Wednesday, June 30, 2021-
Evening.
I rented a bike from the hostel and cycled to the Kyrgyzstan Top Team headquarters with my cell phone in one hand to check Google maps. The route took me down patched up streets full of pot holes, or else streets under construction with the asphalt completely torn up. I bumped my way down dirt roads, weaving in and out of backhoes with Chinese characters on them and around construction workers digging ditches.
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| My view while biking through Bishkek |
I passed a police station with a van out front. Several men sat in the back behind caged bars. I crossed streets the way I learned how to do in China: playing Frogger across the street by dodging incoming traffic as horns honked.
I got to the gym around 6:45 pm.
When I went inside, the 5 pm class was still training. The mat was filled with blue belts and purple belts rolling on the mats; 5 pm must be the advanced class. I looked for A, but I didn’t see her. I texted her to let her know I was here. I was already dressed for class, so I took out my gi and put it on.
A came in then.
“What are you doing?” she said in perfect English.
“Oh, I just got ready for class, I was looking for you,” I said.
“Come, you should put your stuff in the locker room,” she said.
“That’s okay, I can just keep it out here, I don’t need to go in there,” I said. Since I’ve started presenting masculine, I have been approached by women in bathrooms and locker rooms on multiple occasions, informing me that I am in the wrong locker room, or else turning to their friends to ask, “why is there a boy in the bathroom?” Since it started happening on more frequent occasions and I am identifying as trans, I had switched to using the men’s room much to my recent relief since men do not have a need to police bathroom spaces the way women apparently do. I didn’t really want to go into the locker room here either.
“No, this place is for training, the locker room is for changing,” she said with a slight scold in her voice. I had made a faux-paus. In this gym, clearly etiquette dictated that one got ready in the locker room.
“That’s okay, I came already dressed, I don’t need to go in there,” I said again.
“The professor isn’t going to like that,” she insisted. I reluctantly agreed, and followed her into a small room in the back. I put my backpack in the women’s locker room.
When we returned to the mat, she turned to me.
“So, males and females do not train together here,” she explained. I nodded, my heart sinking in disappointment but also not surprised since it was like that when I visited Osh six years ago. “They have a special class for women on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she continued. “But it is all white belts, total beginner stuff. My friend who trains and coaches the women here, Aizhan, is a blue belt, so they let her come to the white belt men’s class and I come so that she can have a partner. I’m a white belt but have experience training a lot in Prague. Aizhan said since you’re a purple belt, you would be totally bored in the women’s class. So we wanted to invite you to this class.”
Aizhan approached us then and introduced herself, of shorter stature but broad shouldered and thick. She carried herself with ease and confidence, and was clearly very athletic with tomboy vibes.
“Are the rules about males and females not training together there because they are Muslim?” I asked.
“Yes, it is partially because of Islam,” A said.
“Well, what about the guys who aren’t Muslim, can they still train with us?” I asked.
“No, it’s a pretty strict rule. There are two reasons for the rule. They used to have co-ed classes here, actually, but we got a new coach who is from Dagastan and he is Muslim, so that is one reason they don’t allow training with women. The second reason is because when they did have mixed classes there was a lot of talking and socializing, and not enough discipline, so they decided to separate the classes for that reason as well. Now women have their own class.”
So that’s why the person behind the WhatsApp, who had said “hey man” to me earlier that day, told me to come at 5 pm. That’s the time I would have trained if I was male.
We chatted a bit and it was clear that A was accustomed to Western Culture, so I spoke to her casually about my masculine identity and appearance. I told her I was disappointed and explained that I would go to Golden Eagle BJJ tomorrow and not tell them that I’m Assigned Female At Birth (AFAB). We joked that I looked like a teenage boy.
Eventually the 7 pm class started. The coach was really friendly and welcoming to me and spoke a little bit of English, and explicitly explained to me that I would drill with A and Aizhan. We went through lots of drills: triangle, armbar, underhook to escape from side control, armbar from mount, with A, Aizhan, and me taking turns.
Then we had sparring time. I went with Aizhan first, who was very strong and very good. I went about 80% of my maximum capacity and was only just barely able to hold her down and prevent her from submitting me. Then I went with A, who is also tall and thick, and again had to use all my strength to fend her off and eventually submitted her with an armbar.
During that roll, I saw Aizhan training with one of the men, and asked if it was her boyfriend, curious why she was allowed to train with a guy but nobody else could.
“No, that’s my brother,” she said.
OH.
For the next round, I sat out because Aizhan and A wanted to train together. While I was sitting out, one of the guys was talking to me about where I was from and telling me he had relatives in Chicago. Another guy came up to me in no-gi gear and asked if I wanted to roll. I was confused because I thought that was against the rules. I thought, “maybe he thinks I’m a boy.” The other guy said something to him in Russian and he looked at me and walked away. Then he came back and asked me again if I wanted to roll.
“Is it okay?” I said to him and to the other guy. They both nodded, so I rolled for just a few minutes with this guy in no-gi, almost getting a knee bar and a toe-hold on him, and he attempted several darsc chokes which I got out of. Afterwards, the coach and some of the other guys were laughing at him. I couldn’t understand anything that was going on because they were speaking in Russian. I asked Aizhan what was going on, she said, “It’s our Muslim culture, which dictates that no man can touch a woman.” During a later conversation, A confirmed that the guy who had asked me to roll thought I was a boy and was admonished for touching me since I was female.
