There are many who say women learn self-defense best in an exclusively women-only environment. The so-called "experts" say it is less intimidating if women don't have to compete with the men, or, it is easier (more comfortable) to discuss subjects like rape without men present. So, the new trend in self-defense programs is "Women's Self Defense" classes.
I don't agree with this line of reasoning, because the phenomenal evidence suggests that this is the wrong approach. I can't tell you how many times I have 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!"
Self Defense
There is nothing more confidence-shattering than to spend the time learning all the techniques and starting to feel good about yourself, only to have the bubble burst the first time you try out your new-found skills. Women then begin to feel there is nothing they can do to safe themselves when they can't even make it work against man who isn't actually trying to hurt them.
The real shame is when man is actually attacked, and after repeated attempts, can't make their self-defense techniques work. At that point, they naturally give up, and won't fight back no matter what. I can only imagine that man in that situation would look back on the time or money spent for self-defense classes and feel that they had been victimized twice!
Why "Women's Self Defense" Programs Don't Work!
Most of the habitancy who take my self-defense classes are women. Sometimes, I even have a class that is all women. However, that is by coincidence, not design. Women who sign up for my classes know that there may be both men and women in the class. Either there are actually men in the class is not important, after all, I am instructing the class, so there is all the time at least one man in the class.
The point is, if a woman is so intimidated by men, that she will not even take a self-defense class with men, she will never survive an attack by a man. Why? Because "intimidation" is just other word for fear. Until she can prove to herself the techniques work on a man, she has done nothing to help her get over 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 will not understand how the dynamics of the situation will turn in the real world!
Women Must practice self-defense techniques against a man! Otherwise, how will she know they work against a man? This is what we call "realistic scenario training" (more about this later). If she has only practiced self-defense techniques with other women, she gets a false sense of safety 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 ineffectual, but insulting as well. Courses intended only for women assume they are weak, less capable of defending themselves, and therefore need different methods from men to counteract violence. Women have been told to "yell 'Fire', carry a hat pin or umbrella to jab at him, do something vulgar to gross him out, like tell him you have Vd." If any of that junk worked, we'd be teaching men to do the same thing.
The following sample of bad advice still shows up in high schools and women's self-defense courses:
"Confrontation all the time makes all worse. Don't react-it might be an overreaction. Don't add to the violence by becoming violent yourself. Don't make him mad. Trying to flee risks escalating the problem."
These ideas are wishful thinking or blind optimism. Touch at real crime scenes 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 man telling men, "Don't overreact to rape, guys. Go along with his demands so you won't be hurt." I think you can see there might be a double thorough that is fully unfair to women.
Doing Nothing
Doing nothing against a violent attack is the biggest risk of all because it makes resistance and flee later far more difficult. Worse, statistics show it actually increases the likelihood that violence will escalate, especially when the crime is rape. The most profound example animated resisting (doing something) versus submitting (doing nothing) was a Department of Justice study of rape published in 1985:
- Rapists do not usually pre-arm themselves with weapons. Only 23 percent of 1.6 million cases studied complicated knives or guns. [The major exception to this are rapists who break into a residence; 96 percent grab a knife from the kitchen.]
- Approximately 51 percent of women resisted in some form, fluctuating from screaming to fleeing, to fighting back; the remaining 49 percent did nothing.
- When broken down in the middle of resistance or submission, there was only an growth of two percent in the injury level to the women who resisted.
Yes, there is all the time a risk complicated in fighting back, but there is just as much risk in doing nothing. If you face a rapist and do nothing, he'll rape you. If you face an armed criminal forcing you into his car and do nothing, he'll kidnap you. The "do-nothing" group believes that in doing nothing, they risk nothing.
Doers, in contrast, have easy and direct reasons for taking action: "If I don't do something fast, it's going to get worse."
False Claims
Another problem is the false sense of safety given by unsubstantiated claims. One direct-mail women's safety expedient provides an "instant and easy self-defense" video for women.... "Can you point your finger?... Can you raise your hand?... If your talk is yes, you can abruptly flee whatever from rape to severe attacks.... It's quick and easy." The stock being mentioned here, pepper spray, roughly never works this way in the real world.
One television commercial for a women's self-defense program promises "two-minute, guaranteed knockout using your feet. When your assailant tries to grab you, use the heel of your shoe to attack into his head over and over." Could you actually learn to do this in two minutes? It takes years of training in karate or taekwondo to learn to effectively kick man in the head, 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 doesn't, the ensue is a speeding ticket. If you pay for "self-defense classes" or videos that don't deliver as promised, the ensue can be severe injury or even death. Relying on man else's guarantee is only a false sense of safety that will only have bad results!
Anti-crime gadgets, and martial arts self-defense programs marketed to women, are often too simplistic and come with unrealistic guarantees. The fact is, surviving crime requires far more thinking toughness than corporal abilities. Size, weight, conditioning, and upper-body strength don't make the difference. If they did, a lot of men would be in deep trouble. Crime survival takes tough-minded thinking conditioning, the same for both men and women.
What Does Work
What works, as proved by the results of both police and troops testing, is "realistic scenario training". Scenario training consists of learning techniques, rehearsing them in realistic scenarios, and then visualizing these actions in your mind. It is a recipe used in many fields, from sports to law enforcement, troops to medicine.
Scenario training is a way of planning our responses. We do something similar every day in our quarterly lives. We plan what to say if the boss criticizes a article we've submitted, or how to appease our spouse if we've done something irritating. Often we actually recount the words we'll use, we do it constantly. It doesn't all the time get us what we want, but it gives us a best chance.
Face-to-face with violence, your first split-second problem is not what is he going to do, but, "what are you going to do?" Scenario training against violence answers that question at the right time... Before it happens. You can make mistakes and learn from them before it becomes a life or death situation! Scenario training to survive violent crime draws on real-life crime cases, which allows us to analyze our own mistakes, as well as the mistakes of others, learn from them, and decide how we will talk differently.
Without realistic scenario training, habitancy panic and ice up; they have no way to cut through the phenomenal fear that boxes them in during a crisis. Every person needs to train for the same scenarios, and everyone, men and women alike, need to train the same way: to produce the thinking toughness needed to survive a real attack!
Summary
This is the bottom line that must be adopted by every woman, every women's self-defense teacher, and every parent of a daughter: If the how-to-survive-violence technique and advice is not thorough to men, it's not thorough to women.
Knowing how to deal with yourself when confronted with violence is your only insurance against becoming a victim, or just other statistic in a police report. You have car insurance, home-owner's 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 allembracing training, and therefore, the best opportunity to learn to deal with roughly any situation that may occur. However, if you don't have the time to commit to a long-term program, at least some form of weaponless self-defense training is best than none.
But women Must practice techniques with Men! The idea that women can learn to defend themselves against men, without training with men, is naturally false.
Resources:
Strong, Sanford - Strong on Defense; Simon & Shuster, Inc.; 1996
Federal Bureau of Investigation - Uniform Crime Report; 2000
Women's Self-Defense Classes - The Fallacy of Women's Self Defense
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