295 - Mailbox: "There was very little appetite in the room for self-defence"
The realities of running self defence classes...
There was a widely reported rape of a woman in our town recently. Made even more shocking that it occurred in broad daylight next to a busy round about by a supermarket. At time of writing, the rapist is still at large.
One of the local women that train with me attended a large meeting in the town (200 plus mostly female attendees took part) in response to not only this event but several others that have happened recently.
The following is a portion of an email she sent me.
“I attended an interesting meeting with the police, district council, local MP, community initiatives, rape crisis, etc, at the Sub rooms last Tuesday. It was moved to there from Rodborough Village Hall because so many people (mostly women, obviously) wanted to attend. I'm not at all sure what I think about it all. There was very little appetite in the room for self-defence.”
Jeth: Thank you for this. There never is an appetite for self-defence training in this community.
I focus entirely on personal safety and self defence issues within a UK legal context. This has made me uniquely uncommercial and sometimes, flat unpopular in the town where I run my small business.
In the nearly ten years I have been delivering training in this area, I have found an almost overwhelmingly negative viewpoint towards any attempt to seriously pursue realistic solutions to escaping violent situations from certain quarters.
When I hosted Hock Hochheim here, the comments in the paper that begrudgingly featured the event said: “Why do we need a yank to teach us this?”. And that was that from the locals.
I am not a martial artist. I don't cloak the subject in eastern mumbo jumbo, sports/ fitness activity lingo or anything else. You come to learn to defend yourself against a criminal attempting to assault you. Your response needs to be effective and keep you out of jail.
No promises, no guarantees, just options.
The busy martial arts clubs don't like me being here, one in another town actively tried to sabotage me several times as I probably undermine that “learn to defend yourself!” tagline (the one somewhere below “improve your fitness!”) they have by having it as my sole focus.
I've been subject to projection by some would be trainees, they expect the subject to be about trendy social issues and try and frame everything within that. Sorry, that doesn't solve your “just had a knife pulled on you” problem though, does it?
One woman wrote to me after attending a workshop and told me that I should mention the content of each workshop in advance as one scenario included a trainee being on their back on the floor (featured in nearly every martial class around the world) and that it could be construed as a “rape scenario” and although I very carefully avoided referring to it as such I should have contacted trainees before to let them know that the workshop would include this position and they could choose to avoid it if they so felt. It was apparently “very confronting“ of me to feature such material in an over 18 years only workshop clearly billed as containing “simulated confrontation and language”.
She left training and took her training partner with her, unsubscribing from the Journal in protest.
Comments in the local media from police sources and locals are mentioning misogyny (which the paper spelt wrong by the way along with “assault”).
“Often perpetrators don't understand that misogy and sexual assualt isn’t normal and they need bystander training.
“This is a cultural issue, it's a deep seated culture issue.” Said the police source.
A candlelight vigil was planned (near to a local food business...).
Agendas and profit start to be seen forming.
I'm sure that courses will spring up very soon with themes very similar to this awful incident. Money will be made; virtue will be signalled and then? Move on to the next cause.
None of these ideas, that those adopting this as an issue to feel passionate about (until the next one) have put forward, will in any way help the woman whose life was destroyed. Not by a “misogynist” but by a degenerate who needs removing from society.
A society that currently manages to prosecute 1.3% of rapes.
A friend of mine who is a very experienced international trainer abroad, agreed to give free training after being approached by the mother of a 12-year-old girl who was violently raped in his town. The mother, who passionately believed in the workshop being available to all, booked a venue with her own money, a huge number of women signed up to attend the free event.
There was a heatwave that weekend and only a handful turned up as all the others had left for the beach.
He is an elite level trainer in his field with clients that included LA SWAT and Navy SEAL team members.
Disillusioned, he has now finished in personal protection and works in another field.
Self-defence training is the last resort possible solution to a crisis that cannot be solved in any other way.
As the saying goes: “violence is seldom the answer… but when it is, it's the only answer”.
Just as a bleed control kit doesn't prevent stabbing but it does possibly keep the victim alive long enough to reach hospital, self-defence knowledge gives the individual an extra (small) advantage in either avoiding a situation or escaping it.
All the endless debates, agendas and suggestions for long term solutions can take as long as they like.
If you are about to be attacked, you need an immediate solution NOW!
It is an individual decision to pursue training and see any value in it. It's not for me to persuade or convince.
This is why I will not adapt training to be more commercial to appeal to a wider audience.
It is what it is. I present every possible realistic method for avoiding or escaping violence.
I won't use a local crime event to try and generate business for myself, something I see often on social media – I've come to believe that to do so makes you little better than a perpetrator. One does the crime, the other tries to actively profit from it.
I train because of things that happened to me for real in my life. I've heard all the arguments against what I do, from many types of people who can't or don't wish to understand it.
But whatever they say, not one of them would not want some training when facing what is about the loneliest and worst of human experiences – being violently victimised.
Perhaps if rather than them it was their daughter or partner that faced this kind of threat, would they suddenly feel different about things? Something tells me they would.
Local appetite for self-defence or not, I'll just keep on keeping on, though perhaps I'll need to relocate to a city or some other area where I'm better understood.
If anyone wants to learn, they'll find me and if they want to put the work in, I'll do everything I can to get them there. Because they've taken that step of making their personal safety their responsibility, rather than relying on others or some perceived authority figure to do it for them.
Some will understand it, others will not.
This was my personal belief at inception and will quietly continue to be for as long as I am able to train or write.