Aizhan and I rolled again after that and this time I got her in an ommo platta, swept her and almost submitted her with a mono platta, but she escaped just in time. I also got her in a knee bar, but she escaped again. We stood up and she took me down easily.
“Did I mention I’m a black belt in judo?” she said. That explained her aggression (judo players are known for being very aggressive because judo matches are very short so you need to have fast movements to end the match quickly). That also explained the way she kept giving up her back to me as well (in judo flipping onto your belly re-sets the match, but in jiujitsu this gives up your back to your opponent). She was strong and athletic.
Finally, class was over, so we stood up and I shook hands with everyone in class like we normally would. After I shook everyone’s hand, I noticed that Aizhan and A didn’t even shake anyone else’s hands: that’s how strict they were taking the “no touch” rule. Which I know is normal in Muslim culture that women don’t shake hands with men, but I was pretty blown away by that since it is customary to shake hands after jiujitsu class. Nobody said anything about me shaking their hands, but I was embarrassed about this potential second faux paus.
I went into the bathroom to get some water for my water bottle. The girls in the bathroom were looking at me and giggling. I got nervous, so I left immediately before I could even find the sink.
“Where do I get water?” I asked A.
“In the bathroom.”
“Where in the bathroom? I couldn’t find the sink,” I said.
“The sinks are to the right.”
“I’m nervous, because of the girls in there…” I said.
She seemed to get exactly what I was saying, and she said, “No, don’t worry it’s okay.” She accompanied me into the bathroom, and as I walked in, the other girls said something to her in Russian and she responded, looking down at the floor. I went and refilled my water bottle. We went back outside.
“Don’t worry, everyone knows you’re a female now. People weren’t sure at first, but they know you now, you won’t have problems after this,” she tried to assure me.
But I wasn’t so sure. Part of me sure was glad that I don’t speak Russian so that I didn’t have to know or hear what they were actually saying. I could just pick up context clues. I brushed it off. This has happened so many times before that I’m used to it.
I went back outside to the mats and stretched. I talked with Aizhan, who told me that she used to train judo for 6 hours a day but had to retire at age 26 after the most recent Asian Judo Games because it was so hard on her body. (Bodies can only take so much slamming into the ground.) Now she just does jiujitsu, which does not involve high impact. She was a competitive judo player for many years; no wonder she was so hard for me to submit. She explained that they don’t have any female purple belts or above in the whole country of KGZ. They have five female blue belts in the whole country.
“Are you going to come back?” she asked.
“Maybe, but I’m going to try out Golden Eagle BJJ tomorrow.” She nodded with understanding, clearly seeing that today wasn’t the best day for me.
I was not sure I wanted to ever go back to KGZ Top Team. I really didn’t like the way I was treated and I didn’t like the way I was treated as inferior or not worthy—needing to train only with women in the white belt class did not feel good.
Of course, the other hard part of this was being misgendered the entire time. I kept wishing I would have been seen as a boy. I kept thinking that if I hadn’t known A, I could have gone into class presenting male at 5 pm and no one would have known. I decided to try that at Golden Eagle BJJ the next day to see what would happen. I knew if I had a bad experience, then I would know that I just can’t come back to KGZ--jiujitsu is fundamental to my mental health and if I can't train, I can't live.
It was also a good motivator for me to reach out to the queer community in KGZ and see what I could find out. It is such a privilege to be where I’m from and I imagined the queer community here must have it pretty rough. I was curious to find out more.
Reflections
This is a good reminder of my privilege. I have the opportunity to change genders. I also have the opportunity to train with whoever I want. I also have the resources to travel to interesting places and learn about other cultures. These are privileges that other people don't always have.
This is a good reminder to always be grateful to what you do have.
It’s also a tangible reminder of how the community who is doing the discrimination suffers just as much as the community who is discriminated against. The jiujitsu community is smaller and less developed in KGZ partially because they exclude 50% of the population. They could grow their club so much by including women more. This is why it’s so important that gyms all over the world continue to push and promote more inclusive policies not just for women, but ALL genders (including trans and non-binary), races and sexualities. The less people you include, that means less training partners and less opportunities to improve your own game and grow the jiujitsu community.
Kyrgyzstan Top Team missed the opportunity to train with a bad ass purple belt with almost 10 years of experience on the mats tonight. Sadly, it was their loss tonight. A and Aizhan gave me great rolls, it was the guys who not only missed the opportunity tonight, but who will continue to miss opportunities to improve their jiujitsu with different bodies and people as long as they refuse to train with women.
Who are you excluding from you community who could help you grow? Remember to think about who you are leaving out of the picture.
It's also important to remember that when people are colonized, as the KGZ people have been by the Soviets and Russians, religion can be a force of resistance and survival. The men have also been victims of violence here through war and colonization. What happened at Top Team must include an understanding of the whole picture: exploitation leads to exploitation. This is a cycle of discrimination and abuse, not a one-sided story but a complex picture. This is just a snapshot of what happens when humanity is disregarded and abused.
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