After having recognized who we are and the violence that we face in our daily lives, we have identified our vital strengths—the elements fundamental to women’s empowerment—which include self-awareness and autonomy in their various dimensions. The third component that helps to optimize these vital strengths is self-defense. Self-defense gives us the ability to respect and defend our rights and decisions, to express freely what we feel and think and what we disagree on, and equips us with the necessary tools to face attacks. Therefore, self-defense is a key component of empowerment.
What is self-defense? Self-defense is a set of physical, psychological, and verbal techniques that can be used to defend ourselves in situations where we are the target of assault, including undesirable comments, physical abuse, and rape. Developing the capacity for self-defense involves understanding the most common forms of violence suffered by women, the specific forms faced by activists, and the common social and psychological barriers faced by women learning how to respond to attacks. Developing self-defense skills also means appropriating physical, legal, and psychological self-defense resources, and strengthening our personal capacity to utilize them. This is an important tool in strengthening our ability to assert ourselves and set limits in our daily lives. Likewise, it helps us prepare for any eventual physical attacks. Developing our self-defense capacities gives us the opportunity to explore a wide spectrum of emotions that are awakened when we begin to understand the level of violence that we face on a daily basis. Thus, self-defense is an excellent vehicle to help us explore anger, worry, and fear, and experience the joy that comes from finding our own voice and inner strength. It is also part of a much larger political project that seeks to eradicate violence against women at its root. Self-defense by itself cannot transform the social order nor can it radically change the oppression of women. Together with other vital strengths, it protects us from the violence we face as women.
Is it necessary to defend ourselves? Very often we are faced with a dilemma when we try to answer this question, as we have been taught to fear aggression and believe that nothing can be done, since reacting goes against the ideal of the passive woman. We are normally taught that defending ourselves will only hurt us more; therefore, it is better to suffer the violence passively.
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