why Chiang Mai Has the Best Female Muay Thai Fighting in the World

This article is about the flourishing Muay Thai of Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, becoming the best female fight city in the country and very possibly in the entire world. No other city boasts such a complete native female Thai fight scene: it’s fed by side-bet (gambling) fights in the outlying provinces, stabilized by Sports Schools, hosted at a large number of local stadia (all of which allow women to fight in them) which hold fights every night of the week, and supported by the Thai Muay Siam media coverage. If you are a female Muay Thai fighter, this

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Interview with IFMA’s Stephan Fox | Muaythai in the Olympics and More

Stephan Fox is the General Secretary of the International Federation of Muaythai Amateur (IFMA) and the Vice-President of the World Muaythai Council (WMC).  He is a huge figure in the recognition and development of amateur Muaythai in Thailand, as well as international competition with both the IFMA and WMC. After 20 years of work, the International Olympic Committee has just given provisional recognition for possible inclusion in the Olympics – let me repeat that: 20 years of work for that, and Mr. Fox’s response is, “right on schedule.” above, the full 30 minute interview with Stephan Fox We cover a range of

the-secret-to-padwork-in-thailand

The Secret to Great Muay Thai Padwork in Thailand – Get the Most Out of It

What follows is not authoritative, it is just the things I’ve gleaned in my nearly 5 years of full time training at my various gyms, and in traveling around and taking privates from some of the best in Thailand. You can get access to my growing Muay Thai library with legends for a suggested pledge of $5. I read a rant on Reddit that, despite its intense language, does open up that some people do get frustrated training in Thailand, finding a lack of instruction and padwork that be repetitive. I do believe there is no better place in the

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“This Is Business” | The Imitation Game, Playing to the Gamblers

Alex and Note are standing on opposite corners of the ring, wearing shinguards and gloves, hanging out like they’re about to do anything other than sparring. They’re totally relaxed, laughing, joking. Kru Nu is pacing around and there’s a buzz around the circumference of the ring while the remainder of the boys all takes their positions along the ropes as spectators and Goh – one of the padmen for the kids – is hollering for Chicken Man. Kru Nu squats down with his hands on the top rope, peering under the staircase and out into the chicken farm, the most likely

fighting-above-weight-in-thailand

Female Fighters | Fighting Above Weight in Thailand & How to Win

First off, let me say it: weight, its not that big of a deal. There is a strong caveat to this, which is that it is a definite advantage, but so is height, or knowing the scoring system, or fighting since you were 10, or having a fight on your  home turf, and so many other things. So while weight is always a potential advantage, it is just one among many possible advantages. You can beat people who have the weight advantage over you, just like you can with any of those other advantages. I know that in the West

perfect-muay-thai-technique

Precision – A Basic Motivation Mistake in Some Western Training

read my guest post articles a Husband’s Point of View A Husband’s Point of View – Consider this a working theory. I’ve written about the uniqueness of Thai style training before, in The Slow Cook vs the Hack, and this article can be seen as something of an extension of that. But as Sylvie’s husband watching her progress through very earnest training and a hell of a lot of fighting, and seeing numerous westerners come through her Thai gyms, I’ve come upon something I think is pretty important. What led me to this is a very particular quality many serious

Guide to Muay Thai Gym Etiquette - Not Offend

Guide to Thailand Muay Thai Gym Etiquette – How to Be Polite

Below is meant to be a helpful guide, something that I wish I had when I first came to training Thailand. These are just things I’ve noticed in my 4 years of training and fighting here and are not hard and fast rules to follow. If you want to be polite in Thailand gyms, in a culture that is different than your own, these are just a few things to look for. There are of course a wide variety of gym experiences in Thailand, and things that are impolite in a small, family Thai-style gym might very well be common

Pitbull - Fear and Agression in Muay Thai

Fear of Escalation in Sparring and Training Aggression as a Skill

A lot of us feel that aggression comes with an “on/off” switch, and that we should be able to flick it back and forth based on context. Many of us who are learning Muay Thai struggle with aggression, perhaps because we don’t feel that we are “naturally aggressive,” and it’s frustrating to watch those who are seemingly naturally gifted with aggression succeed in ways that we don’t see in ourselves. But aggression isn’t natural, even if it does seem innate in some more than others. I contend that aggression feels natural to some due to having spent years cultivating it before they

Dracula Guard position - Muay Thai

Padwork with Daeng at Lanna – Dracula Guard (Long Guard Variation)

