A personal view of capoeira today from a female perspective.

I walked out of my capoeira class today. I’ve thought about doing it many times before but today I actually did it. I’m not sure why today was the day. I guess the stress and frustration just builds up. I’m tired of being yelled at, picked on and belittled more than the guys from my own instructor. I don’t want to be bought out or exercises because If my mestre is there to belittle me and not to foster my training then who is on my side?

Sometimes I think I have a chip on my shoulder. I feel like I always have something to prove because I am a woman I assume that the men in the roda think I’m just there for the sculpted male bodies I’ve got to come to the roda with anger and aggression to play hard with my opponent. There is no such thing as a fun game for me now.

I never felt this way until recently – and I can pinpoint the exact moment when it started. A few weeks ago my mestre was out of town and one of the high cords was leading class. He decided we were going to train push-ups from a headstand to a handstand. I went over to the wall and tried one to see if I had become the incredible hulk in the past few weeks. As it happens I hadn’t, so I just practiced holding headstands and handstands until the high cord came over to me and told me to just try going from a headstand to a handstand. When I told him I couldn’t even do that he said, “Wow, you’ve got problems.”

I know as well as any other American training capoeira that Brazilians don’t always have the English language skills to say exactly what they mean, but in that moment I did not care. I thought to myself, “I don’t have problems. I’m a girl. I don’t have the upper body strength of a guy. I don’t have the body of a guy nor do I want to.”

I got angry and I stayed angry over the next couple of weeks. I did some internet research about women in capoeira – when and how we started getting involved in the game, how many female mestres there are, how other women feel about their place in capoeira. I came across this article written by a woman describing problematic female approaches to capoeira. She says that some women play too weak and shy, afraid to assert themselves in the roda and others come with a chip on their shoulder and always feel they have something to prove. Woman should be confident in the roda but stay feminine.

What does that even mean? Femininity is a social construction that takes on different meanings at different times and places. The article I mentioned above just seemed too 90’s, Spice Girls, girl power. I don’t see that as relevant anymore in 2005. We don’t need to constantly victimize ourselves, thinking we need to instill confidence and empower women. We’re supposed to be past this point in feminist theory . We’re starting to realize that men shouldn’t victimize us and we shouldn’t victimize ourselves either. My game wasn’t less aggressive because I was shy or insecure. I just didn’t want to fight. I wanted to play-fight. I admired people who played with a smile on their face and then suddenly throw a martelo in mine.

When I first started training I read Nestor Capoeira’s Capoeira: Roots of the Dance-Fight-Game. He talks a lot about malicia and, at the time, I was really turned off by it. He emphasizes that a capoeirista should not have a 9-5 but live by his wits and always be wary of razorblades between people’s toes. In an academic setting in 21st century America this isn’t the most viable way of life. But the nicest games still involve being able to outwit and trick your opponent, not telegraphing your movements, faking in one direction and coming with a kick from the other. Capoeira is not simply about overpowering your opponent.

These goals lend themselves perfectly to traditional views of feminism. Ancient cultures worldwide have invented stories and myths that portray women as internal, sinuous, ambiguous, dangerous creatures. They aren’t external like men, carrying their genitals outside their bodies, displaying great feats of strength. Yet, women have this dangerously inexplicable power to knock men on their asses. This primordial and universal femininity involves hiding your intentions and using unexpected and unseen maneuvers to defeat the opposite sex.

So maybe we should just be feminine. It would almost seem that capoeira was designed especially for women – a circle (a traditionally feminine symbol) in which to carry out their dangerous rituals of masking and trickery. Perhaps the myth of vagina dentata is true of female capoeiristas. If you shove your male power too hard at us, we’ll chew it up and swallow it – and not give it back. We aren’t going to change it my trying to fight sexist capoeiristas head on, going kick for kick. We’ll play hard and kick like we mean it. But capoeira is not just about fight. It’s about playing a game, a dance, and a fight. There are no clear delineations. Strength is great and wonderful for a certain kind of game but if you are going to argue that it is more important that other skills, you will have to ask João Grande to step out of the roda. We are just as well equipped, perhaps even better, to explore those ambiguities and hidden intricacies.