I have been watching too many youtube women’s self-defense videos and reading the chatter on the web lately and seem to keep finding a familiar theme. An alternate universe where karate instructors seem to be pumping up the egos of women, trying to pretend they can go toe to toe with men!
Now before you (if you are a 21st century woman) start screaming at your computer screen, let me assure you that I know women CAN defend themselves against men. But do I think just because a woman has attended a self-defense course and generally buys into equality, that she understands what she is in for?
I may have worded this a little too strongly but please understand that I think realism should be injected into any woman’s fighting strategy… rather than the dribble that I see so often put forth as empowerment for women (in the form of self-defense)! I spoke to my step-daughter to try and get an understanding of why equality is bandied about so freely when speaking of self-defense and she told me that for some women - it is more important to “feel” that women are equal to men in every way.
Ok here is what I am going to do in this post:
- Point out how to overcome a stronger attacker
- Point out that women have to use strategy (i.e. surprise, explosiveness, run, awareness, or weapons to win)
- Women in the martial arts can overcome a size/strength advantage by superior skill.
- That many men attacking women will strike hard to disillusion a woman - make her more complainant.
- Woman should expect to have to fight for their lives - become an animal if they expect to survive!
I hope I have not lost you but let me open with this video and then I will go into more detail. The good news is if you are a woman - YES you CAN defend yourself against a stronger, larger man but you will have to be smart about it!
Now I do not mean to draw a parallel with women of poor countries but I wanted to point out what seems to happen when women do not know how to fight back. Males just do not think women can harm them so bad guys will attack women while leaving themselves open to counter attack!
I have been seeing on the web, ball busting stories and lots of videos of how women can kick the nuts of guys. Heck I even posted a couple of stories here about that topic. The good news is a guys family jewels are very sensitive and may totally incapacitate him but will not necesaraly stop the attack.
If a woman has to defend her self against a man, she will have already not noticed the threat in time and was unable to avoid the situation. We will not deal with those issues in the post but rather the fighting strategy.
First off watch this video from Dr. Ruthless TM, about what a woman will likely face and then I will talk about it.
Alright now - that was more like it for realism but I would like to take it up a notch. If I was attacked, I would expect that I was going to get hit or hurt. I think my counter attack strategy would win out but I would not expect to just counter attack and beat the guy up! No, I would expect to take some shots or get hurt before I got away with my life!
I also think it would be great if the bad guy did not hit me, my point it it would be unwise to plan on not getting hit and then be demoralized by some pain.
Having said that what I don’t like about these self-defense videos (even the good ones like I think this one to be) is the guy gives up too easy. In a real attack it might go like this video but most likely the woman is going to be under pressure and every counter will not hit its mark. She will likely take some damage until she hurts the attacker momentarily - giving her time to make her escape.
Remember this if your first two mantra’s have failed you (Awareness & Avoidance):
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Aggression
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Surprise Counter
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Escape!
As a woman (I’m extrapolating here - I am a man), a bad guy is going to want to rob or rape you (unless he is a kidnapper/killer). Either way my guess is a man will not think a woman can defend herself. This is the aggressive act. This will be your first engagement judgement call. How are you going to get out of this?
Common strategies employed by women are assuming awareness or avoidance failed are:
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Screaming at him - trying to scare him off and draw attention
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Talking to him - trying to reason with him
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Aquascience (give them what they want and hope for the best)
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Rage and attack (gives the attacker a warning you won’t go easy)
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Feigned complacence and Surprise Counter Attack (I think is the best chance at getting away)
I will only deal with the surprise counter attack here because while the other strategies may work - if they don’t you will have to fight back. I would suggest not fighting back until you think you have an advantage. Think about it - the guy is bigger and stronger. If he does not think you are a threat (arguabaly his predisposition) he will not just try and knock you out and take whatever it is he wants. He will be barking orders, wanting you to comply.
