1 00:00:00,260 --> 00:00:05,870 OK if I could have your attention. If I can have quiet in the in the back there. 2 00:00:05,870 --> 00:00:10,500 My name is Carl Kemnitz , Senior Vice Provost, it is really my pleasure here to 3 00:00:10,500 --> 00:00:15,870 introduce today's speaker before but before I get there I want do want to 4 00:00:15,870 --> 00:00:22,079 also think those of us those in the room who helped sponsor this event the Office 5 00:00:22,079 --> 00:00:26,550 of the Provost the university library Spartan bookstore and the new division 6 00:00:26,550 --> 00:00:31,229 of research and innovation so thanks to those of you who helped make this 7 00:00:31,229 --> 00:00:36,780 possible and today we're really pleased, I'm very pleased to bring Wendy Rouse to 8 00:00:36,780 --> 00:00:42,480 the podium and she's going to tell us about her own hero, the origins of women's self- 9 00:00:42,480 --> 00:00:47,440 defense movement 1890 to 1920 so please welcome Wendy 10 00:00:47,780 --> 00:00:50,980 (applause) 11 00:00:51,800 --> 00:00:54,340 Hello, Thank you for 12 00:00:54,380 --> 00:00:58,900 inviting me I'm really excited to get to share some of my research with you. 13 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:02,560 Have any of you taken a self-defense class before? OK 14 00:01:02,579 --> 00:01:06,390 okay so you'll have you'll recognize some of the techniques and some of the 15 00:01:06,390 --> 00:01:09,869 images that I'm going to show you and some of this will be very familiar to 16 00:01:09,869 --> 00:01:13,110 you and if you haven't that's okay I'm gonna tell you everything you wanted to 17 00:01:13,110 --> 00:01:16,469 know and didn't want to know about the history of women's self-defense more 18 00:01:16,469 --> 00:01:21,780 than you need to know I want to start though with a story to kind of 19 00:01:21,780 --> 00:01:27,390 contextualize this in 1905 there was a woman named Nellie Griffith and she was 20 00:01:27,390 --> 00:01:31,590 a telephone operator in Oakland California and she was walking home from 21 00:01:31,590 --> 00:01:36,450 work and it was night it was after dark and she felt like someone was following 22 00:01:36,450 --> 00:01:40,350 her so she kept kind of looking over his shoulder and finally she realized that 23 00:01:40,350 --> 00:01:42,950 someone was following her it was very scary 24 00:01:42,950 --> 00:01:48,630 so she sped up to see if she could kind of out outrun the person and she looked 25 00:01:48,630 --> 00:01:51,750 behind her and he was still following her and eventually he starts making 26 00:01:51,750 --> 00:01:56,219 really inappropriate remarks and this scares her so she tries to get him home 27 00:01:56,219 --> 00:01:59,850 as fast as she can now he catches up to her and he grabs her by the arm she 28 00:01:59,850 --> 00:02:04,950 turns around she says let go but he doesn't so she gets the courage to put 29 00:02:04,950 --> 00:02:10,860 her hand into a fist and she punches him square in the nose and he starts 30 00:02:10,860 --> 00:02:15,959 bleeding he starts screaming for help crowd gathers around eventually the 31 00:02:15,959 --> 00:02:20,299 police show up and they arrest him and they haul him off to jail for assault 32 00:02:20,299 --> 00:02:25,349 now one incredulous reporter arrives on the scene and he has never seen anything 33 00:02:25,349 --> 00:02:30,269 like this he has never seen a woman fight back in this way and so he 34 00:02:30,269 --> 00:02:33,900 interviews her and he says you know how could you how could a woman like you a 35 00:02:33,900 --> 00:02:39,930 little lady like you do this to a man like this and she said if you could be 36 00:02:39,930 --> 00:02:44,609 forced to stand the everlasting insults that a woman is you could understand why 37 00:02:44,609 --> 00:02:49,019 I acted as I did tonight I've waited too long for some bystander to take up the 38 00:02:49,019 --> 00:02:53,400 fight for me but no one has ever volunteered so I was compelled to assert 39 00:02:53,400 --> 00:03:00,319 my rights this is a really interesting statement think about it it's 1905 40 00:03:00,319 --> 00:03:05,609 