Member-only story
There is No Real Security
Saying “no” won’t stop rape. Neither will self-defense classes. And both give women the false hope that they can stop men who want to hurt them.
A month before I left home to travel the world solo at 18, I signed up for a women’s self-defense class. My high school counselors said it would prepare me for the situation everybody warned me about: getting attacked by a stranger while walking alone late at night.
Women’s self-defense classes popped up in the United States as far back as a century ago, supposedly empowering women to fight back against assailants, combining tactics from boxing or martial arts. From the beginning, the classes focused on repelling apparently inevitable attacks by strangers, always assumed to be men.
In my week-long self-defense class I was taught to aim for a man’s groin and face, and what kind of language might help de-escalate a threatening situation. I role-played scenarios I might encounter, including physically countering attacks by a man wearing protective gear. Fewer than twenty percent of sexual assaults are perpetrated by strangers, but the physical training I completed focused on “stranger danger” attacks. The instructors skimmed over the complications inherent in physically fighting back against someone I knew — a…
