Many martial arts schools have outreach programs either open to the public or at local colleges, high schools, or youth programs that are of a limited duration (one day or a handful of sessions) and focus on women's self-defense, particularly rape defense.
What material is fundamental to these courses? What should students come away thinking and being able to do?
[Nota Bene: A lot of this is going to piss off a lot of you. I am most certainly NOT blaming any victims by saying any of this; I'm proposing a better way to prepare people for the harsh reality that certain people are just not nice.]
I wasn't going to answer this question. I like Sardathrion's comment that "Whatever you think you know about rape is probably wrong," and it's absolutely true. I also liked his inclusion of Mark MacYoung's page, which has a lot of good information, and encourages personal responsibility (for which I'm a huge advocate prior to becoming a victim).
I posed a question here as a focal point to be considered because there are a lot of important pieces of information that are being ignored. Studies have suggested that 3% of women on a university campus in a 9 month period are raped, and as many as 25% of women will experience at least an attempted sexual assault during a degree program.
Let's go ahead and give rape an actual, usable definition: Rape is the commission of a sexual intrusion against another against the victim's will and consent.
So let's start out by looking at something called the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (aka IRMA) -- I'm going to pose a series of statements and I want you to consider your answers on a standard Likert Scale of 1 ("Strongly Disgree") to 5("Strongly Agree"). Remember, you're on your own so no one knows your answers:
Scoring this is simple: the lower the score, the less susceptible you are to "Rape Myths", those little bits of information that have been passed around as truth about rape for as long as man's existed.
We can use this to heighten our understanding of what rape is, and by sampling this data and it's studied results, we can understand the biases against rape, and look into ways to prevent it through education of well-equiped bystanders and not simply potential victims. FYI, something interesting came out of the study
It is interesting to find that there is a correlation between high scores on this test and a decreased likelihood of intervening in a sexual assault.
A very common, almost comical approach approach to Rape Prevention has been the "STOP! RAPE!" then kick to the testicles. Some of the slightly better courses teach women how to bridge and roll.
For the smallest minority of victims, this may be enough. For that minute cluster that actually is the victim of an attack where they see it coming or are capable of performing the poorly trained and hardly practiced movements picked up from a weekend seminar, this is a victory. But it is not enough.
The approach of every Rape Defense course I've encountered has portrayed the same message: "You don't have to be the victim." While this can be good, and even empowering, it is isolating, and puts the burden solely on the victim.
A girl is apparently drunk at a frat party and passes out on a couch. The guy sitting next to her puts her arm around his shoulder and stands her up. She's clearly in no condition to resist. She made a mistake; a horrible mistake that is about to follow her for the rest of her life.
It's very easy to think "She needs to be responsible for herself." And yes, she should have. However, now she can't. Maybe it was a big mistake like drinking too much. Maybe it was a small mistake like not keeping a close enough eye on her drink. Either way, one person in a room of dozens is now about to take advantage of her; and all it takes is one of those people to speak up. But will they?
The bystanders in the room are going through a cognitive process as this is happening: * Noticing the action. (This guy is trying to stand up a drunk girl). [NB: In the social context of a party, based on social norms of what is polite in such situations, a person is less likely to draw attention to a perceived threat. Latane and Darley. 1968] * Evaluating the Context ("This guy is trying to stand up a drunk girl at a party.") [NB: Even * Evaluating their degree of responsibility ("I don't know the drunk girl or the guy; they're probably dating.") * How to assist ("I could intervene directly, but he looks pretty strong; or I could tell someone else and it'd be their responsibility"). * Implementation (Act or don't.)
What is occurring is called the Bystander Effect, notably observed following the brutal murder of Kitty Genovese in which questioned witnesses rationalized away their responsibility in preventing the crime, some claiming they thought it was a loud television, others assuming that other people had already called the police so why should they...
Stanley Milgram (psychologist renowned for his studies of obedience to authority) posits that commonly bystanders present a callous approach to those in need of help due to highly developed coping mechanisms related to the information overload in their daily lives.