Griffith is clearly articulating here not only her right but her ability to 41 00:03:05,609 --> 00:03:10,829 defend herself and this is really the emergence of what I call like the 42 00:03:10,829 --> 00:03:16,560 hashtag me to moment of the early 20th century women's self defense emerged 43 00:03:16,560 --> 00:03:20,129 during this time when women are fighting for political economic and social 44 00:03:20,129 --> 00:03:24,120 equality but they're fighting for much more than just the right to vote or 45 00:03:24,120 --> 00:03:28,549 their right to pursue a job of their choice the right to pursue an education 46 00:03:28,549 --> 00:03:32,430 they're fighting for something as simple as the right to walk down the street 47 00:03:32,430 --> 00:03:40,290 free from harassment and assault a lot of people ask me you know what made you 48 00:03:40,290 --> 00:03:47,220 want to write about this topic it seems so so kind of obscure and I'm a 49 00:03:47,220 --> 00:03:50,819 historian and I've never really thought about writing about this topic but I've 50 00:03:50,819 --> 00:03:53,970 also studied martial arts for my whole life and I've never really thought about 51 00:03:53,970 --> 00:04:00,329 writing about this topic when I was training in martial arts as a young 52 00:04:00,329 --> 00:04:06,180 woman we were told that our teachers were the first generation of women to 53 00:04:06,180 --> 00:04:10,049 ever study self-defense to ever study martial arts so this would be the women 54 00:04:10,049 --> 00:04:14,310 of the sixties in the 70s so I really didn't think it had much history beyond 55 00:04:14,310 --> 00:04:20,310 my teachers generation and even when I started studying history I never heard 56 00:04:20,310 --> 00:04:25,080 anything about Nellie Griffith or any of these people from this time period that 57 00:04:25,080 --> 00:04:28,470 we're studying self to but what struck me is when I was doing 58 00:04:28,470 --> 00:04:34,729 research for my dissertation I came across this image in a newspaper article 59 00:04:34,729 --> 00:04:39,180 and I was surprised because this woman is doing a palm heel strike classic palm 60 00:04:39,180 --> 00:04:42,870 heel strike that's taught in almost every self-defense class you'll ever 61 00:04:42,870 --> 00:04:45,930 take in fact many of you probably learned this in the self-defense class 62 00:04:45,930 --> 00:04:50,940 that you took and I was surprised because this goes farther back than I 63 00:04:50,940 --> 00:04:56,130 ever knew this is like 1905 and these women are training in classic 64 00:04:56,130 --> 00:04:59,130 self-defense so I clipped this article and I went 65 00:04:59,130 --> 00:05:02,160 back through the newspapers and I started trying to find any evidence I 66 00:05:02,160 --> 00:05:06,300 could of what's going on here to try to understand it to try to contextualize it 67 00:05:06,300 --> 00:05:10,680 and what I learned through my research is that although women's self-defense 68 00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:15,360 classes are often seen as a relatively new phenomenon and they're often in the 69 00:05:15,360 --> 00:05:20,250 media depicted as kind of a fad they have a much longer history and this 70 00:05:20,250 --> 00:05:23,729 history has really paralleled the various waves of the women's rights 71 00:05:23,729 --> 00:05:32,280 movements but this history like most of women's history has been obscured just 72 00:05:32,280 --> 00:05:37,020 as women have been taught to be quiet to take up less space so their history 73 00:05:37,020 --> 00:05:43,770 has often been silenced as well women's rights groups have been loudly calling 74 00:05:43,770 --> 00:05:49,520 attention to the issue of harassment and sexual assault for over a century 75 00:05:49,520 --> 00:05:55,320 they have demanded laws to protect women they have demanded the enforcement of 76 00:05:55,320 --> 00:06:00,300 these laws they have insisted that men changed their behavior and they have 77 00:06:00,300 --> 00:06:05,460 fought cultures of toxic masculinity and in the reverberating silence that has 78 00:06:05,460 --> 00:06:09,000 often echoed