Here is your chance as you saw in the Dr. Ruthless TM video. Your surprise counter attack to get away! You will be striking his eyes, throat and groin with your knees, kicks, palm, punch (half-fist works good for the throat), elbows and if you are close enough, biting!
You are trying to do as many strikes as it takes to get a momentary advantage, and then run away (hopefully you are not in the wilderness - if so you will have to break away and find a weapon, rock whatever to incapacitate him).
So the choices women have are many; 1) become a martial artist and take any fighting training so you know not only how to do all of the kicks and punches, but what it feels like to be in a struggle (albeit it studio sparring session), 2) become proficient with lethal or non-lethal weapons and carry them, 3) at a minimum take a self-defense class - this will give you the minimum tools you will need to defend yourself!
I think most women can avoid most bad guys with awareness and avoidance and if it is not possible to avoid - take someone with you to mitigate the risk. But if you do find yourself in a pickle - you CAN defend yourself against a man if you have taken a realistic look at what you are up against, as well as mitigating strategies.
In closing I would like to point out how martial arts can “even up” the score between a man and a woman. A former student of mine’s husband (now ex) came to me on a layover (he was a long haul trucker) and confided in me that whenever his wife and he were arguing (as he put it) he had to pick up a stick. He could no longer win a fair fight (she knew karate and he did not). He was 6′ 2′ tall and my student was about 5′ 6″.
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Thanks for the post, John. There’s a lot of good information here. As a 5′2″ 125lb female martial artist, I can say that my training has definitely removed a large amount of the “intimidation” factor. Almost all of my sparring practice has been against men who are much, much taller and much, much heavier than I am. I’m no longer overwhelmed by their greater size. I’ve never been in an actual fight, but there’ve been a couple of times I’ve had to “stare down” men. Once they saw I wasn’t afraid of a larger opponent, both potential attackers backed down and walked away.
Hi Cheri, I started out as a 155 pound, (still 5′ 11″) guy that came up the ladder fighting 220 - 240 pound, 6′ 2″ animals at Tracy’s Thursday night sparring class. I soon learned that I could not fight toe to toe with these guys (they had the strength, size, weight, and skill advantage)!
I had to learn evasive strategies, initial movement and get out of the way as well as fight from the outside. That was why I did really well at fighting tournaments as a lower belt (Green and Brown). After my initial movement (As Joe Lewis taught Tracy’s to use) started to improve and my overall skill level increased - I could fight toe to toe with these guys… It took a year or two until I got comfortable.
I really liked fighting women (where else can you hit a girl?)… Just kidding. The thing I liked was teaching women was how to cover up if they got caught, so they would weather a storm and counter effectively!
No problem not fighting for real (probably shows you have good judgment) but standing up for yourself is important. In my experience the ones that do fight - really ought not to as it is generally beer muscle (poor judgment and no training). The real fights I’ve been in mostly have been against people that were emotional or bullies but could not fight their way out of a paper bag! I had the advantage of fighting a few paper bags before and always came out ok
Thanks for you insight Cheri!
Hi John,
Great post on women’s self-defense.
I have been to several types of self-defense seminars. Some classes were basic self-defense while others were called empowerment seminars. The empowerment seminars focused on awareness and prevention with a few simple self-defense techniques at the end of the session. Years ago, a co-worker asked to attend an empowerment seminar. She did not tell me at the time but she was a survivor of a violent attack. She had a tough time with the physical part of the seminar. The contact and confrontation brought back unpleasant memories. She learned a few simple techniques. Less than two weeks later, I was called into her office at work. During work that day she drove to a HR hearing and parked in a parking garage. A man approached her and tried to grab her. She started yelling and took her briefcase and started swinging. He ran away. Was it hearing the empowerment seminar and knowing/feeling that women can defend themselves? Was it knowing a few simple techniques? Or was it an internal dialogue that “it was not going to happen again”? I don’t know….
