why do people take the piss out of martial arts and make the whole discipline seem like a farsical joke?

Question

when I say i do taekwondo, often people regard it as inferior to mainstreem sports or simply laugh and say 'what the hell is that?'

Answer 1

theres good and bad in every ma.there are a lot of good tae kwondo schools,instructers and students out there but there are a hell of a lot more bad ones and unfortunately when you have a bad reputation everyone gets tarred with the same brush.thats what happens when you take the martial out and make it into business arts.and what makes it worse is anyone who does tkd says no the one i do isn't like that or my instructer isn't like the others he's good and stuff like that.thats ok if you do happen to go to a good school but the ppl who go to a bad one say the same thing only more vehemently. it's like any ma you learn it's strengths
and it's weaknesses,you use the strengths and fix the weaknesses.it doesn't matter anyway when you get into a real situation you will know whether you go to a bad tkd school or a good one,and so will others.
PS.you definately dont say shut up you ignorant bastard for the reasons i just said.you say yes i agree but... and explain it to them so that they have an understanding of it,and you'll find that there opinion will change because they will see it in a Fairer light?

Answer 2

Because people naturally associate martial arts with fighting. Fighting is not the main purpose of taekwondo, these people are ignorant of all of the other efforts that go into the sport. Now, if you mention martial arts to anyone, they either think ufc, or professional wrestling. This depresses me. The ufc is fairly marial art orientated, and can be respected. Profesional wrestling should never be mentioned other than as a source of entertainment for undereducated rednecks.
It is rather pathetic of the supposed civilized american culture to find a sport that is not redblooded un-respectable. I do judo, i have for over half of my life span now, i love judo specifically because it is aimed at not hurting people, some of the things that go on in ufc is slipping back into the barbarism that was originally removed out of martial arts hundreds of years ago. Original japanese jujitsu was practiced hard, until about a hundred years or so ago, and martial arts were banned, jujitsu baasically only survived by becoming a spectator blood sport, judo was formed by jigaro kano, for various reasons from jujitsu and it became unpopular to practice jujitsu in favour of more practical and humane judo. What we see in the states is a steady decline, we are slowly getting worse and worse, might as well start asking the muay thai kickboxers from thailand for some glass to stick in between our fingers to rip our opponent open and get it over with.
Basically what i am saying is that you are better than these people, they just don't know it, it's like trying to tell an addict that drugs make him feel worse, they can't understand.

Answer 3

It's viewed as inferior to mainstream sports mainly because the funding isn't there. It gets laughed at due to the work of the media.

It's no different than the way sports such as skateboarding or BMX were viewed in the 1980s, or the way bodybuilding was viewed before the 1970s; those sports wouldn't get their players any fame or athletic scholarships the way, say, football or basketball would, and they were practiced by a demographic who were looked down upon for other reasons which were usually based in cultural or socioeconomic difference from the mainstream of the society of the day.

Weightlifting is an example of this sort of cultural vilification of a sport due to correlations to demographics not popular with the mainstream. Decades ago, most people who weren't pro athletes who worked out with weights were either bodybuilders (who were vilified at the time by the majority as freaks or druggies) or lower-class would-be boxers (who were derided by the mainstream culture of the era as ruffianistic and ghetto-minded). Today, on the other hand, everyone and his suburban-living baby-boomer mother is in the gym using the Nautilus machines, and the mainstream cultural stigma against lifting weights is long gone.

The situation has been analogous for practitioners of martial arts, but for the more well-known sportive martial arts it has changed somewhat with taekwondo, judo, wrestling, archery, and fencing being Olympic sports; at least at the Olympic level there is some chance for athletes of those sports to gain some recognition and sponsor funding. But since so few get fame or athletic scholarships for taekwondo, judo, archery, or fencing, the martial arts are viewed as a rather strange avocation.

Making the martial arts disciplines a farcical joke is another matter, often perpetrated and perpetuated by the media in the forms of "chop-sockey" films which have taken to the exoticism as something to market. For an example, note that few people make movies lampooning the legends of, say, the use of an ancient Roman gladius, or of the skills of something as exoteric as Western boxing; however, the use of the Samurai Sword(tm) and the legendry, theatrics, and exoticism-mongering associated with it is all but ubiquitous in movies, video games and most other media in this day and age.

In an ideal world, people would transcend this sort of thing and realize we all have our own preferences in sports, physical training, or artistic traditions. But I strongly suspect that it may not ever happen.

Best of luck in your training.

Answer 4

My advise is to ignore them. Fir example if I don't think I can give a good answer or somebody else already answer it better than me or when is just plain annoying I just don't answer the question. There is something behind the ignorance thou. In the United States a lot of schools have lower the training so much in order to retain students and make money that some people think that is all there is to Martial Arts. That arises from the American way of wanting things done, right now with as little sacrifice or dedication as possible. So don't worry, keep practicing and be an example for others.

Answer 5

Some people are small minded no matter what the subject may be, years ago I was into Tang Soo Do and folks said, "what is that?". As soon as I mentioned Chuck Norris they knew it was a kicking art but most don't know the difference between Tae Kwan Do, Tang Soo Do or Hapkido.

Most who have seen M/A movies know that what Bruce Lee did was not the same as Chuck Norris and the same goes for Steven Seagal and Jeff Speakman.

If you have been into M/A for some time you'll know the difference and if those who are not small minded and are open to your knowledge, then explain to them the different styles.

Good luck.

Answer 6

i hate when people say taekwondo is a ineffective martial art
i mean they wouldnt know cause they dont take it
i especially pisses me off when they dont know anything about martial arts

Answer 7

Most people are ignorant. People frequently ridicule what they don't understand. Ignore such people, talking to them just wastes Oxygen.

Answer 8

what I sya you do is say " SHUT UP YOU IGNORANT BASTERD!" then kick them in the shin becuase they dont know what there talking about. stupid people sheeshhh