back at them they've determined that sometimes they have no 79 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:15,330 other choice but to fight back ok I want to give you some context first before we 80 00:06:15,330 --> 00:06:19,229 dive into the reasons why women started training in self-defense although I 81 00:06:19,229 --> 00:06:23,760 think it's kind of obvious now first of all you need to know that at the turn of 82 00:06:23,760 --> 00:06:28,260 the century athletics in general were becoming more common and popular among 83 00:06:28,260 --> 00:06:35,219 middle class and upper class Americans in fact boxing became quite the fad at 84 00:06:35,219 --> 00:06:40,169 the time there were a number of factors that arise for that account 85 00:06:40,169 --> 00:06:45,419 for the rise in athletics one of them is that Americans had more leisure time or 86 00:06:45,419 --> 00:06:49,979 middle-class Americans had more leisure time and there was growing concern about 87 00:06:49,979 --> 00:06:54,330 the health of Americans who were working increasingly in office jobs and 88 00:06:54,330 --> 00:06:59,669 factories and so there was concern about improving the nation's health there was 89 00:06:59,669 --> 00:07:05,969 also concern and imperialistic concern about maintaining the u.s. supremacy on 90 00:07:05,969 --> 00:07:09,599 the world stage and part of this included a concern with the health and 91 00:07:09,599 --> 00:07:15,120 virility of Americans so the manly art of boxing was touted as one way to 92 00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:19,860 improve and develop the superior character of men and their physical 93 00:07:19,860 --> 00:07:24,180 strength as well so we see a new form of boxing emerging now boxing had already 94 00:07:24,180 --> 00:07:28,650 been quite popular especially to go and watch prize fights but middle-class men 95 00:07:28,650 --> 00:07:32,339 for the first time are engaging in actual boxing classes taking lessons in 96 00:07:32,339 --> 00:07:35,819 boxing but they didn't want to get too hurt so this was mostly like light 97 00:07:35,819 --> 00:07:40,469 sparring bag work you know that sort of thing nothing that would really be too 98 00:07:40,469 --> 00:07:45,419 dangerous for them so boxing became popular among middle class men but 99 00:07:45,419 --> 00:07:50,069 there's also a large group of middle class and upper class women now that are 100 00:07:50,069 --> 00:07:55,789 going to college and at college they are also becoming more involved in athletics 101 00:07:55,789 --> 00:08:00,899 so boxing appealed to many young women because they saw this as having two 102 00:08:00,899 --> 00:08:05,430 benefits one improve their health and to learn self-defense so what we see is 103 00:08:05,430 --> 00:08:11,879 more and more women participating in boxing and taking lessons sometimes 104 00:08:11,879 --> 00:08:15,449 these lessons were at their colleges sometimes they hired private boxing 105 00:08:15,449 --> 00:08:21,779 instructors to teach them but you can imagine the backlash that they received 106 00:08:21,779 --> 00:08:26,430 people were saying this isn't right if women start practicing boxing it's gonna 107 00:08:26,430 --> 00:08:31,710 masculinize them it's gonna transform their bodies they'll start acting more 108 00:08:31,710 --> 00:08:37,110 like men so there was concern about this people were concerned about disrupting 109 00:08:37,110 --> 00:08:42,630 binary notions of femininity and masculinity so boxing instructors 110 00:08:42,630 --> 00:08:48,360 responded by kind of remarketing it and saying that boxing would essentially 111 00:08:48,360 --> 00:08:53,190 turn women into more women Lee women it would actually enhance their feminine 112 00:08:53,190 --> 00:08:59,400 beauty right so you see articles like this so 113 00:08:59,400 --> 00:09:03,900 you can actually maintain your summer body and you can you know the ideal 114 00:09:03,900 --> 00:09:08,490 woman would train in boxing they also there's a lot of gendered ads 115 00:09:08,490 --> 00:09:12,690 that also said that it could you know appeal to men you want to improve her 116 