My instructor would always quote a research study (I can not find the referece) about the characteristics of women who got away from an attack. In the study, the number one trait they found in common was that they played a contact sport. Interesting.
Hi Michele, Glad your friend came out ok this time! I think empowerment and such is valuable and may lead to enhancing performance. I’m sorry to hear the self-defense portion was short. Most of this post although it covered self-defense, was pointed to the concept that a lighter, weaker woman could defend against a larger, stronger man… heck take the gender out of it… just large versus small of anything… the smaller person has to do something to get an edge to win.
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I’ve been reading a bunch of these testosterone driven mma forums that make fun of teaching women to just kick the nuts to win a fight with out stressing the follow-up. I guess I should consider the source of the comments but that do make one valid point - not stressing realism is not doing a service to a beginning self-defense student. I guess the trick is to get that point across while still teaching the empowerment
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I was sickened by the creator of model mugging stating the reason for creating was a woman from his karate school was a black belt but still lost a fight - insinuating what she learned at the karate school was worthless! I don’t know how he got there from here… individuals learn at their own rate… some just don’t seem to get over the panic. That is why I suggested fighting in the studio so if it ever really happened - getting hit would be no great surprise. I tend to get long winded about self-defense as I believe in it… I just don’t like the criticisms and wanted to deal with the one valid critique in my view.
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It is nice short term self-defense coursed try to let the women really hit and kick the bad guys and maybe that is as good as it gets in the short term. My solution is a longer term martial arts course where the women get comfortable with fighting. In all of my real fights (one a week for two years when I was a bouncer in a low-life bar) I never got the jitters when fighting… rather I was always amazed on how easy it was to take out the bad guys… as they generally did not know how to fight.
Thanks Michele for your insight and again - I’m really glad your friend made out ok!
John, thanks for calling by my blog and leaving a comment.
This post on women’s self defence is very topical for me at the moment. I have been having doubts for some time that my karate training adequately prepares me for defending myself against an attack. In fact I have recently written a post about it for Martial News which I have reproduced on my own blog site today. All this self-defense training assumes that a women’s greatest threat comes from a ’stranger’ attack in the street when in fact this type of attack is relatively rare. A woman’s biggest threat comes from being attacked in her own home by someone she knows (85% of attacks on women are of this type) or from a date rape situation where she has been drugged first. In a domestic violence situation the woman will have been subjected to months of psycholgical attack before a physical blow is struck. I think a woman’s self-defence strategy needs to equip her to deal with the events occuring before any physical attack occurs. What do you think?
Hey Sue!
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Glad you stopped by and pointed out this interesting statistic. I have found that with men, the probably attack will be from a stranger but as you say, mostly likely women will be attacked by someone they know. Even more sad for me is most women I have known in my life have been attacked by someone they knew at some point in their life. I had never really thought of it in those terms but it is quite startling. I’ll gladly give you my 2cents.
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First off let’s agree the figure is 85% of the women attacked know their attacker. I don’t know the actual figure but I believe this is probably close. My guess that date rape, child molestation and domestic abuse probably account for the lion’s share of attacks.
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Now with woman’s self-defense, as you state/imply we are really dealing with more than just learning the mechanics of fighting. There are societal as well as individual psychological considerations, for instance will a woman stand up to her abusive husband? Will a woman feel comfortable with her date to get drunk? Does a mother/father trust that uncle to baby-sit their daughter?
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As you can see it is not really simple. My guess is by your question (and your website post) - you are wondering if women taking traditional karate classes are in the women’s best interest from a self-defense standpoint? Or how to best teach women to defend themselves for the attacks they are most likely to face?
