Male teachers sound foolish talking about rape.

[HanshiClayton]

Bendickson, Anita, et al, Scenarios in Self-Defense, DVD 102 minutes, BPS Communications, 2002.

Our female fighters have to be absolutely deadly. Anything less is not going to work for them. Tournament karate isn’t good enough.

This is the point where the male self-defense instructor typically makes a fool of himself. A male instructor can lose credibility with a female audience very quickly. We don’t live in the same world that the women do. Their reality is not ours. When we talk about rape, our ignorance gets in our way. In this respect, let me recommend Scenarios in Self-Defense, a DVD by Anita Bendickson and Mary Brandl. Bendickson and Brandl are formidable black-belts in shotokan, and the tone of the DVD is woman-to-woman. I could not hope to compete with it in terms of credibility. Female students should look here for instruction. Males should study it just to see the female point of view.

One of my students is a school teacher and a grandmother. She gets a lot out of karate training, but her karate is not strong enough to save her in a crisis. Then we added jujutsu combatives to the curriculum, and she suddenly became an impressive self-defense artist. When she uses her knee to grind your skull into the floor, you forget that she's "just a grandma." She's Godzilla, and must be propitiated. We call her "Zilla the Hun."

Any anti-rape program would do well to introduce the wrist locks, escapes, and submission holds inherent in a jujutsu program. With the right training, a woman really can overcome a man. The pain of joint locking steals much of the opponent’s strength from him, equalizing the contest. Punch/block/kick is a thin defense against rape. Give her grappling skills, too.