There are many who say that women learn self-defense better in an all-female environment. So-called “experts” say it’s less intimidating if women don’t have to compete with men, or that it’s easier (more comfortable) to talk about things like rape without men present. So the new trend in self defense programs is “Female Self Defense” classes.
I do not agree with this line of reasoning, because the overwhelming evidence suggests that this is the wrong approach. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “I took a women’s self-defense course once. But I went home and tried some of the stuff on my husband (or boyfriend), and it didn’t work!”
There is nothing more confidence shattering than spending time learning all the techniques and beginning to feel good about yourself, only to have the bubble burst the first time you try your new skills. So women start to feel like there’s nothing they can do to protect themselves when they can’t even make it work against someone who isn’t actually trying to hurt them.
The real embarrassment is when someone is actually attacked and, after repeated attempts, can’t get their self-defense techniques to work. At that point, they just give up and won’t fight no matter what. I can only imagine that someone in that situation would look back at the time or money spent on self defense classes and feel like they’ve been victimized twice!
Why “Women’s Self Defense” Programs Don’t Work!
Most of the people who take my self defense classes are women. Sometimes I even have a class where there are only women. However, that is by coincidence, not by design. The women who sign up for my classes know that there can be both men and women in the class. Whether there are actually men in the class is not important, after all, I am instructing the class, so there is always at least one man in the class.
The point is that if a woman is so intimidated by men that she won’t even take a self-defense class with men, she will never survive being attacked by a man. Why? Because “bullying” is just another word for fear. Until she can prove to herself that the techniques work on a man, she has done nothing to help her overcome her fear of men.
If she is ever attacked, it will probably be by a man! If she hasn’t gotten over her fear of men, she will immediately panic, no matter what she has learned. If she hasn’t learned how to deal with the bigger, stronger, more aggressive male, she won’t understand how the dynamics of the real world situation will change!
Women MUST practice self defense techniques against a man! Otherwise, how will she know that they act against a man? This is what we call “realistic scenario training” (more on this later). If she has only practiced self defense techniques on other women, she has a false sense of security that her techniques will work in the real world. But, an even bigger problem is that most of what is taught in these so-called “women’s self-defense” classes wouldn’t work anyway.
Poor teaching methods
Much of what is taught as “women’s self-defense” is not only ineffective, but also insulting. Courses intended for women only assume that they are weak, less able to defend themselves, and therefore need different methods than men to counteract violence. Women have been told to “shout ‘FIRE’, carry a hatpin or umbrella to hit him, do something vulgar to gross him out, like tell him he has VD.” If any of that crap worked, we’d be teaching men to do the same thing.
The following sample of bad advice still shows up in high schools and in women’s self-defense courses:
“Confrontation always makes things worse. Don’t react, it could be an overreaction. Don’t escalate the violence by becoming violent yourself. Don’t make him angry. Trying to escape risks making the problem worse.”
These ideas are wishful thinking or blind optimism. Real crime scene experience teaches you something very different.
Imagine if the percentages of women and men raped were 50-50 instead of 98 percent women and 2 percent men. [Outside of prison, those are the true percentages.] Now imagine someone telling men, “Don’t overreact to rape, guys. Accept their demands so you don’t get hurt.” I think you can see that there could be a double standard that is completely unfair to women.
Doing nothing
Doing nothing against a violent attack is the greatest risk of all because it makes resistance and escape that much more difficult. Worse yet, the stats actually show it increases the likelihood that violence will increase, especially when the crime is rape. The most profound example of resisting (doing something) versus submitting (doing nothing) was a Justice Department study on rape published in 1985:
- Rapists do not normally pre-arm themselves with weapons. Only 23 percent of the 1.6 million cases studied involved knives or guns. [The major exception to this are rapists who break into a residence; 96 percent grab a knife from the kitchen.]
- About 51 percent of the women resisted in some way, from yelling to running away and fighting back; the remaining 49 percent did nothing.