As martial artists, we know the value of repetitive action. By repeatedly drilling a response, we make the response natural, even if it's a reconditioning of an established flinch. Training in rape defense needs to be a reconditioning of established conditioned responses. That is, if we're undertaking the responsibility of leading rape prevention classes, we must do so in a way that is effective and reconditions the students to react in an effective way.
By reconditioning against the Bystander Effect and training women not only how to look out for themselves, but for those around them, rape prevention classes can take on a drastically more effective curriculum.
[tl;dr – If you're going to teach the "Kick to the Groin" method of rape prevention, you are doing a disservice to your students]
One of my old instructor used to teach a couple of ways.
One approach was a free, one evening seminar (3 hour long) usually offered in the first or second week of the term at a university. Obviously this was a very limited unit. The focus was on rape-by-force and rape-in-a-coercive-social-setting scenarios (not the whole story of course, but it is the kind of thing that martial arts can help with). Materials covered include:
Situational awareness and avoidance. Avoid going into the dark and isolated parts of campus and the surrounding spaces alone at night; keep eyes out in parking lots; the blue lights are bike-patrol call boxes and they will escort you and so on. Avoid being too drunk in social setting with people you don't know very well; especially without a buddy.
Lots of emphasis on the buddy system for social settings. Your sober (or at least more sober) buddy is a resource for identifying and avoid threats and a possible deterrent to casual attacks.
Three part strategy for a potential rape-by-force scenario: (1) draw attention (2) escape (3) evade. This was where the physical part of the unit came in.
The strategy was shout/escape/follow-up/run/keep-shouting.
Basic technique escapes from two wrist grabs, a couple of bear hugs and the hammer lock were taught, each with a distracting or off-balancing strike at the end. Technique was practiced on some victi volunteers brought along for the role (me!), and on each other to a lesser extent.
Emphasis that the purpose of that counter is to make time to get away.
Some discussion of where to run. That is, towards people.
Obviously this kind of thing is very limited, there just isn't enough time to do much and many students don't have much by way or preparation.
And truth be told it was also a kind of loss leader for the PE course version which would bring in a little money.
Two hours twice a week and students encouraged to practice outside of class. Not "rape prevention" as such, but it was a goal in the unit and made part of the discussion.
Here there is a comprehensive set of ~16 escapes and a more flexible set of counters (some throws and some counter-lock-then-shove), and the students drill them with the goal of being able to react in under one second when blindfolded and presented with the attacks in unknown order and side. Again, more experienced students from the "martial arts" group would participate. That blindfold drill was instructive to me, I thought I knew my stuff but I fell apart the first few time through the drill.
Some confined spaces (other students hold up some of the mats to make a corridor) and low light work.
Some plain old physical fitness, but not strongly emphasized. A system that requires you to be a trooper to use just isn't going to work for most people.
Because the student do much more trading of technique they get chance to understanding that they can go on after being thrown about a bit. This being a beginner's class at the University they were not subject to really serious abuse. (The instructor use to brag that his classes had a lower injury rate than the golf classes.)
Whatever you think you know about rape is probably wrong.
So, I suggest that before even starting to think about what material you will teach, you must learn about rape. A god web starting point is the section on rape from MacYoung's site). Next, find your nearest rape support group and contact them to ask them to teach you. Finally, look up your local police force and ask them to teach you. The latter should give you statistics on rape in your area from which you can extrapolate what situations are the most likely to happen in your area. For example, most (2/3) of rapists are not masked strangers. Then you can start thinking of creating a program that will give women (and men) some tools that may prevent them being raped. Yes, men do get raped too.
Information is beautiful has a graphics that you must study. The data comes from the UK but is nonetheless interesting to all nationalities.
Now that you have some more knowledge, you can look into how your martial art can be adapted to help. This could be as simple as "be more self confidence" or "how not to panic when hit in the face really hard", or whatever else. If nothing else, martial art training does improve your ability to cope with violence and defend yourself against it -- be it only fitness to walk/run away. It is possible that your martial art may not be useful for the type of rape that happens in your area. However, that depends on many external factors and there is no one true way.
The only thing that students should come out of a course like that is that there are no easy answers. They need to stack the odds against being attacked and martial art training is just one part of what they should do.