First a Little Bit About Daeng Daeng is one of the most fight-focused trainers I’ve trained with. When I was training at Lanna Muay Thai in Chiang Mai, it was Daeng who invested the most in diagnosing and fixing weaknesses in my fighting. He wasn’t my main trainer, but he’s a very good teacher and has a keen eye for finding how to improve on existing strengths and correct errors. I’d initially gotten a bit stuck with a technically brilliant but lazy and unmotivated trainer – that guy was a great trainer for some, just not for me – and Daeng

Arjan Surat - Dejrat Gym in Bangkok - Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

Arjan Surat of Dejrat Gym – 1 Hour Private | Coach of the Thai National Team

Join and Study my Muay Thai Library of Legends This is a full video of a private I took with Arjan Surat, Head Coach of the Thai National Team, and owner of the esteemed (but lesser known to the west) Dejrat Gym in Bangkok. I did a short review of the gym when I interviewed female fighter Kaitlin Young, and it was then that I met Arjan Surat for the first time: an absolutely extraordinary teacher and life-force of Muay Thai. The man is Old School-Old School, telling me that he’s been holding pads longer than I’ve been alive (he’s

The Gendered Experience

Sylvie and Robyn - Petchrungruang

Company in a Male Space – Training with a Friend

The afternoons at Petchrungruang have been crowded lately.  I’m sitting in a somewhat unusual spot between the two rings, rolling my wraps. I’m sitting here because my usual spot on a bench across the gym has already been usurped by a few Italians who train in the evenings; it’s a wrench in my routine, but a sublimely mild one. My friend Robyn is visiting from the US and will have a fight next week. She looks at me while we sit and adjust our wraps, “What do you want to work on today?” Robyn asks. I’m stumped. There are things

Feminism and Thai Traditional Culture

Navigating Western Feminism, Traditional Thailand and Muay Thai

There is a natural division in western feminist thinking, and in some way this post is about that divide. But much more it is about the situational ethics, the principles we may want to protect and forward, when visiting or even living in a traditional culture like Thailand; when coming to a different culture as a western privileged woman. This post is a single-person deliberation about how to best do so in the context of Muay Thai and its unique traditions in Thailand, how I am attempting to do so. Hopefully this resonates with others. Not all women from the

First Kathoey Fighter at Lumpinee - Angie Petchrungrung 2

Making History: Angie First Transgender Fighter at Lumpinee Stadium

Email subscribers, see the interview here Almost two years ago I interviewed Angie in anticipation of her first Muay Thai fight, after only a few months of training in Muay Thai. Remarkably, two weeks from now Angie will be having her debut fight at the legendary Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok. A historic fight. She will be the first kathoey (Trans) fighter to enter those ropes. The famed Nong Toom “Beautiful Boxer” fought at Lumpinee and was a kathoey, but she didn’t fully fight as a “kathoey fighter”. She fought to afford sexual reassignment surgery, would fight wearing lipstick in the ring, but fought

chiangmai_women_barebreasted

Keep Your Shirt On – Another Read on Thai Modesty

A few weeks ago I posted an entry on Thai modesty and the issue of bare chests (on men) within and outside of the camp, titled “Of Modesty and Men -Thai Manners In and Out of Camp”.  In short, it is considered impolite for men to go bare-chested in public but it is completely acceptable (and encouraged) to be shirtless in the gym.  Some men at the camp bend the limits and go shirtless into a convenience store that shares a driveway with the gym, but this is considered (by my eye-witness and personal understanding of Thai manners) out of

Treated Like a Lady - Self-Defense Class - Female Only-w1400

Treated Like a “Lady” | The Benefits/Complications of Female Only Classes

This post is taken from a response I posted on the Women Only section of the Roundtable Forum – where confirmed female members discuss all things Muay Thai. If you are a female who trains in Muay Thai do join our group. The question was raised there by one of our members about the benefits and/or complications of female only classes. Her question specifically referenced “self defense” classes and women wanting to be prepared physically and mentally for an assault, and being disappointed that they were treated “ladylike” in those courses; but there are gyms that offer “women’s classes” that

