Philosopher Susan Brison’s story of resistance and recovery after a violent sexual assault reveals the therapeutic significance of anger learned through self-defense training. Ten years after her attack, Brison wrote _Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self_, describing the effect sexual violence had on her capacity to think and feel at home in the world. Brison spoke of the incredible difficulty she had in learning how to be angry at the man who sexually assaulted her and attempted to kill her (an attack she calls her “attempted sexual murder”). Rediscovering that anger became a matter of re-learning how to defend her body. Physical self-defense courses taught Brison how to resent what had happened to her. Here is a quote:
“One might think it would be easier, and it certainly would be more appropriate, for victims of violence to blame their assailants…. I was stunned to discover that the other women in my rape survivor’s support group were, like me, unable to feel anger toward their assailants, and I was surprised to learn later that this was not unusual. It was not until after I had taken a self-defense course that I was able to get angry with the man who had almost killed me.”
Ultimately, Brison recounts that she was able to break the double bind of self-blame and powerlessness by performing a kind of self-empowered bodily existence. “We had to learn to feel entitled to occupy space, to defend ourselves,” Brison recounts in reference to her self-defense training, adding that, “the hardest thing for most of the women in my class to do was simply to yell ‘No!’.” The ability to refuse another person’s claim upon one’s body by yelling “No” was re-learned through talk therapy and self-defense training, taught alongside kicks and punches.
Brison’s account demonstrates the therapeutic value of feminist self-defense training. It (re)instills in survivors a sense of entitlement to occupy space in the world. Linking self-defense training to recovery and therapy also creates a positive feedback loop. Having more empowered female and feminine bodies in the world communicates the value of women’s lives and livelihood. When we measure the value of self-defense training merely by its ability to prevent an attack, we lose sight of the therapeutic and political value feminist self-defense training can have.
Resting bike face
Grayson Hunt is a professor of philosophy at Western Kentucky University and an avid cyclist.
Preamble/Warning: This is a post on the value of feminist self-defense training for survivors of sexual abuse. I will discuss in some detail a recent encounter I had with an abuser. I encourage readers of this blog to read my post alongside Ann Cahill’s recent post, “What (Feminist) Self-Defense Courses Can Do.”
Last month I went to Lake Cumberland in Kentucky for a day of boating and swimming with friends. At one end of the lake was an amazing waterfall. As I was swimming near the falls, I looked up and saw a man 30 feet above in the bushes on top of the falls. He waved. I waved back. I’m not up on “boating culture”, but apparently that’s what white people do when out boating: everyone waves to each other. Only he wasn’t boating; he had gotten to the falls by foot from the access road up top. So I stared at him, wondering what the hell he was doing up there. Then I realized he was masturbating. I was stunned. I turned away to swim back to the boat and I could feel shame sneaking into my chest and face. I began to feel responsible for what was happening to me, which was the very message I internalized after being sexually assaulted as a teen. But then something changed. As I was swimming away from this man I realized that if I wanted to say something I could, and that it would probably make things better for me. I needed my life to continue, and with as little shame and self-blame as possible. So I yelled. I yelled loudly, and he heard me. I pointed up at him and said three things:
1) “PUT YOUR DICK IN YOUR PANTS!”
The masturbating man retreated backwards away from the ledge, but was still in view.
2) “I CAN STILL SEE YOU!”
The man disappeared completely from view. Then, bizarrely, I finished with:
3) “GET A LIFE!” (Who says that?) As a recent transplant to the South I have learned that people down here don’t curse in public,, and I guess I didn’t want to attract any negative attention from the other boaters. I needed to keep my righteousness intact!
I swam back to the boat, and told my friends what had happened. They hadn’t heard me yelling.
