Jennifer S. Hirsch argues in Time (March 11, 2015) that colleges need to “think bigger to end campus rape” and this means taking a public health approach to preventing sexual assault. We agree with Hirsch that campus administrators and activists alike seem too wedded to reporting procedures and services for sexual assault victims and not focused enough on the prevention of sexual assault.  However, we disagree strongly with Hirsch’s claim that we don’t know what is effective for preventing sexual assault. There is actually no “real gap in science” on this.

Multiple empirical studies have shown that women’s training in and use of verbal and physical self-defense techniques makes them much more likely to thwart an attack and not to be (re)victimized in the first place. But despite that, campus authorities and activists, as well as policy-making and advocacy groups, believe self-defense is either ineffective or dangerously victim-blaming. This is not simply not true; there is significant data demonstrating that self-defense is effective, and no data we have seen that suggests it is experienced as victim-blaming.

We also take issue with Hirsch’s implicit argument that training women in self-defense is a simple “educational message” and as such not true prevention.  Self-defense training challenges the rape culture that makes sexual assault both easy to accomplish and easy to rationalize.  In offering women self-defense training, then, we challenge the embodied ethos of rape culture that defines defenseless women sexy and sexually aggressive guys manly.

Hirsch rightly points out that major public health achievements did not come solely by exhorting people to act differently. But it’s also true that we would never hope to reduce fatal traffic accidents without exhorting people to wear their seatbelts, reduce teen pregnancy without teaching teens how to use condoms, or combat unhealthy tobacco use without offering smoking cessation classes. Moreover, self-defense training does not exhort people to act differently – it teaches them a new set of skills, both physical and verbal, that can be used effectively to maintain one’s physical and psychological integrity.

We should not hold sexual assault prevention programs to a higher theoretical standard (is this primary prevention? Or “just” risk reduction?) than we would other types of public health prevention programs, particularly when they work.  For example, if we took the approach to stopping teen pregnancy that campuses have been taking to stopping sexual assaults (even those campuses saying they follow the public health model), we’d have been telling teens the definition of pregnancy; giving them the frightening statistics on how many teens experience unwanted pregnancies; telling them how it will ruin their lives; telling them to abstain from reproductive sexual encounters; training other people to stop them from engaging in those encounters or showing up just in the nick of time with a condom; and then offering to help them, telling them we care about them and aren’t judging them after they become pregnant, and keeping track of their numbers. It would be treating teens as if there is nothing they themselves can do if and when they are sexually active. In the case of preventing teen pregnancy, the CDC would never have failed to provide teens with the tools they needed to prevent the outcome of impregnation at any point along the process that leads to it–and would never have been so successful in reducing teen pregnancy if it had. Nor would the CDC have regarded the use of birth control to stop an egg and sperm from meeting to create a pregnancy as secondary or tertiary prevention rather than as primary prevention of teen pregnancy. The CDC has not advocated that we prevent teen pregnancy only by telling teens not to have sex. The CDC acknowledges that the consistent and correct use of birth control among sexually active teens helps prevent teen pregnancy. Teaching self-defense is the equivalent of teaching birth control. It’s putting the condom on.

Dr. Hirsch is correct – we need to ask the hard questions, drawing on data from across academic disciplines.  The data on the efficacy of self-defense and self-defense training come from psychology, sociology, gender studies, feminist studies, and criminology.  The hard question, perhaps, is why scholars, practitioners, universities, public health advocates, and sexual assault prevention workers continue to assert the futility of self-defense for women, or ignore the possibility altogether.

We do have the power to transform – to transform the experiences of individual women and men, and to transform a culture that believes in the inherent rapeability of women’s bodies and the inherent superiority of men’s.  So yes, let’s think big: self-defense training must be understood to be an important part of sexual assault prevention in the public health model.

Although it’s not very likely, someone could appear on a college campus and start shooting.  University police departments are increasingly preparing for that sort of crisis in a number of ways, for instance by forming early intervention teams and educating members of the campus.  One such initiative is the “Shots Fired” training program.   The gist of the program is that you must respond to an active shooter with a “survival mindset”–determined to take responsibility for your personal safety.  The goal is not to scare students and staff but to help them prepare for a violent situation with shots being fired.

While we have nothing against such a program, we find it interesting–yes, let’s say interesting–that a similar awareness, safety, and preparation strategy is not offered for the threat of sexual violence on campus.  It’s equally interesting that we don’t hear feminists or others arguing that such programs are victim blaming.  We’ve heard no one quip, “How about we teach the active shooters not to shoot?” or “Why should we have to learn how to take down a shooter?”  It is pretty creepy and tragic when you think about it, especially since some of the college students have remarked that they already received similar training in high school.