00:09:12,690 --> 00:09:18,510 bad temper her feminine hysterics her caddy disposition just encourage her to 117 00:09:18,510 --> 00:09:25,140 take boxing so it wasn't unusual at this time to see young women and children 118 00:09:25,140 --> 00:09:28,430 studying boxing 119 00:09:45,540 --> 00:09:53,550 okay okay jiu-jitsu jiu-jitsu also became a popular kind of trend at this 120 00:09:53,550 --> 00:09:59,220 time American anxiety about Japanese military might and a fascination with 121 00:09:59,220 --> 00:10:03,839 all things Japanese culture in the early 20th century helped to give rise to this 122 00:10:03,839 --> 00:10:07,620 fascination with Japanese martial arts Japan had just defeated Russia and the 123 00:10:07,620 --> 00:10:12,000 russo-japanese war and American President Theodore Roosevelt was really 124 00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:15,540 interested in this and he started to take notice of Japan as an emerging 125 00:10:15,540 --> 00:10:21,480 world power he was anxious to learn more about Japanese jiu-jitsu he was a he was 126 00:10:21,480 --> 00:10:25,050 a fan of Japanese history and culture he had read a lot on the samurai and 127 00:10:25,050 --> 00:10:28,920 Samurai culture and when he heard that a famous jujitsu instructor was visiting 128 00:10:28,920 --> 00:10:32,220 the United States he invited him to the White House to teach him what he had 129 00:10:32,220 --> 00:10:37,800 learned and he loved it he loved it so much that they practiced this is Teddy 130 00:10:37,800 --> 00:10:42,329 Roosevelt and he was really into sports he had done boxing by the way in college 131 00:10:42,329 --> 00:10:45,839 he loved it so much that he invited these jiu-jitsu instructors to the White 132 00:10:45,839 --> 00:10:49,800 House and they put down they put down mattresses on the White House floor and 133 00:10:49,800 --> 00:10:54,870 they started he started practicing the throws and the techniques with them um 134 00:10:54,870 --> 00:10:58,709 he loved it so much that he thought really that all American men should 135 00:10:58,709 --> 00:11:02,940 study this but obviously there was racist attitudes about Japanese 136 00:11:02,940 --> 00:11:06,510 jiu-jitsu and Japanese immigrants and critics initially condemned it they said 137 00:11:06,510 --> 00:11:10,019 no it's too feminine it's an unmanly means of fighting it's 138 00:11:10,019 --> 00:11:15,120 unfair but Roosevelt he he didn't entirely disagree 139 00:11:15,120 --> 00:11:19,709 he believed that boxing and wrestling were the superior manly arts Western 140 00:11:19,709 --> 00:11:23,220 means of fighting were superior but he thought there was something to jujitsu 141 00:11:23,220 --> 00:11:26,970 and that American men would benefit by studying it and learning some of the 142 00:11:26,970 --> 00:11:31,410 techniques of the Japanese so he advocates that it be adopted by the 143 00:11:31,410 --> 00:11:37,699 American military so we actually see the military is starting to train in that 144 00:11:37,699 --> 00:11:44,040 during the Roosevelt era he hired he asked his instructor to go and teach at 145 00:11:44,040 --> 00:11:48,569 the military academies and they started to train and this really what I calls 146 00:11:48,569 --> 00:11:52,290 the first mixed martial arts because not only were they practicing boxing and 147 00:11:52,290 --> 00:11:56,850 wrestling they were also now picking up these jujitsu techniques and so that you 148 00:11:56,850 --> 00:11:59,130 can see videos from this time period by World War one 149 00:11:59,130 --> 00:12:06,080 it was pretty much widely adopted by militaries in the US and in Europe 150 00:12:07,940 --> 00:12:12,170 this is sped up they're not that good 151 00:12:12,380 --> 00:12:20,580 and then after the the war is over and even even somewhat before that people 152 00:12:20,580 --> 00:12:25,440 start teaching this mixed martial arts in the United States so if they trained 153 00:12:25,440 --> 00:12:27,630 in the military they had learned boxing and wrestling and a little bit of 154 00:12:27,630 --> 00:12:29,970 jiu-jitsu they would open up their own gyms 155 