Give the Gift of Hope

Every year, we at The ChenCenter give proceeds from our Women’s Self-Defense workshops to RAINN.org.

Please consider giving what you can as well.  Remember, Dec. 31st is the last day to have your tax-deductible gift to RAINN matched!

http://www.rainn.org

Extending a Hand to Women – Tim Larkin

I’ve you’ve been to Target Focus Training‘s website, you’ve seen the video.  Tim Larkin seldom asks us for anything… however, the truth of the matter (with the media the way that it is), self-defense for women is not going to be given the platform it needs to without help, without sales, without you guys helping to spread the message.

This should be an invaluable book (with a foreword by Tony Robbins!) and is will worth the cost.  Find it on Amazon, Barnes N’ Noble or buy directly from Tim Larkin himself.

10 QUESTIONS WITH TIM LARKIN

“As someone whose career is based around the education of women, I am eager to aid this movement as strongly as I possibly can.  I sincerely hope you guys do the same!”

-Michael Joyce

OutFoxxed Program

GTS Workshops.  North Carolina

“Violence is Never a Choice a Man Should Make” – Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart gives a gripping and personal answer to a fan at Comicpalooza 2013.  Be forewarned, there’s a moment (2:40) that may bring you to tears.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

A Story From The Corner

I want to share this story from one of my students. I am not releasing her identity.

She was riding the subway (the tube) and she fell asleep. She was woken up by the slam of the inter-car door while the train was in motion.

Three large men whisked through and walked to the end of the car and stood huddled.

Her intuition fired like crazy, and she got off at the very next stop, long before her home.

I am very proud of her.  And I want use her example as a lesson to follow your intuition.

Maybe nothing was wrong, but either way she is alive to tell the story.

As Rory Miller says in his book Meditations on Violence,

“It is better to avoid than to run; better to run than to de-escalate; better to de-escalate than to fight; better to fight than to die.”

This woman showed the best self-defense possible as far as I’m concerned!

– T.J. Kennedy

Hybrid Fighting Method

You Must Be High If You Wanna Wear Heels!

High heels cause such damage to a person’s body, it is completely nonsensical to wear them for any occasion. Each person has the right to do whatever they want to their own body – but I would like to challenge our view on high heels. Stilettos, Wedges, and Pumps all share one thing in common – they damage your body.

For this reason, I personally do not find them attractive – and in fact – find them quite the opposite.

Heels are only worn for the cosmetic appeal, and because of society’s patriarchal impositions on women and their own assumptions about beauty and sexual selection. They really serve no actual function.

People in all sorts of cultures do ridiculous things to their bodies in order to appear beautiful. They cut chunks of their skin out, file their teeth into fangs, and they elongate their necks to the point where they look more like giraffes.

I have heard martial arts instructors suggest using them in a self-defense context, citing them as useful trauma-causing tools. I question whether or not this is actually the case. Surely almost ANYTHING can be used as a weapon, but by the same token why not carry a banana with you everywhere and stick the pointy end into an attacker?

Let’s look at the 2 kinds of violence a person is likely to face – social and asocial – and examine if high heels really can be useful.

SOCIAL VIOLENCE

When does someone put on heels? When they are going out on the town, or out for a nice dinner, or out to a special event.

If social violence is to occur, it is going to be very difficult to flee the situation while wearing heels, so the heels will likely come off.
However, if there is social violence occurring, there is usually alcohol involved (after all – where are we wearing heels?…..in places that serve alcohol). Violence and alcohol share a first cousin, and that cousin is broken glass. You rarely have one without the other in settings where alcohol is served. If you cut your foot open on broken glass, especially in a public area – you risk blood loss and infection – as well as giving yourself a disadvantage toward the end of protecting yourself.

“Yeah, but you can take off your heels and use them to stab attackers in the eyes”, or other such arguments are ludicrous. Even if there is no broken glass or other rough terrain, it would take you an exceptional amount of time to remove your heels and to use them with enough force and accuracy to do any significant damage. You could have a far better effect (and far quicker) with even just an open hand. The time you would take to remove your shoes to use them as a weapon is longer than the time it would take to already be severely injured by your attacker.

They can be used to dig into shins and feet, but your stability would be far too compromised to really be optimally mobile (as you would want to be for the duration of a personal attack).

ASOCIAL VIOLENCE

What if you are attacked asocially? This would be a possibility if you are on a date, walking to your car after a long day at the office, waiting for a taxi to go to your best friend’s birthday….or a million other possible scenarios. Typically you are alone.

In an asocial setting, you very rarely see the violence coming. The attack is likely an ambush. Heels will hinder you in many of the ways described above. The difference here is that you have even less time to deploy them as you are already under attack. Again, you could probably do far more damage and better your chances of escape using your bare hands.

Of course, if your shoe was already in your hand for some reason, then you could use it – but the odds against this being the case seem astronomical.

THE OTHER SIDE

Some people argue that women are not going to let go of wearing these types of shoes, and because of this they craft entire classes and programs around performing self-defense in heels. While I can see their point, this attitude perpetuates an illogical meme, rather than challenge the currently held norm.

I wore high heels once. I volunteered with the White Ribbon Campaign – an organization that works toward the goal of ending violence against women and girls. We conducted a “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” fundraiser, where participants walked a mile in high heels.

A great cause indeed. During the stiletto and pump marathon, women chuckled and guffawed at the men hunkering around like their knee caps were inverted. You could almost hear the collective “Now you know what it I have to go through.”

But did anyone stop to ask, “Why the hell do I wear these stupid things anyway?” They are worn because women think they are pretty, and make them look good. And men perpetuate this idea, to the detriment of women’s health.

What a shame…that a woman would think that she HAS TO go through that torment just to look appealing.

Transgendered men that try to emulate women also put themselves through hell to look like women, and also force themselves into the little hobbling devices.

To train women realistically in heels is a liability. I would imagine that if you jostled a woman around in a manner similar to what she would experience during REAL violence (and not cardio karate playtime with friends), you would have enough broken and sprained ankles on your hands to fill an entire armada of hospital beds.

Violence is difficult enough to navigate without crippling your chances. I mean, why not fight blindfolded, too? After all, blindfolds make you look sexy and classy.

CONCLUSION

In summation, heels of any sort are horrible for your body, and are not so great for functional use in self-defense contexts.

Flat-bottomed shoes are where it’s at. They can be sexy, stylish, functional, and comfortable with components that actually aid your posture and stability.

We really should be making conscious choices for functionality in fashion.

High heels should be nothing more than a history lesson.

– T.J. Kennedy

Hybrid Fighting Method

* high heel image above courtesy of imagepoop.com