Self-defense is not just physical - it’s verbal, emotional, psychological, spiritual.  A lot has to be transformed for most women before they can ever defend themselves physically.  We have to believe that we are worth defending, that defense can work, and that we can live with the consequences of setting and defending our boundaries before we can even imagine taking defensive action.  There’s a saying that change happens in this order:

 #1 Awareness

#2 Acceptance

#3 Action

My favorite advice columnist, Cary Tennis at salon.com, expresses this in a wonderful way in his response to a letter from a woman who describes being sexually harrassed by her boyfriend’s “friends.”

 I especially like the way he refers to our innate will to protect ourselves as a “pure moral reflex”.

Maybe inspired by the upcoming U.S. election and the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about violence prevention.  Some people are surprised to learn that I’m a committed non-violence and peace activist.  After all, the simplest level of what I teach includes how to kick someone in the head until he’s unconscious. 

OK, so that’s violent!

A meditation teacher helped me to reconcile that incongruence .  I’d shown her a video of one of my IMPACT classes, basically some quite intense, realistic and violent self-defense against attempted assault.  Lots of shouting and kicking and knock-out blows.  I have to admit I was nervous about her reaction; I was eager at the time to be perceived as a spiritual and peaceful person. 

We chatted a bit about karma –  including the long-term negative consequences for those who commit violence.  She pointed out that it’s not doing the perpetrator any favors to allow him to harm you, and that “sometimes the most loving thing you can do for someone is to stop him from hurting you”. 

And if that requires you to knock him out, so be it.

And of course the linkage between peace and self-defense is long and deep, here’s a wordy article from the Quaker community detailing the historical use of some of the terms.

Why don’t more white people effectively act as allies for people of color?

What’s the difference between a straight person who doesn’t hate lesbians and gays, and one who is actually an ally?

What does it take for men to stand up for women’s safety?

Are you a bystander or an ally? 

Most people I know have had a personal experience of witnessing violence against a woman, and doing nothing.  I’ve done nothing more than once.  I remember standing silently on a street corner in San Francisco when I was 19, and watching a man drag a screaming woman down the street by her hair. I didn’t know what to do.
 
What’s the difference between a bystander and an ally?  Is it that the bystander doesn’t care or can’t be bothered?
 
I think it’s fear.
 
Fear that if we intervene, we’ll be hurt too, or killed.  It’s a very real fear.  Police officers have shared with me that the most dangerous part of their job is trying to intervene in domestic violence assaults.  Sometimes the perpetrator turns on them.  Sometimes the victim turns on the ally too, terrified that she’ll be beaten even worse later because someone tried to help her.
 
There’s social fear too.  You may suspect, rightly, that if you say to your sister “I don’t like the way your husband talks to you” or “Have you noticed the kids are afraid of him?” that you won’t be invited over on weekends anymore.  And you might really need your sister’s love, or approval, or a place to go for Christmas.  That’s fear turning a potential ally into a bystander.
 
There are lots of good reasons to learn how to be safe, effective, and meaningful allies, but one that I’m particularly interested in is the trauma that we experience as bystanders.  The experience of failing to act can have devastating, long-term consequences for the witnesses.  It can haunt us, leaving a sense of shame, inadequacy, impotence, even terror.
 
When I finally got realistic and meaningful self-defense training, it not only taught me how to save my own life, but freed me to be an ally.  For the first time in my life, I was free to make choices.  I could choose when to speak up.  When to ask for help.  When to refuse to back down.
 
Knowing I can physically protect myself if someone tries to hurt me has increased my choices in all areas of my life.  Now I know that I can find support, love, and acceptance even if someone rejects me for speaking out.  Now I’m free to tell the truth in all my relationships.  I no longer have to live small and quiet -  whether that’s staying inside because of a fear of parking lots, or shutting up when I hear a racist “joke” or learn disturbing information about a friend.  When we are free to choose, fear no longer gets to run our lives.  We become better allies and safer in the world.
 
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”  Albert Einstein

This month there have been a series of incidents in my town of men standing outside women’s homes, looking in the windows at night and masturbating.  I can’t stand the cutesy appellation “Peeping Tom” – what’s cute about this behavior?  Like most forms of sexual abuse, this perpetrator method has been lauded and mythologized and turned into a sexy little joke in the media way too often.

I know that a lot of men really do not comprehend the chronic, pervasive, and exhausting fear of being raped that women live with every day.  When I taught self-defense classes at sororities this month, no one laughed about these incidents. 

The women wanted to know what to do if one of these guys was outside their house.  Their questions included “What if he grabs me by the neck and chokes me?” and “What if he has a knife?”  and “What if I’m alone and he tries to come in and kill me?”  No one subjected to this abuse thinks it’s cute.

I point out that most of these guys have a slightly different profile than other sexual assailants.  That mostly they’re frightened guys, interested in shocking and observing, not in attacking and killing.  And I also teach them how to physically defend themselves if they have to face their fears.

