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My studio says it’s 1 in 3…heard that other places, too. And that it’s worse on college campuses…basically that it’s 1 in 3 on campus, and not just in a lifetime.
Some statistics available at
http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/cvict.htm
http://www.fbi.govHere’s my local site: http://www.impactchicago.org/ . The Core Program is 2 weekends, the class size is kept small so that every woman gets to really practice, the guys are uber-padded so we can give 100% effort, and there’s even a graduation ceremony where you can invite friends and family to watch you demonstrate what you and the class have learned. I’ll let you guys know how it goes in February.
When I first signed up for this back in October, I was a little nervous about it. The idea of having some guy pin me and force me to fight back was somewhat upsetting. Now that I have a little Krav under my belt, I don’t feel as intimidated anymore, so I think Krav will end up helping me maximize my time with IMPACT.
And I’ve wondered about the competition aspect of it myself.
Thank you for the links, Andre. I’m going to check them out now.
I’m seeing roughly 1 and 3 too, Tough Girl.
On the bright side, one page claims the assault rate has fallen by over 64% since 1994. Perhaps women are 1) becoming more aware and 2) learning to fight back.
I don’t think that people misunderstand Krav. It is, to be honest, fairly aggressive, which is what most people are reacting to. I think the real misunderstanding, or social misperception, is the negative connotation associated with aggression, especially female aggression. Last summer in my metropolitan area there was a serial rapist in the local park. Now this is a nice area (Fairmount Park)–think of it as Philly’s Central Park. You don’t want to be in isolated areas alone at night, but solitary jogging on occupied trails shouldn’t be a problem. After the second rape, the local media goes all out on their \”atmosphere of fear\” joy ride and the police interviewed all say women should avoid the area for their own safety. I never found an article or news segment about self-defense, women learning to protect themselves, etc…just stay away, or else. I was so infuriated, where else were we supposed to go to run, bike, play sports, etc.–our most convenient park was now off limits to women. So I wrote an op/ed piece about female aggression and how women need to learn to protect themselves, not just from \”stranger danger,\” but, even more prevalent, acquaintance aggression/violence. It was never accepted.
Even today with the advent of female sports and successful female athletes, there is a distinction between acceptable athletic competition and raw aggression. I was a fairly competitive athlete in both soccer and volleyball and later ultimate frisbee, but I never learned aggression until Krav. Remember when Brandi Chastain of the Women’s Soccer Team scored the game winning goal and tore off her shirt–a practice common among her male counterparts–the story that buzzed was not ìlook at that six-pack, damn that girlís fit and powerful.î Instead media pundits tisk tisked over Chastainís less than revealing sports bra–feminine modesty again trumping power/aggression.
In many ways, American society values the docile, weaker woman. Until that changes, female aggression will be considered a less than ideal alternative to avoidance/retreat. Think about it, feminists are always going on about the \”blaming the victim\” issues inherent in the question, why does a woman stay in an abusive relationship; why did that woman wear that outfit in that neighborhood. But no one asks the question why didn’t she fight back? Until that becomes a repeated question, I don’t think we’ll get to the place where we get to ask: how do we teach her to fight back successfully (i.e. with aggression)?
Sorry for the long post; as stated, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now.
I was cruising around a site ~ http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com ~ and it addressed the feminist cry, \”A woman should be able to walk into a biker bar nude and be unmolested.\”
In other words, self defense shouldn’t be the priority. A utopian world where rape no longer exists should.
That it’s unrealistic is completely ignored.
It’s an interesting site. The profile for potential attackers is something I’d love to print out for my neices along with the section on high risk behavior.
Nononsenseselfdefense is where I learned about Krav. 6 years before I found my first studio… what a great site. I’d say that the information on that website will do more for your own self protection than a lifetime of krav, because it will drastically reduce the likelyhood of your ever needing the krav in the first place. Course, it’s not nearly as much fun… 😛
That’s something else that really aggravates me. We had a group, which I won’t mention by name, check with us to see if they could rent space for seminars. They weren’t self-defense or martial arts seminars. It was women’s self-empowerment seminars. But after reading their website and their literature, I vehemently spoke out against us supporting the group.
