By Matthew Schafer
Copyright 2017, All
Rights Reserved
With the Wonder Woman movie having recently come out and
been very successful Hollywood is patting itself on the back not only for a job
well done making a successful movie, but also for promoting “girl power.” Having a strong and powerful female lead is
said to be good for females, young girls especially, because it an empowering
thing to see strong, capable, and all over empowered woman on the big
screen. Such a thing is supposed to send
a message to young girls and older women alike that they can be strong, “have
it all,” and if need be, kick a man’s ass.
While I have no problem with the character Wonder Woman, the
concept of female empowerment, and I have no plans to see the movie these types
of movies do make me cringe a little bit and in the end I think they’ll get
women in trouble. The problem is all
these movies like James Bond, Jason Borne, Taken, Charlee’s Angels, Salt, and
of course super hero movies show characters that are essentially human wrecking
balls tearing through hordes of bad guys single handedly and this ends up
distorting people’s view of reality.
This is especially damaging to girls because when boys see
these movies and get the idea they might be able to emulate the things they see
on the screen they have a feedback mechanism that brings them back to
reality. That feedback mechanism is
other boys; if a boy sees a bunch of action movies and they try to emulate what
they see they are quickly brought back to reality by getting their butt kicked
by other boys. Young boys do a pretty
good job of keeping themselves in check because they are perfectly willing to smack
each other around.
The problem is that girls really don’t have this same
mechanism to keep their expectations in check.
Girls generally don’t beat on each other and guys are taught not to hit
girls even if the girl hits them first so while most guys get physically put in
their place at least once while growing up this often doesn’t happen with
girls. In fact, with a lot of young
girls their physical equality is reinforced when they’re young.
There is video I saw of a 10 year old girl that is a black
belt in karate and I believe she is the youngest person to ever get a black
belt in that organization. The video
goes on about how tough she is and how when she goes to competition she is doing
very well and even beating the boys.
This is misleading because girls mature faster than boys to so at 10
years old she probably is a tall and strong as most of the boys her own age,
and she might actually be a little stronger than a lot of them. This girl probably has little difficulty
going toe-to-toe with a lot of the boys and this unfortunately can give her,
and others, the impression that she is just as physically capable as males but
this is only true for a very short time.
Once boys start developing they quickly become bigger and stronger and
unless they fall victim to some type of sickness or disease this doesn’t
change.
I don’t know how many young girls and young women I’ve
trained over the years that have this idea that they are just as physically capable
as men when it comes to inflicting injury.
One girl in particular that I worked with was in her early 20’s said she
wanted to learn to defend herself and wanted to be a “kick ass female;” she
loved kung fu movies and especially loved the Charlee’s Angels remakes and she
felt that she was ready to pursue that sort of persona. She was dripping with confidence and raring
to go and I knew I had to bring her down to reality a bit before I could train
her so I held a kicking shield and had her kick and punch it as hard as she
could.
I really like using a kicking shield with untrained people
because people really have an unrealistic expectation of what their blows will
do when they connect. While she really
enjoyed hitting the shield I could tell that her hands and wrists were starting
to hurt a little bit and when she kicked it she pretty much bounced off the
kicking shield I told her to kick it
really hard and when she did I pushed the pad forwards a little and she was
knocked backwards and fell on her butt.
I asked her how she felt about hitting the pad and I could
tell she was a little disappointed and she even made the comment that it was
not like the movies. Girls see movies
where some larger than life female hero kicks a guy and he flies backwards 10 feet
and they get it in their head that they can do that too, and since most of the
time they don’t have a feedback mechanism like boys do to bring the back to
reality some girls grow up thinking that they are just as capable as men when
it comes to causing injuries.
While a female who is properly trained can disable a man through
injury the fact is that a lot of women simply can’t, at least no intentionally. Men are generally bigger, stronger, and more
aggressive which can mean quite a bit when it actually comes to a real violent
encounter. I’ve been punched in the face
two times by women and each were real punches delivered with the intent to do
me hard and neither one did more than sting a little bit. The truth is the only thing they really did
was piss me off and make me want to hurt them.
When it comes to self-defense a woman is just not on equal
footing when it comes to a man and all the Hollywood movies and “girl power”
can’t change that. There is no way of getting
around the fact that if a woman has to fight off a man she will more than
likely be fighting someone who is bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than
she is. If a woman thinks she can punch
a guy in the face or kick him in the stomach and drop him she is most likely
mistaken; even a kick to the testicles is not always guaranteed to put someone
down. When I was 16 I intervened when a
girl about my own age was picking on a friend and the girl turned around and
kicked me in the testicles as hard as she could. It hurt, a lot, but really it just made me
mad. The look on her face when I didn’t
drop to the ground in pain was of pure shock.
When she saw that I didn’t go down and how angry I got she left in a
hurry because she knew that was really the only move she had.
Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with these movies
or even with the concept of “girl power” itself. I think boys and girls should be empowered to
follow their dreams and blah, blah, blah.
My only issue is that I’ve seen firsthand that a lot of these movies give
women a false sense of security that they can take down a guy if they have to
and this is dangerous. A woman shouldn’t
try to fight a guy empty handed unless she has to because she is at a size and
strength disadvantage.
Luckily, disabling injuries don’t care how they happen or
who caused them so a woman can certainly injure a man and put him down but she
is going to have to put more effort into it and work smarter. When I see a woman who wants to learn to
defend herself go to a gym and start learning how to box I cringe a
little. Sure, a woman who is
professionally trained to box can knock out a guy…some of the time. However, going force to force like that just
isn’t wise.
There is a reason why a woman who wants to kill her husband
shoots him in his sleep or poisons his food instead of challenging him to a
fist fight. Woman have to rely on
intelligence, weapons, anatomy, and leverage a bit more than guys do if they
want to disable a man and that is life but it is also perfectly doable. Other than physical fitness or actually
engaging in competitive fighting against other women there is no reason for a
woman to ever throw a jab; after all if a right cross to a man’s face is
probably going to just piss him off then throwing a jab is nothing more than wasted
time (unless you’re trying to initiate a finch response to set him up for
something else).
Woman need to realize that while, yes, they’re equal and
just a “good” as a man they are not the same.
Men’s and women’s bodies are quite different and if a woman doesn’t plan
for that then she is going to suffer the consequences when a violent act
occurs.