And of course, it can help to close the drapes at night, keep the doors locked, and
report,
report,
report. 

I would love to see every one of these creeps on the front page of the paper, exposed to the community for the damaged and damaging people they are.

Over the years I’ve tried a variety of responses to sexual harassment on the street.  I’m a big fan of drawing attention to inappropriate behavior for the entire community to judge.  You’ve probably heard the story of the woman on a subway who found someone groping her?  She grabbed his hand, held it up in the air and shouted “Does anyone know whose this is?  I found it on my ass!”  Take the shame and secrecy away - say what just happened.

I found a great community-wide project called HollaBack that encourages just that.  Women are invited to take cell phone photos of men harassing them and send them directly to a website to be published.  There are subpages for different cities, and a great video about the project here.

I have experienced a WIDE continuum of harassment - for example, at least twice in college I was followed while walking by a man in a car masturbating and calling out to me.  If I had a time travel machine, I would ensure both of those guys were immediately arrested.

To be perfectly honest, this is one of my least-favorite questions. I feel aggrieved to point out that self-defense is deeply personal and complicated to learn, that every student is different, that there are no “one size fits all” techniques. Frankly, if “tips” worked we’d have them all memorized by now and be living in a world of peace and justice.It’s not that simple.

That said – yes – I have tips!

Say no. Practice saying no to requests you feel pressured to go along with. Whether it’s loaning a co-worker another $5, or giving your sister a ride, or staying late at the office. The more difficult it is for you to say – the more you’ll benefit from this practice. Most perpetrators test their victims verbally long before exerting any physical force. No is a complete sentence, try it!

Yell. Loud and often. Shout NO or Leave Me Alone or whatever you want, just start shouting. It will break through the fight-flight-or-freeze response, may attract help, and will startle many attackers into giving up. Practice in the car if you’re feeling shy or goofy, we’ll just think you’re yelling at traffic.

Don’t get in the car. If you aren’t feeling safe, don’t get in the car with someone. Even if he’s threatening you, even if you don’t feel safe at your current location, and even if he promises not to hurt you. Someone who wants to get you in a car (his or yours) is planning to take you somewhere less safe than where you are now.

Tell someone. If you feel unsafe or uncomfortable around anyone in your life, ask for help. Shame often prevents victims from revealing ongoing patterns of humiliation, sexual harassment, or sexual abuse. If your ex- won’t stop calling, if your boss hugs you too long, if your father keeps walking into the bathroom when you’re naked, tell someone. If the first person you tell doesn’t help (or worse, implies it’s your fault) tell someone else!

Targets and weapons. Target an assailant’s eyes, throat, groin, and knees. Use your fingers, palms, elbows, and feet. Strike hard and shout NO while you’re striking. This isn’t rocket science, you might be surprised to know how quickly you can break off most attempted assaults.

Out of all your friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances, what percentage have had meaningful self-defense training? And by meaningful I mean training that gave them lots of physical practice, in a wide range of defense scenarios, and left them feeling stronger and more capable. 10%? Less?

In my personal experience, most of us will answer “None” or less than 5%. But if you ask that same group of people – I can guarantee you that more than 5% of them have worried about being assaulted. In fact, it’s not unusual for women to experience some fear of being attacked on a daily or weekly basis. And of course the actual risk of facing assault is quite significant, here’s just one link to some pretty overwhelming statistics.

So why haven’t we all taken a self-defense class? Why isn’t personal safety training mandatory for every grade school, middle school, high school, and college curriculum? Why don’t employers offer it like they offer health care packages, parking passes, and credit union membership? Why are we often taught to swim, sew, cook, hunt, drive and balance a checkbook – but not taught how to protect ourselves? I think the answers to these questions are complicated, and I promise not to write you a 1,000 page treatise as my first blog entry!

Here’s one explanation: Self-Defense is to Sexual Assault what Breast Self-Exam is to Breast Cancer. Regularly examining your breasts for lumps or changes is one of the best defenses you have against breast cancer. This simple action helps detect the disease early, when it’s most treatable. BSE protects us from breast cancer.

In an analogous way, meaningful self-defense training protects you against sexual assault. It’s a positive, proactive step to take, and greatly decreases the likelihood that you’ll be victimized or that an assault will progress past the initial attempt. Because it makes me feel bad. The whole time I’m doing it, I’m thinking about cancer. Or worrying that I’m doing it wrong. Who wants to think about breast cancer? I can think of at least a hundred things I’d rather think about at any given moment. So I don’t do it. And I rob myself of the action that could actually protect me.

So I have a lot of compassion for people who don’t sign up for self-defense training. Who wants to spend an afternoon, or a month, or a year thinking about the possibility of being assaulted, maybe even sexually? Even worse, who wants to think about their children being attacked? But if you could rape-proof your daughter, would you? What would it be worth to you? Who else do you care about? How uncomfortable or uncertain would you be willing to be, in order to provide meaningful protection to someone you love? To yourself? OK, I’m off to go raise my arms in front of a mirror now.