Girls can't fight

[Joseph Bronson]

Girls can’t fight

A paradigm shift is needed if we are going to stop the humiliation, objectification and demoralization of women in our society. This paradigm shift must start with the mothers of today’s young girls.

For thirty years + I have watched as mothers would bring their sons into my martial arts school for training, often with a little girl in tow also. As the mother is signing up her son I will ask “What about your daughter? I bet she would like Kung Fu too.” And the answer is always something like this. Oh, well no, she’s in dance right now (I get that answer about 70% of the time) or we’ll think about it. Or, another common answer, “She’s really into soccer, that’s her thing.”

So, the answer is no for the little girl and yes for the little boy. And now we have started to teach the little girl that fighting to protect herself is not an option that her mother thinks has any merit. Subconsciously the little girl starts to see that physical self-defense is just not for girls.

This message is pounded into our young girls (as well as the entire female population) constantly by the media. If not overtly, the insinuation is always there. “You’re a girl and girls don’t fight back.”

By age 30 a full 20% (that’s one in five women) has had an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.

This is astounding when you understand that the tools (knowledge) necessary to reduce this number significantly is no harder to come by than the study of math. Follow me here. Each child that is getting a decent education must complete all of the math classes through high school to be deemed competent. It takes no more than this level of dedication to prepare a young woman for a self-defense situation.

Start you girls in self-defense training as soon as possible. When they get bored and do not want to take classes any longer (this will happen because acquiring any kind of skill takes time and dedication) insist that they continue in their classes. Just as you would insist that they finish their math homework and get passing grades to graduate from high school.

Using the graduation from high school as our reference point, many young women will be going to college after graduating high school. All you have to do is a little research to see that rape on our college campuses is at an all-time high. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/sex-offense-statistic...

You would not send her to college without good math skills and you certainly should not send her without good self-defense skills as well. Maybe, if today’s mothers have a paradigm shift, this statement will be turned around:

For thirty years + I have watched as mothers would bring their sons into my martial arts school for training, often with a little girl in tow also. As the mother is signing up her son I will ask “What about your daughter? I bet she would like Kung Fu too.” And the answer is always something like this. Oh, well no, she’s in dance right now (I get that answer about 70% of the time) or we’ll think about it. Or, another common answer, “She’s really into soccer, that’s her thing.”

Get your girls training and we will start to see the tides change. Let’s help our girls to grow up without having a victim mindset.

 

[Victoria Pich]

Absolutely. This country doesn't take care of it's girls. They need to learn to take care of themselves as well as they can. We moms owe this to our daughters. If we can't train them to fight for their lives, what can we do for them?

[David Gardner]

My daughter, Hannah, earned a Green Belt as you know and she is powerful and able to defend herself. Kung Fu isn't just for boys believe me Hannah is about as girly as they come but she is tough and confident make no mistake. She doesn't get pushed around, she will not allow it.

Thank you Mr Bronson 

Dave Gardner