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From http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/01/five-reasons-why-teach-women-self.html

Five Reasons Why "Teach Women Self-Defense" Isn't a Comprehensive Solution to Rape
| posted by Melissa McEwan | Tuesday, January 15, 2008 | permalink |
Before I start this post in earnest, I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that women should not take self-defense courses, that women should not get involved in martial arts, or that there's no such thing as a woman who has successfully defended herself against assault, sexual or otherwise. What this post is intended to address is the exceedingly common recommendation in rape threads that women should "learn how to protect themselves" as the (one-and-only) solution to rape, and the equally frequent comment that people have enrolled their daughters in martial arts classes so they "will know how to take care of themselves."

Self-protection is, at best, one part of a comprehensive solution to rape—and it's not even as straightforward as it may seem. Looking at the complex and practical realities of what teaching women self-defense in regard to rape prevention really means is the focus of this post.

Its raison d'être is the progressively frequent references to rape's inevitability and women's need to learn self-defense as the only surefire way to prevent rape. (See An Angry Old Broad's comment here, in the Bob Herbert thread, as an example of how this meme is disseminated in the media.)

* * *

Reason #1 why self-defense isn't a comprehensive solution to rape: Self-defense instructors can be rapists, too.

Increasingly, martial arts classes are being marketed to young women and the parents of young girls as "self-defense," in which is implicit an unspoken narrative about the prevention of sexual assault. (They are also being sought after in the same way; see another comment from An Angry Old Broad, in the same thread.) The brutal irony is that, as ever, sexual predators endeavor to infiltrate programs where they will be given a trusted position and unsupervised contact with a steady stream of victims. And so we end up with stories like this (via Marcella):
A self-defense instructor in Forest Lake, Minnesota has been charged with having sex with a 15-year-old female student.

Ladislao Enriquez, 48, faces one count each of first-degree and third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

According to the charges, the girl told police she took the class because she was sexually assaulted more than two years earlier.
And this (note that "having sex" is yet again used as a euphemism for rape):
A Yakima karate instructor has been accused of having sex with two underage girls.

Yakima Police say 44-year-old Paul Daniel Barr was charged last week with four counts of third-degree child rape for molesting and raping a 13-year-old girl after he met her while teaching at the Yakima School of Karate.

On Friday, Yakima Police questioned Barr about his relationship with another girl, who says she had sex with him when she was 14-years old. Barr has been charged with second-degree rape and sexual exploitation of a minor in the second case.
Those are just the stories I saw last week.

I am not citing them to try to discourage parents from enrolling daughters in self-defense or martial arts classes, but because they expose the inevitable problem with treating self-defense as the end-all-be-all of rape prevention. There have been fathers in various rape threads at Shakes who have pointedly said that they're taking their daughters to learn a martial art "so they won't ever have to worry about rape," men who absolutely refused to engage the point of this post, which is that such classes are not a panacea for the rape culture, which is vast and varied and—yes—capable of saturating even martial arts classes.

These stories underline why challenging and undermining the rape culture within your own community—including by insisting that criminal background checks and multiple-adult supervision are required by any instructor of children's extracurriculars—is at least as important as self-defense training (and probably more so).

Reason #2 why self-defense isn't a comprehensive solution to rape: Unconscious women can't fight back.

Read more: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/01/five-reasons-why-teach-women-self.html

Comments

[hematopoetic.livejournal.com]

While the logistical reasons behind victim-based solutions (leave a relationship, learn self-defense, go places in groups, watch your drink, don't talk to strangers) and so on make sense to some degree because we usually have access to victims more than rapists in anti-rape programs (altho this varies, even when we're not talking about abuser-specific programs), I think we should always ask the question "Why is the responsibility for 'preventing' rape always on the victim? Why don't we teach rapists not to rape?"

I worked for a peer-education program where we talked about healthy relationships (as opposed to rape specifically--so we could discuss strategies for healthy arguments as well as safety plans in abusive relationships & all the usual stuff), which is a step toward reducing relationship-based violence. But the fundamental dynamics of our society encourage sexual violence and, until those are radically transformed, sexual violence will continue to predominate.

Rape is used as a tool of war, colonization, and intimidation. Rape is one way of keeping white men in power.

I've been raped.

[olympiasepiriot.livejournal.com]

And, guess what? Not only have I had hand-to-hand training, and am a hunter, I successfully fought off a "stranger-in-the-alleyway" type of rapist many years ago.

So, what happened? Well, not all rape is in a situation where you are being threatened in a obvious way and you respond to a physical threat out of the blue. Not every robbery is a mugging.

It was my husband. It was in our bed. It was accompanied by lies. And it always began when I was asleep.

I have a son. I definately am trying to raise him not to rape.