00:12:29,970 --> 00:12:34,740 and they would promise to teach you to protect yourself and again we see these 156 00:12:34,740 --> 00:12:40,230 very gendered types of advertisements they endorsed jiu-jitsu as a means of 157 00:12:40,230 --> 00:12:44,280 enabling a smaller man to overcome a larger opponent and they said basically 158 00:12:44,280 --> 00:12:48,120 that you would be able to protect not only yourself but your loved ones 159 00:12:48,120 --> 00:12:51,870 protect that little woman in your life right from any kind of harm so they 160 00:12:51,870 --> 00:12:56,550 started to advertise in this way mostly three young men's magazines but this 161 00:12:56,550 --> 00:13:01,890 also opened an opportunity for women again to study a martial art and so 162 00:13:01,890 --> 00:13:06,690 women start studying jiu-jitsu in part because Japanese women studied jiu-jitsu 163 00:13:06,690 --> 00:13:10,560 so feminist minded women here in the United States are like well if these 164 00:13:10,560 --> 00:13:15,320 Japanese women are studying it why can't American women practice it as well and 165 00:13:15,320 --> 00:13:22,190 this was mostly advocated by a woman named Martha wodsworth she was a wealthy 166 00:13:22,190 --> 00:13:28,170 Washingtonian heiress she ran in the same social circles as Roosevelt and all 167 00:13:28,170 --> 00:13:32,670 of his his friends and she hated Roosevelt 168 00:13:32,670 --> 00:13:36,540 she actually despised him she hated the fact that when he was running for office 169 00:13:36,540 --> 00:13:43,620 he would show off his physicality as a way to to get elected so she she vowed 170 00:13:43,620 --> 00:13:46,830 that any time he would do some sort of physical feat especially for the media 171 00:13:46,830 --> 00:13:51,150 that she would duplicate it just to show that women could do it too and he wasn't 172 00:13:51,150 --> 00:13:58,410 all that he pretended to be so when he took up jujitsu she said okay all right 173 00:13:58,410 --> 00:14:06,120 we got this so she hired jiu the teddy roosevelt's instructors wife to teach 174 00:14:06,120 --> 00:14:13,120 her and her friends and their daughters jiu jitsu and they actually held a class 175 00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:18,640 on the White House lawn and invited reporters to come and watch and when 176 00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:22,450 they were interviewed they basically said that the manly art is now the 177 00:14:22,450 --> 00:14:27,339 womanly art and women can do it too so they were very politically empowered and 178 00:14:27,339 --> 00:14:31,930 motivated by this so that actually this is a picture of the girls that were in 179 00:14:31,930 --> 00:14:36,250 the class these were all the daughters of congressmen and high-level people in 180 00:14:36,250 --> 00:14:42,880 Washington okay so that's how boxing and jujitsu kind of became mainstream but 181 00:14:42,880 --> 00:14:46,600 the individual reasons why women signed up for these classes obviously varies 182 00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:52,240 quite a bit so let's talk about the street first of all women wanting to use 183 00:14:52,240 --> 00:14:55,779 self-defense in the streets so returning to Nellie Griffin remember her in the 184 00:14:55,779 --> 00:14:59,050 very beginning we talked about the telephone operator who was attacked on 185 00:14:59,050 --> 00:15:02,710 the street most women signed up for these classes because they were 186 00:15:02,710 --> 00:15:06,850 concerned about that threat previously there was this concept of separate 187 00:15:06,850 --> 00:15:10,600 spheres this idea that a woman's place is in the home that a man's place in the 188 00:15:10,600 --> 00:15:13,720 public sphere and especially in middle-class and upper-class women and 189 00:15:13,720 --> 00:15:17,470 we're told that they should not be out on the street that essentially any 190 00:15:17,470 --> 00:15:21,670 respectable woman wouldn't go out without being accompanied by a male 191 00:15:21,670 --> 00:15:26,680 protector so their husband their boyfriend their cousin their brother you 192 