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My take is all of this ought to be considered as follows (please note that I am not blaming anyone in my suggestions but rather pointing out common sense to mitigate some of the risk. This is near and dear to my heart as my step-daughter seems to think she and her friends are invincible – they take dumb risks):
• Parents should be protective of their children – not just assume relations are safe (molested women to my understanding tend not to be as trusting)
• Young women should somehow break the mold of knowing everything (feeling invincible – just like young men do at this age) and not take foolish risks such as allowing themselves to get drunk (this is easier said then done but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure)
• Women should learn self-defense techniques at a minimum. My preference would be to learn a martial art of some kind and become proficient at fighting.
• Women should learn basic techniques for molestation at a young age. For instance I think there is now awareness in women to tell their daughters that no one should touch their privates. That is a change in the right direction.
• You have touched on micky’s or ruffies in your post… good observation. My mom taught me when I was a boy of 12 to never leave a drink in a public place. I’m not sure what might of happened to her but she stressed that if I got up to dance, not to drink any of the beverage I left but rather toss it and order a new one. I guess there have been date rape drugs forever. I actually had a female co-worker tell me about a similar experience – she felt really funny after going to a club and luckily was with girl friend that drove her home.
• Domestic abuse is a hard one… for instance how would one teach a women that has been abused and buy’s into abusers reality? As far as I know many women that get away from bad situations – willingly go back. I’m not sure that a karate studio not dealing with women’s physiological issues would make any difference. My take is by teaching women how to fight back – when they are ready – they will have a chance.
• Women ought to actively seek out strategies that will help them feel empowered if they need it. Some women are naturally aggressive about their self-defense but other might have self-confidence type issues. There are women’s groups that can help women feel better to where they will fight back. Now I should say that those classes are generally short term but playing the devils advocate – why would women want or need years of that? Would years of empowerment training be worth the same as karate/ jiu jitsu training?
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Here are a couple of great resources I have found that deal with women’s self-defense specific issues:
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http://www.strategicliving.org/ & http://www.self-defense-mind-body-spirit.com/
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I think both of these websites have women’s organizations that would be helpful for anyone reaching out.
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Ok – sorry for that long winded answer but this is really a huge question you have put forth. These are just my quick thoughts but I will probably do a post after I have some time to consider. My short answer is no matter what statistical number of women that get attacked by a stranger or non-stranger – as soon as it gets physical, the formal martial arts training will come in very handy. Say the overll number is 50% of attacks are defensible and another 25 percent of the non-defensible attacks are preventable (through awareness and common sense) – that leave 25% of the women as victims rather than a far larger number. So yes I do think women should take martial arts training over just women’s self-defense courses but if she was only going to take a short-term class, then I would opt for the women’s self-defense.
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I hope some of my point of view makes sense. Please let me know if I missed some of your points and I’d be glad to reconsider.
Women going back to their abusers…wow, that hits close to home for me. I’ve started a post on it on my own blog. I guess I’ll need to finish it sooner, rather than later. It’s been a difficult post for me to write, since I was in an abusive marriage for 10 years.
I agree we need to teach women to fight, to get the used to the idea of how to hit and to learn to accept the fact they might be hit as well. They need to learn that getting hit isn’t the end of a fight, that you can take a blow (or three) and still keep fighting.
Along with that, we need to teach our girls how to recognize abuse. It’s not always easy to tell when you’re in the middle of the relationship. I didn’t learn about the “red flags” until after I left the abuse. I wish someone had taught me about them when I was a teenager.
Your comment about your stepdaughter did make me chuckle (in a worried way). I did some pretty stupid things at that age, too. I call it my “I’m 19 and I’m invulnerable” stage. I look back now and go “What on earth was I thinking?!”.
Hi Cheri, Yes abuse is a hard topic to even talk about. The thing I cringe at is seeing how some men view women as property. That view point seems to lend itself to abuses. Anyway I’ll be looking forward to your post as I am on the outside of this - I only see the results.
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Yeah the most recent thing my 19 year-old step-daughter announced to my wife was she and a girlfriend wants to save up their money and backpack in Europe next year alone!
