Do women simply need to learn how to fight more?

[QueenoftheRant]

www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30272204

No one's picked this up yet so far as I can see. Hurray for the people concerned, its so good to see women who are willing to defend themselves at need. It also highlights a question I've long been interested in. Personally I had my fair share of fights when young and I would love to see physical self defence training taught to all girls in schools rather than netball. I wonder whether that is the necessary last answer to male aggression. I think of male aggression essentially as gender based bullying and the usual way of stopping bullying is to hit back.

But of course there're two points: firstly a male friend once told me that if women could defend themselves more effectively they would be targeted more as men's restraints towards them would drop.

And secondly do we really want a world where fighting is a way of life?

Any takers?

I feel like there are some straw men in this thread and it's a result of the rather extreme way the thread title was phrased (when in fact most of the arguments on both sides are more subtle).

I don't think anyone is saying women shouldn't defend themselves, if it is helpful, and I don't think many of us would disagree that there are many situations where more self-defence training would empower women and prevent attacks.

It's just not THE solution and it's only going to be helpful to some women in some situations.

Lol grimbletart, I did consider coming back and posting 'and nor should men' but hey ho.

I apologise for the phrasing of the title, it was a bit poor.

And you've probably summed it up. I could always see extreme situations where self defence would not help. I see no one's mentioned the elderly yet! Is it possible however that on balance it would help, even allowing for possible escalations?

when you do martial arts, the longer you do it, the more you realise how hard it is to fight off someone bigger, stronger and well trained. just bigger and stronger is not too bad, but if they also have martial arts training it is very hard. i do think all kids should learn self defence (step one being 'run away') but obviously that gives everyone a background in 'fight skills'

On balance it would possibly help some women.

Apart from the very young, the very old, the very ill, the disabled and the very opposed to learning martial arts (like me). The question is would it make things worse for those groups (ie escalation and victim blaming).

But again, I've come round to the 'WTAF is this about women's behaviour rather than men's!' conclusion which I seem to be doing more and more these days - not a pop at you at all OP, it's been an interesting thread for me, but where's the one from men saying 'Do Men simply need to learn to not be sexually harassing shits?'

To add to Lonny's point - do people suggest that men learn self defence as men are more likely than women to be subject to street violence?

What I always thought was interesting about my self defence classes in the dim and distant past is they started with sprinting practice; the idea being that running away, if at all possible, was the best course of action.

This thread is making me desperately curious as to what would happen if my dh (strong, fit, average height, never fought in his life) went up in a fight against my Japanese SIL (small, slight, expert at the French kickboxing martial art savate).

what happens is that if he got the first punch in, with the element of total surprise, she would probably be floored
same for any of us
most fights end on the floor so floor based martial arts are useful for that scenario,
but running away is number one best scenario

i would like my boys to have self defence classes also. they are most at risk. self defence includes walking away, not making eye contact, and if you do punch someone, hit them as many times as you can in as short a period as you can, then run away (imo)

Thanks, Sanfairyanne.

Love the idea of that thread, Lonny.

I don't think we're ever going to eradicate violence (quite honestly, I don't think mankind (and I choose that word deliberately) is capable of it), but I do think we are capable of affecting a sea-change in attitudes.

This is why I think it is so important to tell men not to rape, rather than tell women how to avoid being raped. Those who buy into rape myths think this is pointless, because 'everyone knows not to rape, and telling people (well, men) not to do it will be completely ineffective'.

I disagree, though. And I think drink driving is a good example. People used to do this without thinking. Until it became known how dangerous it was, and enough campaigning and pressure put a stop to it. Of course, there are still some idiots, but on the whole, drink driving is something which is no longer acceptable - purely because the message: DON'T DO IT, along with effectively harsh penalties sank in.

Of course, the legal system is set up to ensure rape convictions (unlike drink driving) are depressingly low, so perhaps it is not as likely.