00:15:26,680 --> 00:15:30,970 know some buddy to be there by their side to protect them but obviously times 193 00:15:30,970 --> 00:15:34,060 were changing more and more women were pursuing middle-class women were 194 00:15:34,060 --> 00:15:38,529 pursuing education they were shopping there was leisure activities within the 195 00:15:38,529 --> 00:15:42,130 cities and so we saw more women out on the streets more of these middle-class 196 00:15:42,130 --> 00:15:46,540 previously sheltered women out on the streets and the growth of cities the 197 00:15:46,540 --> 00:15:51,490 expansion of factory and office work also provided more jobs in the city but 198 00:15:51,490 --> 00:15:55,750 their presence in these traditionally male spaces invited backlash and the 199 00:15:55,750 --> 00:15:59,230 biggest example of this backlash we might say would be the masher so you can 200 00:15:59,230 --> 00:16:03,370 see the term here New York mashers now this is an old-fashioned term that I 201 00:16:03,370 --> 00:16:07,540 think would you bring back it's really cool it was a short way of saying 202 00:16:07,540 --> 00:16:11,589 someone a man who sexually assaulted or harassed a woman on the street we don't 203 00:16:11,589 --> 00:16:15,160 really have a phrase for that anymore so we just say a man who sexually assaulted 204 00:16:15,160 --> 00:16:18,430 a harassed women street it's way too long just call him a masher and then 205 00:16:18,430 --> 00:16:21,940 with the masher you have the smash the masher Crusades so you got a nice little 206 00:16:21,940 --> 00:16:25,139 slogan t-shirts and stuff can be made from it so it'll be good 207 00:16:25,139 --> 00:16:32,759 so the masher was kind of became a really important topic of conversation 208 00:16:32,759 --> 00:16:36,989 because women like I said this was the hashtag me too moment of this generation 209 00:16:36,989 --> 00:16:40,829 women started complaining and they said look we're trying to go out to go 210 00:16:40,829 --> 00:16:45,209 shopping and we're trying to go to our job and we're getting harassed by these 211 00:16:45,209 --> 00:16:48,540 people on the streets and the the phrasing of the time is so funny they 212 00:16:48,540 --> 00:16:52,350 say they've made goo goo eyes at me or they cooled me you know there's all 213 00:16:52,350 --> 00:16:56,939 these weird ways of describing it but mashers that could describe anything 214 00:16:56,939 --> 00:17:01,319 from verbal harassment to physical or sexual harassment as well assault as 215 00:17:01,319 --> 00:17:06,360 well so it was a broad term but women they started to complain about these 216 00:17:06,360 --> 00:17:10,919 issues but people told them one go back home that was a very common thing to say 217 00:17:10,919 --> 00:17:13,529 you shouldn't be out on the street respectable women don't belong here or 218 00:17:13,529 --> 00:17:18,329 they said that maybe you're asking for it maybe it's the way that you dressed 219 00:17:18,329 --> 00:17:22,049 which is hilarious if you look at the clothing from back then they're telling 220 00:17:22,049 --> 00:17:25,949 them that they're dressed too provocatively but there really was this 221 00:17:25,949 --> 00:17:31,110 culture that blamed the victim for what was happening to them at the time 222 00:17:31,110 --> 00:17:36,510 so women they refused to be silent they started writing in their stories to the 223 00:17:36,510 --> 00:17:40,320 new women journalists who were writing advice columns and the papers at the 224 00:17:40,320 --> 00:17:44,070 time and they started complaining about being harassed on the street about being 225 00:17:44,070 --> 00:17:48,179 harassed at work and they started highlighting these examples and you 226 00:17:48,179 --> 00:17:52,620 ended up having hot these headlines like this one in all the major newspapers at 227 00:17:52,620 --> 00:17:57,269 the time just calling attention to this issue of harassment so the police and 228 00:17:57,269 --> 00:18:03,360 the courts felt pressure to try to do something they start to put special 229 00:18:03,360 --> 00:18:07,769 patrols out on the street to try to to solve the