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Well that is a year away and hopefully she won’t be able to save enough money… no sense in pointing out the obvious… we are old and don’t know anything
Interesting post. I think it highlights the importance for women of targeting vulnerable areas and using ‘dirty’ tatics in self-defense scenarios - shredding, biting, eye gouging, hair pulling, elbows, knees etc. Unfortunately not all martial arts focus on this kind of training. But if your primary goal is self defense, it’s worth thinking carefully about what kind of martial art you’d best be suited to.
And while most kinds of training are preferable to none, whether your a man or woman, it’s also important to introduce some uncooperative realism into training. Otherwise you only end up patterning in overconfidence in ineffective techniques.
Hi Krista!
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You bring up two great points.
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One is that there are variances from style to style as far as self-defense techniques might teach to include dirty fighting (hair pulling, gouges, biting, scratching, breaking the ear drums…). I always make the assumption that all styles of martial arts include this - as my flavor of Kenpo (American Kenpo from Tracy’s, from Parker, Chow, Mitose…) does. I still tend to believe every style probably will do a good job of self-defense but I’ve not trained with every style.
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Secondly I like your point about injecting uncooperative realism into practice… this was partially my complaint with all of the self-defense videos I saw. The bad guys were giving up too easy. I used to train with one lady that would attack me and stay too long in the inside of my distance. I loved to remind her by punching her head – she got real good at covering in the transitions (in and out of my distance). Later when she tried to defend her male cousin at a party – she tried to kick the nuts but the guy was wearing a cup! She got overpowered and took a lot of kicks and pounding on the ground but was able to walk away. I attribute her survival to her drive and training so I am a believer.
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Great insight!
John, thanks for your detailed comments. I’ll look forward to any future post you may write on this subject. This is an excellent article on what makes a good women’s self defence strategy; http://www.kicks4women.com/thesis.shtml
Great post. Lots of good advice. My daughter started training at my dojo not too long ago and this has made me a feel a bit more secure when I think of her out alone. She has a talent for it and she could probably handle herself if it came to it. Against a man, though, I don’t know. I’ve told her if she gets into trouble to just hit and run, as she will not survive a full on confrontation. The training will give her the vital edge she may need one day and that makes me feel good, knowing that.
On another note, female ninja’s of old used to use their feminine wiles in confrontations with males. They would simply bare their breasts to distract their attacker (which being male, would always work!) and then move in to attack. Great cunning I think! Not that I’m suggesting women employ this tactic but it goes to show that were there’s a will, there’s a way.
My gravatar doesn’t show up on your site for some reason. Any idea why this is?
Hi Neil,
The gravitar is tied to your email address that you use. check what email address you list in the websites compared to what email you listed with Gravitar.
Hi Sue,
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I saw that position paper before and toyed with wrapping a post around it but decided it was a no-win situation.
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Firstly let me say that I view any women’s self-defense as better than not. While I agree with some of the statements made - I see a bunch of logical fallacies.
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The biggest problem I see is just because most of the attackers are known to women - somehow knowing a traditional martial art and employing self-defense techniques from the same will not work as well as a women’s self-defense training. I don’t buy that argument but again as I stated in my post - if a woman is going to learn self-defense short-term, then just taking the women’s self-defense class is a great option!
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Also what does the fact that some men harass women in some karate studios have do to with anything unless you are in one of them? Is the writer trying to associate the bad behavior of some men to represent the rest of the male self-defense/martial-arts instructors? I don’t like kitchen sink arguments.
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While I do not see anything wrong with working with self-esteem, I do not think when it comes to the fighting techniques (assuming the women decide to fight back) it will make much difference.
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I do like that the JD is going to bat for women and she has a point of view. I do not like that the assumption is that traditional studios might not serve women well.
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Again the whole paper is problematic - why I did not choose to address it… (but you have gotten a little idea).
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I think it is most important that women find a program/course they like and do it! I do not worry if I agree with the point of view but rather that the women learn stuff that works for them.