J
Folks have been sucking on the rotten teet of politically charged shite for so long, and been taught out of some kind of idiotic need to be seen by others as ‘virtuous’ to ‘rise above’ the animalistic behavior of those who dwell in the underbelly of society, that they have lost their connection with reality, due to being coddled and pampered by those who seek to make us weak.
Those who choose to sit around debating why criminals behave the way they do, and waste time discussing what must have gone wrong in their past, and how we as a society can ‘help’ them to learn how to behave… instead of coming up with real world solutions such as how to take these fucking degenerates apart when they lay their hands on us and those we love… have their head in the clouds and are playing right into the hands of the scum we all have to tolerate everyday, who walk around scot free because nobody has the balls to do what should be done about them.
In my experience, for what it’s worth, from getting in with bad crowds when I was younger, and from living in various city’s where I unfortunately experienced and got to know some absolute pieces of shit who scared the living crap out of me on many occasions… and who are often very difficult to get away from once you are ’in’ with them, unless you move to a different city (something I did for this reason and it only worked because I was fortunately unimportant to them) or unless you have what it takes to face them in the only way that they understand (something I certainly wasn’t equipped to do I’m not ashamed to say)….
I am aware that those who have not really experienced criminality or known those who have absolutely no moral code or suffer any kind of guilt for hurting others have NO UNDERSTANDING of what it takes to deal with such a person!!! these people have a lot to learn if they are ever going to prepare themselves to deal with a real threat and need to get their heads out of themselves and stop preaching their bullshit pseudo-moral ignorance while some of us are putting honest blood sweat and tears and a lot of time and money into learning how to be the change we want to see in society, and to keep ourselves and our families safe in the absence of a police force that gives a toss about anything except statistics.
Stroud (a place I escaped age 16 because I couldn’t deal with the ignorance and the lack of get up and go) and where I ended up coming back to after spending my whole adult
Life in various city’s working my butt off to pursue excellence in that which makes me feel human… is a place of great beauty! The valleys are picturesque, and I feel blessed that I got to grow up here in my early years, BUT it is and always has been so full of dreamy, clueless, self interested, floaty clowns who like the sound of their own voices that it literally makes my head spin!
And from growing up around these types I know that all their rainbow bullshit quickly falls away when their bubble gets burst by some realworld shit.
I truly feel for you trying to empower people in this way in this place! And I can imagine that at times it may seem hopeless! Also it makes me pissed to hear how many of those fools have tried to shut you down clearly before they have even given you or what you are about a chance.
Speaking as somebody who has been blessed enough to have found your classes a few years back and as a result has been put on a very important path in my life, one which I know I will be on till my last day on earth…. I thank you for NOT being another prick selling their wares… for NOT just trying to make money and capitalize on the goings on that we should all be paying enough attention to that we are NOT surprised when some poor woman is raped…. Or when some teenager is cut to ribbons for making a bad decision… have you all not seen the kind of scum that lurk around the streets of our towns and villages? of our city’s? If you don’t see them you must have your eyes wide shut and your mind must be somewhere else! these parasites only get to be this way and to carry on uninterrupted because ordinary people prefer to put their fingers in their ears and say nothing instead of standing up for each other or for themselves, and so the cycle continues.
In my view ALL women should be cultivating a ‘kill-switch’ for lack of a better term, and learning how to hurt those who would seek to enter uninvited into their personal space! I know that my daughters and my other half will be taught how to look after themselves from as young an age as is appropriate, starting with cultivating a sense of awareness. And to decent men out there who live by a moral code, you too should know how to look after yourselves and the ones you love! And for that you need a teacher with integrity who cares more about the real-world functionality of what they are teaching than about the size of their pay cheque.
I for one am incredibly grateful that there is somebody in this place with the passion and the drive as well as the skills to teach those of us who are serious about learning how to look after ourselves, and I know I am far from the only one! Keep doing what you are doing and know that you have my utmost respect and absolute dedication to what you are teaching us.
Underwolfe
I think there’s an element of shooting the messenger. And there’s often such a strong desire to not believe in the danger out there that alerting people to the fact can be very unpopular. It’s seen as alarmist, or fear-mongering by some, and those that are aware of the dangers can be equally disparaging of those of us that attempt to take responsibility for their own safety: because it’s seen as ultimately not possible to really defend yourself, so the safest thing to do is stay at home, especially at night, even though statistically the home is the most dangerous place for women, especially at night.
I tell everyone that I train, principally because I want every decent person to consider doing so, and although some people are genuinely interested, I would say that most people are either disapproving, or amused.
For me, the more realistic the training, the better. Surely. Of course, it needs to be progressive and not lead to overwhelm, but self-defence that fails to address common scenarios - such as finding yourself on your back - is surely failing the trainees.
I’m a fan of trigger warnings, I really am. I post about a lot of things, and I like not to shy away from the darker aspects of life. I put a TW on a post recently dealing with death, baby death and sexual assault. My friend, the husband of my friend who died, could thus avoid the post about his wife’s death. He very much enjoyed my post about planting leeks, instead. I think that’s kind, and I appreciate being able to at least be pre-warned about certain posts, and not get ambushed. But common sense would suggest that a self-defence course featuring “simulated confrontation and language” already strongly and explicitly carries the trigger/content warning that that trainee seemed to want spelled out at the beginning of every class. Or pre-class, so she could avoid the unsavoury ones.
People are not always in the position to appreciate what you do. As you say, those that get it, get it, and those that don’t, don’t, at least not yet.
This is a tough community to operate in, that is for sure.