As a side note, if a person wants to join your club because of a sexual assault in their past, please make sure that you support them in contacting your local law enforcement agency about said assault.
Edit after comment: Just to be clear, prevent rape is in no way, shape, or form meant as victim blame.
First, the teacher should understand that if they're teaching even a moderately sized class, the odds are overwhelming that someone has experienced a violent sexual assault. If not them, then someone they are close with. Even overlooking the fact that those memories are painful, consider this when saying that such-and-such technique will work to prevent rape. They may have tried it and failed.
Some rapes involve a masked man jumping out of a bush. Most don't.
Most rapes are committed by someone known by the victim, often someone they trust. It doesn't always involve substantial violence, since drugs, alcohol, or the threat of violence may be enough. It's important that students and teachers both understand this. Awareness of your surroundings while walking down the street is nice, but it's almost irrelevant to preventing rape.
Fighting is fighting. Fighting back against sexual assault is fighting. There are no tricks, no special techniques, that will make fighting easy. The attacker is often bigger, stronger, and possessing of greater experience in wrestling, hitting, and getting hit. One's odds of defeating such a person--that is, defending oneself physically against an assault, sexual or otherwise--are improved through technique and physicality. Hail-Mary knees to the groin, one-in-a-million knockout shots, and this-is-my-only-hope eye rakes cannot be relied upon. They might work, they might not. Actual self-defense skills such as boxing and wrestling can be relied upon at least somewhat because they've been tested.
A lot of the teachers of this topic are fit men. To get in the right headspace, I did the following math: I'm about 5'10'' and 175 pounds. The average woman is 5'4'' and 150 pounds. (You can also use the height and weight of a specific woman you know, to understand their point of view.) I extrapolate from my size to see how big the average man would be if I were 5'4'' and 150#. That means I should envision men at about 6 foot 4 and 205 pounds. Or bigger. To mimic the difference in athleticism, envision this guy as a college sports star. That's your attacker. If at all possible, find someone the appropriate size and have them wrestle you to the ground, or spar with them under MMA rules.
Probably the most important lessons to impart are:
In addition to the concepts above, there should be at least some physical content, if only to show students how hard it is to pull off these techniques.
I've found the biggest return on investment has been from three basic activities:
The latter two should be done with extreme caution and the reminder that these activities might be upsetting to students.
In addition, specific techniques that are popular, easy to grasp, and relevant include:
These techniques will not be sufficient for someone to reliably defend themselves. They are meant merely as exposure. Do not expect students to leave with any skills, nor retain any specific techniques.
I find it useful to end with a demonstration of two skilled practitioners sparring, either with strikes or without, to demonstrate the utility of training martial arts over the long haul. Seeing a small woman competently kickbox, or a small man sweeping a larger man from guard to mount, is eye-opening.
I've done this a few times back when I was teaching (we described it as "women's self-defense", not rape specifically).
For a short seminar, I concentrated on only two things:
Situational awareness -- basic rules of thumb to stay out of dangerous situations, be aware of your surroundings, and not to act/look like an easy victim.
Practice hitting or kicking something as hard as they can, and not panicking when somebody grabs them or does something physical with them. We only taught basic, can't-screw-it-up techniques like palm-heel strike or kick to the knee or shin. But it's shocking how many people can't bring themselves to strike with any real force, even an inanimate object like a big kicking pad, or utterly lose their composure if somebody grabs them (even in a class). Not that they don't have the strength, it's just that they've never willed their body to apply their force to striking something and (especially for women) are conditioned to be very hesitant to do it. Heck, sometimes it was a struggle just to have them give a good loud yell. Breaking that mental barrier -- not panic because they're in a physical situation, yell loud, hit hard -- was, I figured, the biggest improvement somebody could make in a couple hours, and it didn't require teaching anything that couldn't be mastered in minutes. For some of them, it was a revelation that they could actually make their voice and body do it.
I'm going to concentrate my answer on techniques, I presume that in the course you will cover off basics like being aware of your surroundings, checking your vehicle before getting in to it, your car keys are a handy impromptu weapon, trust no-one, if attacked don't concentrate on trying to knee the groin, etc.