problem of mashing women are 230 00:18:07,769 --> 00:18:14,179 encouraged to to report these cases and it becomes a more common thing but 231 00:18:14,179 --> 00:18:21,059 self-defense classes also become an issue because women find that the police 232 00:18:21,059 --> 00:18:24,419 aren't everywhere they can't be everywhere and they're not always there 233 00:18:24,419 --> 00:18:29,850 to help them in these cases so self-defense classes became more popular 234 00:18:29,850 --> 00:18:34,320 and essentially what you have is women forming self-defense classes 235 00:18:34,320 --> 00:18:38,790 in major cities so New York LA there was a woman named Virgie drock's 236 00:18:38,790 --> 00:18:43,680 and she was living in LA at the time and she had just visited New York and she 237 00:18:43,680 --> 00:18:47,790 saw all these women training and boxing in jiu-jitsu and so she wanted to start 238 00:18:47,790 --> 00:18:50,580 something like this she wanted to feel safer walking down the street so she 239 00:18:50,580 --> 00:18:55,200 advocated self-defense training but if you think about it in some ways 240 00:18:55,200 --> 00:18:58,800 self-defense training is just reinforcing existing class and racial 241 00:18:58,800 --> 00:19:02,640 hierarchies women's self-defense training was a form of class privilege 242 00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:07,140 only women who could afford it could take those classes and that was mostly 243 00:19:07,140 --> 00:19:11,540 middle and upper class white women so 244 00:19:11,570 --> 00:19:16,620 the self-defense instructors and even the newspapers to some extent start to 245 00:19:16,620 --> 00:19:21,510 highlight this and they play into white women's fears so they focus on the 246 00:19:21,510 --> 00:19:27,870 danger really being immigrants and men of color and they try to market their 247 00:19:27,870 --> 00:19:31,950 self-defense classes in this way so they present this like shadowy stranger that 248 00:19:31,950 --> 00:19:34,980 exists out on the street that's just waiting to attack you like in the story 249 00:19:34,980 --> 00:19:38,310 in the beginning and they start to highlight those cases where strangers 250 00:19:38,310 --> 00:19:42,030 attack women on the street and it's true they try to emphasize that newspaper 251 00:19:42,030 --> 00:19:46,770 reporters they buy into this this fear of the other and so they also print 252 00:19:46,770 --> 00:19:52,200 those types of stories because they find that it sells more papers and it also 253 00:19:52,200 --> 00:19:57,450 elicits more public outrage so reporters would often emphasize the whiteness the 254 00:19:57,450 --> 00:20:03,020 racial purity of the female victims of mashers but the reality is is that 255 00:20:03,020 --> 00:20:09,180 mashers or mostly statistically from the research that I did native-born white 256 00:20:09,180 --> 00:20:15,240 men and their victims were women of all races in fact cases of harassment and 257 00:20:15,240 --> 00:20:18,420 assault against middle and upper-class white women were more likely to be 258 00:20:18,420 --> 00:20:22,860 highlighted in the press but women of color were rarely mentioned in the 259 00:20:22,860 --> 00:20:27,000 newspapers as victims of the mashers even though we know that they were 260 00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:33,990 statistically newspapers were produced by white men for largely white audience 261 00:20:33,990 --> 00:20:38,100 and so they tended to downplay these instances of violence against women of 262 00:20:38,100 --> 00:20:42,360 color and women of color were probably more reluctant to report these assaults 263 00:20:42,360 --> 00:20:45,690 knowing that very little would be done that white women's bodies were 264 00:20:45,690 --> 00:20:49,890 considered more valuable than their own so that's kind of a dark side of this 265 00:20:49,890 --> 00:20:55,110 women's self-defense training this is the smash the masher thing that 266 00:20:55,110 --> 00:20:58,130 I was telling you about how cool is that 267 00:20:58,520 --> 00:21:04,230 so despite this many women who studied self-defense we're