I do agree that in the interim we, as women, do need to take steps to ensure our own safety. But I think until the focus is on changing men's behaviour at least, if not more, as much as women's, things aren't going to really improve.

I have to say that as a person with a disability that means I can't (and have never able been able to) run, and generally am a bit shit generally on the "doing stuff with my legs" front, these threads always make me feel a bit crap.

I know that the ra-ra we are women we can be powerful thing is great but for me it just reminds me that I am inadequate and at risk IYSWIM.

And I know people don't mean it like that, but it's why I guess I always point out that this stuff is great for some people but not great for those who are more vulnerable for whatever reason - youth, age, disability, and even as a pp points out because actually she just doesn't want to learn martial arts thanks. That is a reasonable response IMO.

I am really glad for people who can learn this stuff and be fit and if any person can get out of a situation where they were going to be harmed that is brilliant but but but what about everyone else.

Don't want to come across as overly negative as I think some of the stories on here are great. Just, it's not a doable answer for lots of people.

I've changed my mind a bit on this over the years.
I used to be all, "RRRRRaaaahhhh! If anyone attacked me I'd kick his balls to a pulp, and run away!!! Or possibly kick his balls, and him, to pulp, then run away!!! Raaahhhh!"
I still like to think that I might manage it, though would be happy enough with the running away bit.
But, as MyEmpire says, this is only likely to be useful in a few situations.
I also did some women's sportsfighting a few years ago (basically anything goes except eye gouging etc). The fights always ended up on the floor pretty quickly and boiled down to trying to break your opponent's hold and apply an unbreakable one to them. So quite realistic and useful - no fancy footsweeps etc. The most technically skilled fighter was a stone lighter than me and would beat me 95% of the time. I did, however, use my height and weight advantage to beat fighters round about my skill level, or a bit better, well over 50% of the time. It's so useful to have a couple of inches and a few pounds of muscle over someone else.
I quite enjoyed it, and back then had time for it, but have no intention of spending an evening a week for the rest of my life honing and maintaining my muscles and skills in the hope that it might stop me getting raped some day. I don't have time. I only have one free evening per week now and I am not using it for that. I would do martial arts if I really loved them for their own sake, but I don't.
Also, it's a little depressingly scary and annoyingly unfair how much difference a bit of height and muscle makes. I used to play fight with my little brother. Stopped when he was about 15 or 16 - no fun for either of us as the mismatch had become too much. He's taller and broader shouldered than the average man -he has the same advantage there as I do over the average woman. I'm a bit better muscled than the average woman. Back then, he was less muscled than a lot of his friends and wasn't a gym goer, but the testosterone of puberty had strengthened him more than I could ever match without serious weight training and probably anabolic steroids. I remember using all my might one day and realising that he was well below capacity still, and thinking, shit if he was a real attacker I would be stuffed.

On the whole I think the last three posts nailed it, especially JapaneseMargaret (though I do recommend that any woman who wants to learn self-defence goes and looks up aikido, which is a martial art focusing on movement and doesn't require strength).

Still I think it is an interesting issue to explore and better for women to do so first before men come along and tell us how things should be done (more of m clumsy phrasing but hopefully you get the idea). Thank you all for exploring along with me!

Actually, if you do want a self defence class, go for Krav Maga.
Even eye gouging is allowed. :)

Let's not kid ourselves: we already live in a society underpinned and managed by violence and potential violence. It acts as a potential usually; we operate using place holders for violence in the same way that credit cards and cheques notionally (or actually) stand for lumps of gold.

the question is: who has the right to use violence on their own behalf, without greater violence then being inflicted upon them, by communities, sub groups of communities, or the state. the other question is, on whose behalf will the state intervene with its violence-machine?