- When split between resistance or submission, there was only an increase in two percent in the level of injury to the women who resisted.
Yes, there is always a risk involved in fighting back, but there is the same risk in doing nothing. If you stand up to a rapist and you do nothing, he will rape you. If you are confronted by an armed criminal who forces you into his car and you do nothing, he will kidnap you. The “do nothing” group believes that by doing nothing, they risk nothing.
Doers, by contrast, have simple, straightforward reasons for acting: “If I don’t do something fast, it’s going to get worse.”
false claims
Another problem is the false sense of security that unsubstantiated claims give. A direct mail women’s safety device provides an “instant and easy self-defense” video for women…. “Can you point your finger?… Can you raise your hand?… If your answer is yes, you can instantly escape anything from rape to severe attacks… It’s quick and easy.” The product mentioned here, pepper spray, almost never works this way in the real world.
A television ad for a women’s self-defense program promises “Guaranteed knockout in two minutes using your feet. When your assailant tries to grab you, use the heel of your shoe to hit him in the head over and over again.” Could you really learn how to do this in two minutes? It takes years of karate or taekwondo training to learn how to kick someone in the head effectively, and even then, it’s a risky move. It’s just a marketing ploy to get your money.
If you buy a police radar detector that is guaranteed to work, but it doesn’t, the result is a speeding ticket. If you pay for “self defense classes” or videos that don’t work as promised, the result can be serious injury or even death. Relying on someone else’s guarantee is just a false sense of security that will only lead to bad results!
Crime gadgets and martial arts self-defense programs marketed to women are often overly simplistic and come with unrealistic guarantees. The fact is that surviving crime requires much more mental toughness than physical skills. Size, weight, conditioning, and upper body strength don’t make a difference. If they did, a lot of men would be in serious trouble. Crime survival requires tough-minded mental conditioning, same for both men. Y women.
Than Does Works
What works, as the results of police and military tests show, is “realistic scenario training.” Scenario training involves learning techniques, rehearsing them in realistic scenarios, and then visualizing these actions in your mind. It is a method used in many fields, from sports to law enforcement, from the military to medicine.
Scenario training is a way of planning our responses. We do something similar every day in our regular lives. We plan what to say if the boss criticizes a report we’ve made, or how to appease our spouse if we’ve done something irritating. We often rehearse the words that we will use, we do it constantly. It doesn’t always give us what we want, but it gives us a better chance.
Faced with violence, your first split-second problem is not what are you going to do, but “what are you going to do?” you Are you going to do?” Anti-Violence Scenario Training answers that question at the right time…before it happens. You can make mistakes and learn from them. prior to It becomes a life or death situation! Violent Crime Survivor Scenario Training is based on real-life crime cases, allowing us to analyze our own mistakes, as well as the mistakes of others, learn from them, and decide how we will respond differently.
Without training in realistic scenarios, people panic and freeze; they have no way of breaking through the overwhelming fear that locks them in during a crisis. Everyone should train for the same scenarios, and everyone, men and women alike, should train the same way: to develop the mental toughness needed to survive a real attack!
Resume
This is the conclusion that every woman, every female self-defense teacher, and every parent of a daughter must adopt: if the technique and advice on how to survive violence is not acceptable to men, it is not acceptable to women. .
Knowing how to handle yourself when faced with violence is your only insurance against becoming a victim, or just another statistic on a police report. You have car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, health insurance…
What insurance do you have against being the victim of a violent crime? A long-term self-defense program offers the most comprehensive training, and therefore the best opportunity, to learn how to handle almost any situation that may arise. However, if you don’t have time to commit to a long-term program, at least some form of unarmed self-defense training is better than nothing.
But women MUST practice techniques with MEN! The idea that women can learn to defend themselves against men without training with men is simply false.
Means:
Strong, Sanford- strong in defense; Simon & Shuster, Inc.; nineteen ninety six
Federal Bureau of Investigation- Uniform Crime Report; 2000