What does this have to do with self-defense training? The encounter was a perfect example of “stranger danger.” It is an example of a woman defending herself in the face of a random attack, which is what self-defense training courses claim to teach women, where the value of defending yourself is to prevent the attack by a stranger. I took a self-defense training course when I was 7 years old. I thought we were learning to defend ourselves against robbers until it became clear that we were learning to defend ourselves against sexual predators (what a shameful realization to make in front of all your friends!). One of the things they tell you to do is to yell and make a scene, but also to kick, scratch, and gauge eyes (something I would have been too scared to do anyway).
Before I go further, I think we can and should distinguish between feminist and non-feminist self-defense approaches to sexual violence and abuse. Non-feminist self-defense courses actually communicate rather disempowering messages to women. The American Woman’s Self Defense Association, for example, communicates the message that an attack is inevitable, while The National Riffle Association’s “Refuse to be a Victim” training uses victim-blaming and rhetoric (are you the kind of woman who gets abused, or do you defend yourself?). Yikes. I’m not interested in the fantasy of single-handedly preventing rape, nor of possibly deflecting blame onto untrained women.
Feminist self-defense training is grounded in a political and social understanding of sexual violence. Feminists condemn the view that rape is a natural (if regrettable) phenomenon. One version of feminist self-defense training is called Empowerment Self-Defense (ESD). It is an alternative to the fear-mongering approaches espoused by non-feminist conservatives. Empowerment self-defense is informed by the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which states that “accountability for violence lies with the person who commits it and that everyone has the right to make choices about whether or not to fight back,” (my emphasis) and that “good self-defense programs do not ‘tell’ an individual what she ‘should’ or ‘should not’ do,” but offer “options, techniques, and a way of analyzing situations.” Feminist self-defense training rejects the inevitability of rape, the inherent aggressivity of the male body, and the inherent vulnerability of the feminine or female body. Feminist approaches to self-defense training view misogynist societal and institutional practices as the central causes of sexual violence, and offer options for acting within that reality. Feminist approaches recognize rape culture – the practice of shaming and doubting the testimonies and character of victims who seek criminal charges and police protection. So, what might a feminist, empowered self-defensive response look like? Well, I think my response is an example. Here’s why:
When I turned around and yelled at that masturbating man, I felt capable of externalizing my anger verbally, which left me feeling that I had a say in the matter; that I was not going to passively receive, but could active engage with, this man’s abuse. And the fact that I was able to act out of fear and anger at all (instead of shame) was different from when I was first assaulted by an acquaintance many years ago. That seems key – self-defense courses that teach you to kick and scream aren’t helpful when it comes to acquaintance rape, marital rape, date rape and family child abuse. (I really don’t think there is a form of self-defense training that can protect against those forms of abuse, which prey on intimacy.) Also notice that screaming at this man in the bushes *did not prevent* the abuse. But it did allow me to act and respond in ways that I couldn’t in the past (even after my initial self-defense training as a child). That’s what I would call its therapeutic value. Screaming this time meant that I was not paralyzed by a traumatic cycle of abuse.
I view the anger and resentment provoked in feminist self-defense training as accomplishments, not weaknesses. The value of feminist self-defense training is that it communicates the message that even within a culture of violence against women, you can act. As a survivor of violence, I find that message both therapeutic and empowering. Within a culture that silences victims’ and survivors’ stories, externalizing anger reverses the more common responses of self-blame and shame. It is in this sense, that I think feminist self-defense training should be measured. That is, for its ability to “thwart the cultural forces that keep women from experiencing their bodies as powerful” as Ann Cahill said in her recent post, and not merely by its preventative promise.
Resting bike face
Grayson Hunt is a professor of philosophy at Western Kentucky University and an avid cyclist.
(Note: many of the points I make here are developed more fully – and in acadamese – in “In Defense of Self-Defense,” Philosophical Papers Vol. 38, No. 3 (November 2009): 363-380)
As Sam B. mentioned in a recent blog post, self-defense is a controversial topic, particularly among anti sexual violence activists. There are several concerns about recommending self-defense as a way to combat rape culture. Probably the most commonly voiced one has to do with misplacing the burden of fighting that fight: rather than insisting that women use precious resources of time, money, and energy to protect themselves against an unjust threat, we should insist that men take responsibility for not posing that threat in the first place. But there are also concerns about whether self-defense really protects women against sexual violence. After all, most self-defense courses teach women to protect themselves against attacks by strangers, which are the rarest form of sexual violence. It seems they would be pretty ineffective in cases of violence perpetuated by an acquaintance, partner, or family member.
