The Band-Aid Approach

            While reading Anne Cahill’s piece this week, I had mixed feelings about the idea of Feminist Self-Defense classes. One point that was made in class today was the way that these sort of classes would not only teach women how to defend themselves during attempted assaults, it would teach us how to break through the cultural idea of passive femininity. Conversely, I believe that even self-defense classes set on the basis of feminist ideals would add to victim blaming, and jointly position us with men on the very erroneous belief that the victim should have been able to “ward off their perpetrator” through sheer physicality.

            Firstly, Weiss describes in her article on Male Sexual Victimization, describes men’s hesitance to report their victimization due to the socialized idea that it is “men who are supposed to be strong, virile, and able to protect themselves,” therefore leading to males feeling too “embarrassed to admit that they had been overpowered and forced into submission” (Weiss, 2007). In this sense, if we take the position that women should participate in self-defence classes in order for them to better protect themselves against possible perpetrators, we open up yet another way of holding the woman accountable for her rape. In spite of this, Cahill makes the point that other forms of non-feminist responses on how to avoid sexual assault “limit women’s sense of freedom and access to physical space, and since they are virtually never accompanied by exhortations aimed at men, the dominant social message is that it is women who are responsible for limiting the possibility conditions for sexual violence” (Cahill, 2009). While Cahill does make the point of inferring that Feminist defense classes would teach women to be in control of their bodies, she fails to acknowledge the many different circumstances in which sexual assaults happen, and the vast spectrum of perpetrators in which the use of self-defense would be ineffective. In my opinion, Martin’s argument that these courses would be merely a partial solution, due to the prevalence of date rape, is not easily refutable. However, Cahill continues to argue that these courses are more that “a mere Band-Aid approach,” (Cahill, 2009) yet I would argue that they are just that, and that this approach may in fact add the prevalence of victim blaming within society.

            While I don’t agree entirely on the concept of self-defense courses as a way to combat rape culture, her argument to use it as a way to bring about change could be something to consider. With all the negatives to this approach, I feel that her idea to “[re-center the body with regard to the political phenomenon of sexual violence,” and adding that this approach is less individualistic and more to do with inherent values in the learned skills (Cahill 2009), could have great value. In this sense, teaching women to be assertive, sure of themselves, and holding themselves in a stronger more confident way, may have less to do with preventing rape and more to do with how women are socialized.

            In the end, I am not sure exactly where I stand on her argument for feminist self-defense courses. However, I feel that if they were presented more on the basis of being “pro-woman strength” classes and less of a “rape prevention” course, there could be much more potential to this approach. Finally though, in defense of Cahill and as Marcus so rightly states, “we will be waiting a very long time if we wait for men to decide not to rape.”