With this sort of course you have to recognize the catch-22 that you have:
The surest way to do this is to compile an arsenal of one-strike remedies. These are the moves that with just the one strike will either disable (preferably) or slow down the attacker. You will be able to take some of these moves straight from whichever art is the basis of what you are teaching, some of them will be the good old "vital point" strikes (like a kick/knee to the groin, or finger tip into the eye), some of them will come from other arts.
The crucial thing is these moves must be incredibly simple and effective, the person using them hasn't got time to think, analyze, doesn't necessarily have a lot of strength or large range of motion, and most importantly has not practiced endlessly to perfect the technique.
As an example of one of these techniques, consider the move where the victim does a downward striking palm heel landing in the hollow just above the attacker's chin bone. This move is easy to perform because the victim simply has to swing (flail) their arm while opening their hand, the critical thing is to hit in a downward motion into that spot. This is a crippling blow, if you land it flush it will knock out the attacker for up to 20 minutes or so*. It is easy to learn, easy to practice (I've been one of the poor practice dummies on the end of these), and the technique doesn't have to be perfect to still be devastating.
When teaching them moves that work, you also need to teach them moves that don't work, or are not particularly effective. An example is a kick or knee to the groin - it can work, but is very hard to land a good clean solid blow as most males will instinctively protect that area and it only takes a small change in position for the groin to become difficult to get (not to mention it just may not work if the attacker is amped up on adrenaline or meth).
Above all what these students must take away from their class is a sense of positivity and certainty - they need to know that if they are attacked they can do something about it, this empowerment can be the best weapon you can give them.
*I have this direct from the wife of another martial artist who had to use it once. She knocked the attacker out and had plenty of time to call the police and for them to turn up. This should also leave the attacker with an excruciating headache, this alone should distract them from whatever they were originally going to do.
Most importantly of all, awareness. I train outdoors a coupe of days a week in a dark path with some friends. we go there because there are not too many people passing by and because the lack of light and slippery or wet surfaces make a good and realistic training environment for urban combat survival.
Still, surprisingly enough we see women walking there by themselves, or with a dog. This is usually after 21:00. Rapists are usually like predators, who will stalk their preys and use deception to launch their attacks. Getting a girl to train punches and kicks with the intent of freeing herself from a rape attack is a ludicrous idea, unless they are dealing with some drunk guys.
The best defense for this is teaching people about the psychology of planned attacks and make them aware of how to avoid those places. If it is really necessary for your wife to go through a dark alley alone, it is better to give her a weapon. As I said, predators know when and how to launch an attack against a victim, regardless of being male of female.
There are many good points in the other answer about what to do during the training. Here is a list of what might be useful and what not really.
What not to do:
Standard martial arts training kicks, blocks, and so on. No use what so ever. To do stuff like punching kicking you need to practice a lot even good fighters under predatory assault forgetting stuff. Personal experience.
Sardathrion already linked to Marc MacYoung's thoughts, which I would suggest as a starting point for anyone doing a rape defense class. From there, well depends on how much time you have.
I would say for starters covering where rapes occur and how to avoid being rape (i.e. making yourself less of a target) should be on top of the list. After that you can go into techniques. I usually tell them to "fight like a girl", meaning punch, kick, bite, gouge eyes, scream, etc., then run to safety as soon as you can.
I find too many rape defense courses focus too much on the techniques and not enough on how to avoid being a victim in the first place, just my opinion.
A good rape defense course will first and foremost teach women to avoid a situation where they are at risk in the first place. Bonus points if they drill it into women's heads that they can't knock a guy out like in the movies.
Once that has been driven into their heads, another feature of a good rape defense course is that women will be taught to poke eyes, kick crotches and scream and run like hell.
On the other hand, features of a bad rape defense course is when where women are taught all sorts of fancy bullshido techniques like "driving the nose bone into the brain" or double-slapping the eardrums. I've also seen them teach arm bars and joint locks to women, as if a pretty little thing is going to be able to perform one on a guy twice her size and amped up on adrenalin.
In summary, Good: avoid or escape. Common sense. Bad: Grrl Power!