My take is that the first concern can be pretty well addressed if the self-defense course is explicitly feminist in its approach. Not all self-defense is created equal, and some approaches tend to naturalize the threat of sexual violence, as if it were a necessary part of human society (which it is not). Feminist self-defense courses, by contrast, present sexual violence as an example of injustice, a form of gender inequality that should cause us to be angry. In fact, part of feminist self-defense courses (at least the good ones) is to tap into that anger and give it expression. Such a course would never imply that such a complex social and political situation can be remedied by any one response, and wouldn’t present self-defense as the only or even primary way of counteracting the threat of sexual violence.
But it’s the second one that Sam’s blog focused on, and that’s the one that I want to respond to more fully here. I worry that when we evaluate self-defense primarily in terms of how effective it is in preventing specific instances of sexual violence, we miss some of its broader possible effects. For me, one of the crucial elements of feminist self-defense courses is that they target, explicitly and concretely, some of the bodily habits that a rape culture imposes on femininely gendered bodies. I don’t think it’s an accident that a rape culture like ours teaches feminine bodies to take up less space, to react to physical attacks with paralysis, and to underutilize their vocal capacities. These bodily habits are so deeply ingrained that they are often difficult to perceive (my students are still stunned when I point out gendered differences in how they sit, although the tumblr about men taking up space in trains has helped!).
Iris Marion Young analyzed feminine bodily comportment in her great article, “Throwing Like a Girl,” so if you want to read more about how feminine bodily habits reflect a sexist society, go check that out. I’m particularly interested in how those habits not only reflect, but actually perpetuate, rape culture by encouraging women to experience their bodies as weak, fragile, and expected targets of sexualized violence. All the common ways that women are encouraged to protect themselves against sexual violence – don’t go to certain places at certain times, don’t walk alone, that sort of thing – frame the problem of sexual violence as a problem of women’s bodies. It’s as if when those bodies are in the wrong places, or do the wrong things, suddenly this threat materializes out of thin air. And really, that feminine body should have known better than to cause that threat to show up.
So normative feminine bodily comportment not only renders women’s bodies less likely to be able to respond effectively to an actual assault, but encourages women to see their own bodies as the source of the threat of assault itself. And here’s my general point: this imposition of this kind of bodily comportment is harmful to all women, regardless of whether they are ever actually sexually assaulted. It limits their experience, alienates them from the full range of their bodily capacities, and pits their sense of self against their own body.
When feminist self-defense is done well, it takes this problem of feminine bodily comportment head-on. And it doesn’t do so cognitively, which is how I primarily teach this stuff. In my philosophy classes (although I try to involve at least some bodily experiences), we mostly talk about ideas, read texts, and write papers. But feminist self-defense classes teach women how to move differently. It’s a muscular pedagogy, one that creates new corporeal habits. And these new habits – the ability to kick, or to yell, or to become familiar with the sensation of feeling one’s fist meet someone else’s body with force – contradict what women are usually told about what their body can do and be. And that, in my mind, is what makes it such a powerful tool against rape culture.
Our bodies, as the book title goes, are our selves. So when we change our bodily habits and capacities, we change our way of being in the world (and maybe even the world itself). Now there’s no doubt that a single feminist self-defense course isn’t sufficient to undermine or transform a lifetime of corporeal socialization. And even if one has more extensive training, there’s no guarantee that those skills or habits will be accessible in every instance of sexual assault. But I don’t think that’s where the definition of success should be focused. Feminist self-defense courses shouldn’t aim primarily at reducing incidents of sexual violence (although if they do that, it’s great, of course). They should aim to thwart the cultural forces that keep women from experiencing their bodies as powerful, capable, resilient aspects of their being that do not deserve to be the targets of violence.