Angie Trans Man Sparrring Muay Thai - Pattaya-001

The Petchrungruang Fight Simulator – Transgender Fighter Angie vs. Mirko

At Petchrungruang, there is sparring going on at any given moment in the afternoons. The little kids fly around the smaller ring with abandon, sparring for hours until they get tired and just stop. The older kids will match themselves up and play for a few rounds, or if they’re getting ready for a fight the sparring might be a bit more serious. Occasionally, my trainer likes to match two fighters up and put them in the center of the ring for a “mock fight.” We wear shinguards and gloves, but someone is assigned to be time-keeper and they ring an

Tom and Dee Confrontation - Thailand - BTS 2

A Tom and Dee Scolded on the BTS – A Breaking Point of Thai Norms

The Coconuts Bangkok translation and paraphrase: Woman: Oh, I’m sorry. This is a public venue. Aren’t you shameless, snuggling up to each other like that? Tom: So if you see farangs doing that, do you yell at them too? Woman: Then it’s the farangs’ business. Tom: So why do you discriminate? Woman: Well, they don’t do it on the BTS. I don’t discriminate. Thai tradition, you know. I warned you because I want the best for you. Rejecting the logic that only foreigners are off the hook and can do whatevs, the tom tells the woman to keep her lecturing

Lobloo Female Protection Groin Guard Review - Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu 8 limbs-w1400

The Lobloo Aeroslim Female Groin Guard – A Review | My Amazon Strap

The Lobloo Aero Slim Female Groin Guard inexpensive very well designed – light weight, simple, effective, comfortable could improve technique – groin confidence in clinch, kicks, knees free shipping, arrives fast I love the Lobloo female groin guard. For the most part, I think women don’t even wear groin protection because there are so few options for us – my friend Emma Thomas wrote about these nightmares here – btw, she’s getting one now too – and of those available very few are functional and/or comfortable…but the Lobloo is both. While I obviously like that this groin guard protects me

JR at the gym

Revealing: I’m a Muay Thai Fighter

  There’s a street vendor cart right below my balcony (well, many floors below my balcony, but a direct fall/jump) that sells the most delicious fried chicken.  Sometimes I step out and look over the railing to see if they have a good selection and then go pick the pieces I spied, because I love food and the deliciousness of this chicken is just beyond mortal resistance. It used to be a lady and her husband with their chubby daughter running around everywhere, but then the daughter had to go to school and now they seem to have brought in

Interview with Angie Petchrungruang - kathoey fighter pattaya

Interview with Transgender Fighter Angie Petchrungruang

My interview with Angie this morning: Angie has been training consistently and with dedication at Petchrungruang Gym in Pattaya for about a year and a half now. When she first appeared at the gym we didn’t speak at all; she was only there in the afternoons and came with a friend, who wasn’t really into Muay Thai, so the pair of them kind of peripheral to my awareness. But over time Angie became more serious – she wanted to fight – and her training became more sincere as her friends drifted out of the gym. That’s when Angie and I

The Expense of Competition - Saya Ito, Phetjee Jaa and Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

The Expense of Competition – Training with Former Opponent Saya Ito

above: Saya Ito, me and Phetjee Jaa I’m standing outside the ring in the late evening, maybe around 7:30 PM, watching Japanese world champion Saya Ito crawl under the bottom rope to stand next to Phetjee Jaa.  I’ve got stitches in my head, so I’m not allowed to clinch yet but I’m staying to watch.  Saya has been training at the O. Meekhun Gym for a couple weeks now. It’s her second time at the gym since I’ve been training here and she’s gearing up for a WPMF title fight in Japan on April 5th (today!).  She’s not good at

Sakmongkol talk

Sakmongkol Muay Thai – Days 25 and 26 – Rage and Energy – WKO Pattaya

*** A quick note on how these days are numbered: I go by only counting actual days of training with Sakmongkol, so I’ve been in Pattaya longer than 26 days and these two days actually have a day of rest between them. Day 25 – Back to Training with Mong On Saturday I finally got Sakmongkol to agree to hold pads for me after nearly a week of not training our extra hour and a few days of him not holding pads for me at all.  We both got sick and I took Wednesday off to recover, when I came

no-shoes

Of Modesty and Men – Thai Manners In and Out of Camp

  Power in Modesty? I just read an online article on the topic of Evangelical clothing stores popping up “all over” Brazil. The author is quick to note that Brazil is “known for it’s tiny bikinis,” so there’s some kind of shock expected from the popularity (in number as there is no note on the sales) of these modest clothing stores. The author raises the question, mostly in the title of the article, of whether there is power in modesty. If focus is taken away from the body and how “hot” it looks, can women accomplish more, go farther in

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