Rape is an act of violence which is essentially allowed in the sense that it carries with it vanishingly small likelihood of retributionary violence from the community or the state

Women nobly deciding not to take part in violence is in no way going to change the fact that we live in a society that is underwritten by violence. It would be about as useful as deciding we aren't going to have any money, and about as radical (remember they don't like us having money either)

I really disagree that there is some potential unbearable wave of violence against women that might be unleashed if we misbehave but hasn't yet. And that it can be contained, by women Not Getting Involved. Seriously. It is happening now. and the "women don't do violence" thing, like "women don't have jobs and direct access to money" thing is one of the conventions that is designed to disempower us.

This isn't the way violence works. usually. Most people / organisations who use violence, or the implicit threat of it, use it as a frequent measured corrective to assert themselves against other people. It's more a series of marked, meaning-filled nudges, than the occasional Mad Max rampage. And it runs through society all the time.

Women are controlled by violence and the threat of it in the community.
People of colour are controlled by State violence.
To the extent that there is any push back at all against either of these, it is accomplished by violence. by various agents, directly or as proxies, threatened or actual.

I mean it would be lovely to live in a society where everything was decided by discussion, consensus, and then people following through on what they agreed, but we don't. We live in a society where people are forced to do things by violence and its constant potential implicit presence.

Something we have talked about a lot on this board is ways of dealing with men taking up space in public places. Everybody enjoys talking about "the time I didn't move my leg on the train" or "the time I didn't duck out of his way on the footpath". This is a tiny, almost invisibly violent, very cute distant relation of the actual pushing that needs to be done, that can be done, if done collectively and with concerted effort, in order to assert our physical autonomy in the world. Push, push, push, push back. No, I don't like it. Yes violence is tiring and boring and ugly. No it isn't easy to see how it is even physically possible against a man most of the time (which is why we keep pleading with the state to do it for us, but it won't). but really we are living in cloud cuckoo land if we think we can just walk away from violence and say "oh no, we don't like that".

It's like saying "I am building plans for a house but I don't have any ladders, and I don't like them for ideological reasons, so my plans do not involve a roof". But we live in Britain where it rains 39 weeks of the year? "well you can say that but it is perfectly possible to imagine a society without roofs". I know it's hard to get ladders, I know they are expensive and you can fall off and that's dangerous, and a series of low pretty interlocking courtyards would be very sweet and attractive and so much calmer and easier to build, but... it's going to rain. Most of the time.

I actually think we have really effectively been brainwashed (if you are MC - I am by the way that is not a dig) to think that violence is Other and Doesn't Happen.
It's why people are so shocked when someone they know in their town has to run away to a Women's Shelter. It's why people struggle to come to terms with the reality of the number of deaths in police custody, and what that actually means in terms of what the police are habitually doing, especially where People of Colour are concerned.

AND YET when it is happening to you, although you don't call it violence, you accept it as normal (until a certain line is crossed. If a stranger punched you in the nose you would probably call the police. When an acquaintance gets a bit pissed and gropey, he'll often do it in a way that means you can only giggle and shift uncomfortably). While we all say "oh no I do not accept violence in my life" we are all quite effectively herded and corralled by violence. Because, like I said before, it's not some crazy rampage that might be just about to happen; it's happening now, to limits that, as a society, we have decided to accept. It has been decided that it is ok to pat women's bottoms and it is grumpy and humourless to object, because it has been silently agreed that taking ownership of women's bodies is one key way to keep them in their place. Society sanctions this. Society sanctions rape.

Insightful post Ellis.

Eilis, I completely agree with you.

It's worth remembering that pretty much every major social change in history (social progress, I mean) has happened as a result of violence or the threat of violence.

Should we separate our ideals and our means of achieving them though?

Think about the struggle for decolonization in the 19th-20th centuries. I'm sure some people in those countries thought, well, if we use violence, then we're just as bad as the colonizers who are oppressing us. But in the end, it did mostly take violence to liberate them. Without violence they would probably still be colonies.

I'm not saying we should all go out and start setting cities on fire but I do wish we were doing more marching and protesting and disrupting normal life, putting some fear into people.

I think things are brewing though, on many different fronts. I actually do think there will be a lot of social upheaval in the next 10 years.