The reason? Their philosophy was one of \”accept yourself as you are, love yourself for who you are right now, and just become at peace with it all.\” Though I don’t necessarily disagree with any of that stuff at face value, I felt very strongly that it spoke to a complacant mindset, which is the last thing a potential victim-turned-successful-defender needs. I really actually felt like their goals were mutually exclusive with those of Krav, and even at points contradictory.
How is anyone ever supposed to improve if the key to happiness lies soley in becoming content with exactly who you are?
I just want to make sure I understand this before posting my thoughts, Jeff. It wasn’t a seminar on self defense or anything like that, it was more just a feel-good type thing for women?
If that’s the case, then I understand their goal. Accepting yourself, loving yourself, developing a sense of peace and all that stuff… it sounds dopey, but it’s actually a good thing to do. It also does NOT mean become a doormat, do *nothing* to improve your situation, curb your voice or anything wimpy like that.
I can use myself as an example. I work on this type of thing every day, and yoga (a great love of mine) fosters these ideas. Being at peace with who I am can mean many things, including being at peace with the fact that I can’t learn all my Krav Level 1 techniques in under a couple of months. I need to have patience both with the system and myself, accepting the fact that proficiency takes time and effort. As long as I’m giving the time and effort, I should accept I am doing the best I can do right now. Improvement will come, and I should not forget to be *fully* in Level 1 class at this moment (where I should be) instead of trying to rush things, all the while keeping my eye on Level 2.
This attitude spills out into every area of my life, including how I feel about myself physically (am I pretty enough?), mentally (am I smart enough?), etc. I’m always practicing being at peace with who and where I am at the moment.
That doesn’t mean I won’t gouge someone’s eyes out if they try to hurt me. With practice, I can pop an assailant’s eyeball and be totally at peace with it. 😈
I suspect this is what a seminar like that is promoting. I could be wrong, of course. But that’s what it sounds like.
I think having these seminars at your school might be a good idea. You might get some new students.
That IMPACT training looks somewhat similar to the \”suit seminars\” we have here sometimes. Overall it seems to be a bit tamer than Krav Maga, so I think it’s quite possible that they simply fear the competition.
I’m not sure why so many people seem to think that learning Krav Maga will make you aggressive, even to a point where you’ll need anger management (!). We are usually taught to use our KM powers for good not for evil. And if a girl were to be attacked by a rapist and in order to get away from him she had to hit him, knee him or even gouge his eyes out, I don’t think that would make her an aggressive person at all, she would simply have done what she had to in order to protect herself. Tough luck for the rapist, he made the wrong choice.
RTA, interesting thoughts. While I see what you are saying and I believe that a situation such as the one you described is always a good time to bring up the need for learning self-defense, I’m not sure the police’s reaction was necessarily sexist in nature. The most prudent thing for the police to do in that type of situation would be to warn people not to go to the park, until the assailant has been caught. If the attacker had been a serial killer, targeting men and women alike, I’m sure the police would have given similar advice and would have focused on keeping people out of the dangerous area altogether, before advising them to take up self-defense classes.
The Brandi Chastain thing was silly, I agree. I think when it comes to nudity Americans tend to be more prude than European’s. In the US, girls can’t even take their tops off on the beach, while in Europe (Germany at least) people sunbathe nude in the parks! So maybe the thought of seeing a girl in a bra (even though it was a sports bra), on national TV, with kids watching and all, simply terrified people. 😉
Re:
quote \”Giantkiller\:RTA, interesting thoughts. While I see what you are saying and I believe that a situation such as the one you described is always a good time to bring up the need for learning self-defense, I’m not sure the police’s reaction was necessarily sexist in nature. The most prudent thing for the police to do in that type of situation would be to warn people not to go to the park, until the assailant has been caught. If the attacker had been a serial killer, targeting men and women alike, I’m sure the police would have given similar advice and would have focused on keeping people out of the dangerous area altogether, before advising them to take up self-defense classes.The Brandi Chastain thing was silly, I agree. I think when it comes to nudity Americans tend to be more prude than European’s. In the US, girls can’t even take their tops off on the beach, while in Europe (Germany at least) people sunbathe nude in the parks! So maybe the thought of seeing a girl in a bra (even though it was a sports bra), on national TV, with kids watching and all, simply terrified people. 😉
Hey Giantkiller:
Thanks for your thoughts. I absolutely agree that the public should be warned about the area. In fact, I was equally incensed that the story never made the news until the second victim was attacked, and killed. I thought it negligent of both media and police to not notify the public of the first rape because it is such a highly used park. However, I think it is equally offensive that the media insists on trying to scare people with their coverage, rather than providing productive angles to the news. This is not an issue of gender discrimination but a practice that, in my opinion, spans almost every media-covered story. I wasn’t attacking the media of sexist fear mongering, just fear mongering in general. I should have been more explicit to begin with, among the dozens of stories surrounding this over the months that it progressed (BTW, the culprit was never caught), a useful angle could have been self defense.
