Stop Teaching Girls to Defend Themselves

Like most women in the martial arts, I got started so I could learn how to defend myself. In fact, my father paid for the classes for me and my sister. We were both in our 20s and heading out into the big, bad world.

I love my dad, and I will always be grateful to him for getting me started in martial arts. It's changed me: I'm a stronger, more confident, more powerful woman because of it.

But he sent us to those classes for the wrong reason.

After more than two decades of training and teaching, I have this message to the girl dads and moms of the world:

Please, stop sending your daughters to me (or any martial arts school) to learn self-defense. Send them to learn how to fight -- and win.

The Gift of Fear

Every summer, as parents are preparing to send their daughters off to college, young women show up at the dojo -- often with a parent -- to learn self-defense. So they can protect themselves from would-be attackers. These parents all have the best interests of their daughters at heart.

But here's the thing: When you tell a girl that she has to learn to defend herself, you are already making her a victim.

You're telling her that there are people out there who are stronger than her (translation: she's weak). That those people might try to hurt her, and there is no way to tell who those people are. So she has to be prepared and vigilant. All the time.

But it's all going to be OK, because you're sending her to a weekend class. That way she'll know what to do when she's attacked.

Believe me, in her head, it's not if she's attacked. It's when.

These parents think sending their daughters to these classes will give them confidence. And the good classes and teachers will, for a while. But first, they have given their daughters fear. All wrapped up in a nice package. With a bow.

It's awful damn hard to be fearful and confident at the same time.

The Destructive Power of "Might"

This topic is a struggle for me because I teach self-defense. I've seen how empowering it can be, especially for women who have already been victims of violence.

But I've also had girls who start training with me at 12 or 13, who are worried about being able to protect themselves when they get to college. Five years of fear and preparing, as if they don't have enough to worry about at that age.

The boys who start training at that age or younger aren't generally worried about defending themselves from something that might happen years from now. Some of them are worried about the bully that they're dealing with right now. But they're not starting from fear of a big, unknown "might."

Why don't we give our girls that same advantage? The advantage of not being afraid of everything and everyone in the world who might hurt them, the advantage of not making them feel small and weak -- and at such a disadvantage at the outset that they have to play defense their whole lives.

Words Matter

There's a big difference in these two sentences -- the two I hear most often for why a child is starting karate:

1. I want my child to learn how to defend themselves.

2. I want my child to learn how to stand up for themselves, so they don't get picked on.

The first is reactive. The second is proactive.

The first is what the girl dads and moms say. The second is what the boy dads and moms say. Yes, that's a generalization based on my experience -- and supported by the fact that there's a whole industry built up around women's self-defense, an industry that I'm a part of.

You might think that's justified because girls and women are more likely to be victims of violent crimes.

Nope. The data don't support that.

In 2020, the rate of total violent crime against men was slightly higher (16.6/1,000 men) than against women (16.2/1,000 women). Overall violent crime was down in 2020 probably because we were all stuck at home, but that relative rate for men and women has held steady in the recent past.* And further back, men were much more likely to be victims of violent crime.

But we grow up believing women and girls are the ones who are more often the victims, who most need to be protected, who most need to be playing defense. And we tell our girls that, when we drop them off at self-defense class.

You Can't Win Without an Offense

The problem with always playing defense is that you'll never win at anything. The best you can do is tie.

And ultimately, all we want for our kids (and ourselves) is to win, whatever that looks like to them. To live happy, healthy lives. Lives that are not filled with fear.

So if we want our girls to grow up strong and confident, full of themselves (because they should be) instead of full of fear, it's time to stop teaching them defense and start teaching them offense.

Start teaching them how to win, not just how to survive.