Sometimes the political struggle is in our muscles, our tendons and ligaments, and our vocal chords. What I love about feminist self-defense courses is how they take the political fight right to the body. Of course, that fight needs to be taken to the masculine body as well – but that would be the subject of another post.
Ann J. Cahill teaches philosophy at Elon University in North Carolina. She likes baking a lot more than running.
Audrey writes, “I’m conflicted as someone who’s taught self-defense workshops (women only as well as co-ed), and who has a lot of martial arts experience. This is something I’m pretty good at. I’ve done over 25 years of taekwondo, several years each of wushu and capoeira, and about 4 years of high school wrestling, not to mention bits and pieces of other cross-training here and there. I’m not particularly big, but I’m definitely not delicate and I can use my weight pretty well. I can take a solid hit and keep fighting. These are all things I know about myself. If I’m out late at night, I walk with good posture and confidence, and stay aware of my surroundings. I know I can defend myself in a lot of situations.
I’ve still been raped. More than once.”
I write, “I can say that for me, I didn’t feel invincible after the taking (self defense) classes. I was more alert and aware of my surroundings and I probably took fewer risks not more. Even now, after 6 years of martial arts training, I don’t feel invincible. I do know that i can yell loudly. In Aikido there is even a name for the yell you make when striking. It’s called a “kiai” and is a self-defense technique in its own right.
I know I can engage physically with another person without freezing in panic. And I think I walk wi
th confidence, eyes up and alert. I do believe that my martial arts training makes me much less likely to be attacked in the first place. I’m going to post later about some of the things Aikido has taught me.
When I say that I’m not saying I won’t ever be attacked again, nor am I blaming women who are attacked.”
Both of us agree that the focus shouldn’t just be on teaching women self defense. We also need to educate young men not to commit sexual assault and to be active bystanders.
In the debate over how to reduce sexual assault on university campuses, proposing self-defence classes for women is controversial. Women aren’t the problem, the reasoning goes, so why is changing their behaviour the solution? Putting the onus on women to drop-kick rapists, map out safe walks home, or geo-track their drinks at parties, writes the rules in the wrong direction. And it swerves too easily into victim-blaming.
But, according to new landmark Canadian research, it works. The study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the Canadian-designed intervention, which focuses on teaching women how to detect risk in situations that could lead to sexual assault and defend themselves when necessary, reduced the rate of rape among participants by nearly 50 per cent. At a time when universities are facing harsh criticism for mishandling sexual assault, when the White House has called for action to reduce sexual violence on campus, when it’s estimated that as many as one in four female university students may be assaulted before they finish their degree, is it responsible to deny young women access to a tried-and-tested program?
The four-year study tracked nearly 900 women at three Canadian universities, randomly selecting half to take the 12-hour “resistance” program, and compared them to a second group who received only brochures, similar to those available at a health clinic. One year later, the incidence of reported rape among women who took the program was 5.2 per cent, compared to 9.8 per cent in the control group; the gap in incidents of attempted rape was even wider.
While it’s terrific to see evidence that such classes make a difference, Marina Adshade asks why we focus on university students. They’re not the most at risk group of women. She also asks why the focus on women at all.
If women can be taught to recognize situations in which they are exposed to the risk of sexual assault, then men can be taught to recognize when they are about to become sexual offenders.
If women can be taught not to lead men on by letting them buy drinks, then men can be taught that women who let them buy drinks have not relinquished their right to refuse sex.
If women can be taught to stay together to provide protection, then men can be taught to challenge other men they see exposing women to risk of sexual violence.
Canadians don’t need to teach women to resist rape while we await cultural change that brings an end to violence against women. We need programs that bring about that cultural change starting with the men who are most likely to be sexual offenders – boys under the age of 18