My point was more of an overall social acceptance or even requirement that women do not fight back…run or stay away, but don’t fight back. I think that is an expectation, whether based on social bias (women as nurturers) or physical bias (generally smaller people), that needs to change. The example of the media coverage was more about how little we expect of women with regards to self-protection/defense in general.
Regarding Chastain and feminine modesty, that again is a social indoctrination that needs to change. I was amazed when told by a Krav instructor that some of their women’s self defense seminars included a drill where your attacker rips your clothes off you (woman wears sports bra or bathing suit underneath) because women often stop fighting back during rapes and instead attempt to cover themselves. So those kids who saw their parents \”terrified\” over a woman taking off her shirt are taught how important it is to stay covered up. Repeated lessons like that, with little to no lessons about self defense, and the children (esp. the girls) assume that modesty is more important than defense. Combine that with the expectation that girls shouldn’t or can’t physically beat boys and no wonder women grow up to be victims. I’m just saying we can’t expect aggression to grow from nothing, and we can’t expect women to just learn aggression when the opposite is expected of them. I think perspectives need to change before anything else concrete will.
Good points. The whole taking off your shirt thing reminds me of that fighting class we had many years ago, taught by Amir and Mitch. At some point they decided, since it was basically a Muay Thai type fighting class to always take off their shirts when teaching/sparring and invited male students to do the same if they wanted to. I personally thought it wasn’t a bad idea, after all in ring fights guys don’t wear shirts either, but I guess it frightened people and after one or two times they put their shirts back on and there was no more talk of a shirtless class.
Anyway, seems like people in the US are generally more nervous about taking their clothes off, even guys – sometimes in class, a guy might want to take his sweaty shirt off and put on a clean one, but if there’s a girl in the room he usually kind of turns away and seems a bit embarrased. Weird. But I guess that’s just the American way of thinking and for girls it’s even worse.
I wouldn’t care if the guys were shirtless. Nor would I mind going along provided I was wearing a decent, well-lined exercise top underneath (I say this because not all exercise tops are well made unfortunately). Besides, I dig checking out tattoos. Don’t get to see much artwork with shirts on.
RTA ~ \”I was amazed when told by a Krav instructor that some of their women’s self defense seminars included a drill where your attacker rips your clothes off you (woman wears sports bra or bathing suit underneath) because women often stop fighting back during rapes and instead attempt to cover themselves.\”
I never thought of that. It’s a good idea.
Lor, I get your point, but I think you have a uniquely suited situation to benefit from that kind of emotional/psychological and even *gasp* spiritual discussion/learning. Most women don’t.
And, I believe the self-acceptance, self-love stuff CAN be dangerous without a balanced perspective because the women I’ve met who engage in those seminars DO end up becoming doormats, because those seminars implicitly teach that the answer to all of life’s challenges is wrapped up in processing feelings and attaining an emotionally pleasureable (which is different than healthy) outlook. As you obviously know, there are challenges in life (many, many of them) which can only be met with one response-to fight through them. And I’m not just talking about physical fighting.
I don’t know, maybe I’ve seen too many complacant folks in life who might as well spend the rest of their life sleeping because that’s the most peaceful thing they can do. But that’s not really living, and I don’t believe those seminars teach how to really live.
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