Sexual violence is not only the far more common threat but it’s also usually easier to stop with some training.  If we can go to classrooms and post to campus websites telling students that if a shooter enters the room they must do whatever it takes to survive, including yelling and fighting to overtake the shooter, then why aren’t we teaching women that if they are in a room with someone who’s attempting sexual activity against their will that they can and should do what it takes to stop the assailant, including yelling and fighting?  And, we’d love to hear female college students one day say, “I already got this training in high school.”

by Martha Thompson, reblogging from Martha Thompson’s blog (2.19.15) 

“She’s my ideal woman—blonde, beautiful, and carries a GLOCK.” I almost sprayed my just-sipped iced tea over the table. I was at a meeting with a man who wanted self-defense courses in his community, especially for college women.

I was reminded of that moment when I read the recent New York Times article “A Bid for Guns on Campuses to Deter Rape.”[1]  Lawmakers in ten states—Florida, Indiana, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming –have introduced bills to allow guns on a campus to stop sexual assault. Sponsor of the Nevada bill, Assemblywoman Michele Fiore said: “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them.” (Schwartz 2015).

For the moment, let’s set aside the blonde, beautiful, young, and hot remarks and focus on the argument that arming women is the way to stop sexual assault on campus. Jennifer Carlson (2014) says that confusing self-defense with gun defense limits women’s options, implies that “women must choose armed self-protection or no self-protection at all.”[2]

Imagine how different the conversation might be if instead of a focus on guns, it was on empowerment-based self-defense. What if the NY Times headline was: “A Bid for Empowerment-Based Self-Defense on Campuses to Deter Rape.” Imagine if being blonde, beautiful, young, and hot were not criteria for social protection or social vilification. What if the priority in legislation and news coverage was on empowerment-based self-defense programs built upon the idea that regardless of  age, gender, disability, race, sexual orientation, and social class people have the right to bodily integrity and the right to make decisions about how their own bodies are treated.

[1] Alan Schwartz. 2015. “A Bid for Guns on Campuses to Deter Rape.” The New York Times.February 18. Retrieved February 19, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/us/in-bid-to-allow-guns-on-campus-weapons-are-linked-to-fighting-sexual-assault.html?ref=todayspaper

[2] Jennifer D. Carlson. 2014. “From Gun Politics to Self-Defense Politics: A Feminist Critique of the Great Gun Debate.” Violence Against Women 20 (3): 369-377.Violence Against Women 20 (3): 369-377.

Coming soon to the SJFB blog!  A 5-minute video explaining our latest academic analysis and why we must include self-defense training as part of our primary prevention efforts. Thanks to Dr. Beth Davison for filming and editing, and to the Barbies for starring in the video–here’s a short sneak peek!

On January 11, 2015, the news media reported on a new study by Dr. Sarah Edwards at the University of North Dakota and her colleagues that suggests almost 33% of college men admitted they would force a woman to have sex against her will if they thought they could get away with it; when the word “rape” was used, however, to describe the same behavior, about 13% of men admitted the same thing.

These data call into question the oft-touted claim that it is a small percentage of men who commit most of the rapes – or rather, who force women to have sex against their will; Dr. Edward’s data suggests this is not the case, if 13-33% of men are willing to do it.

This data is disturbing, but so is the recommendation that illogically follows, which is that what is needed is more and better consent education and teaching about healthy relationships.  These recommendations are featured, even though these researchers report that admitting a willingness to force women to have non-consensual sex is not a function of confusion about consent or a misunderstanding of healthy relationships, but rather, is instead highly correlated with hostility toward women and hyper-masculinity:  key components of rape culture.

Consent education will not make men believe that they should not rape women, whether or not they can get away with it, and understanding what constitutes a healthy relationship will not necessarily make men want it, particularly if their goal is to perform a version of masculinity which debases and devalues women as lesser, as other, as objects for the taking.

Self-defense training, in its enactment and practice of women’s bodies as powerful, as strong, as something other than inherently rapeable, is far more likely to change men’s and women’s concepts of gender and performance in sexual relationships.  And more importantly, it significantly decreases the likelihood that men will “get away with it”; knowing that they could be seriously hurt if they try to force a woman to have sex against her will may make more men considering rape to pay close attention to conversations about consent.