mostly again like I 268 00:21:04,230 --> 00:21:09,840 said middle and upper class white women but women who couldn't afford to take 269 00:21:09,840 --> 00:21:14,580 these classes taught themselves largely there were tutorials in the paper there 270 00:21:14,580 --> 00:21:17,010 were books you could buy there were articles that taught you how to protect 271 00:21:17,010 --> 00:21:21,419 yourself so these techniques a lot of women learned them and they were really 272 00:21:21,419 --> 00:21:25,649 challenging this notion that they couldn't protect themselves that they 273 00:21:25,649 --> 00:21:31,140 were saying they could be their own protectors but this became kind of a 274 00:21:31,140 --> 00:21:35,070 point of humor in the in the press as well and people started to say well 275 00:21:35,070 --> 00:21:38,730 what's gonna happen if these gender roles are completely inverted and women 276 00:21:38,730 --> 00:21:41,490 learn to protect themselves then what's gonna happen to men they're gonna become 277 00:21:41,490 --> 00:21:43,679 sissies and they're not gonna be able to protect themselves and then they're 278 00:21:43,679 --> 00:21:47,460 gonna need women to protect them as well hold on I'll show you this one there we 279 00:21:47,460 --> 00:21:49,549 go 280 00:22:31,980 --> 00:22:35,090 yes yes 281 00:23:01,409 --> 00:23:08,440 okay so you see this they're kind of mocking that a little bit okay so in 282 00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:12,760 addition to signing up for self-defense classes because they want to protect 283 00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:16,510 themselves on the street women also signed up for self-defense classes as a 284 00:23:16,510 --> 00:23:20,640 form of political empowerment as well the emergence of women's self-defense 285 00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:27,130 emerges and parallels the rise of the suffrage movement of this time period 286 00:23:27,130 --> 00:23:29,860 suffragists believed that the vote would provide them with the political power 287 00:23:29,860 --> 00:23:33,250 they needed to protect themselves so every almost everyone's heard of susan b 288 00:23:33,250 --> 00:23:38,200 anthony right in 1871 she gave a speech in San Francisco and she said in that 289 00:23:38,200 --> 00:23:42,070 speech I declare to you that women must not depend on the protection of man but 290 00:23:42,070 --> 00:23:46,360 must be taught to protect herself and there I take my stand I'd like to say 291 00:23:46,360 --> 00:23:50,470 she was talking about jujitsu and boxing but she wasn't she was talking about the 292 00:23:50,470 --> 00:23:53,649 vote that if women had the vote they could pass laws to protect themselves 293 00:23:53,649 --> 00:23:58,539 and their families and they didn't need to rely on men but suffragists who were 294 00:23:58,539 --> 00:24:02,799 advocates of self-defense and boxing took this concept and applied it to 295 00:24:02,799 --> 00:24:06,640 their own training and said essentially that if women could protect themselves 296 00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:12,520 physically they could also be able to fight back against oppression and in 297 00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:16,990 fact this took on a really stark reality as suffragists started to face more and 298 00:24:16,990 --> 00:24:22,390 more intense forms of violence from anti-suffrage protestors and this 299 00:24:22,390 --> 00:24:29,830 association this is a by the way this is an image of some men taking a suffrage 300 00:24:29,830 --> 00:24:35,710 flag away from a suffragist who was protesting at the White House and they 301 00:24:35,710 --> 00:24:38,770 actually grabbed the flag pulled it away and this is them laughing afterwards 302 00:24:38,770 --> 00:24:42,250 because they got the flag so at first they suffer just to start to face these 303 00:24:42,250 --> 00:24:45,130 types of assaults where they're there their flags are taking away the banners 304 00:24:45,130 --> 00:24:48,549 that they're pulled to the ground and they're pushed or whatever but the 305 00:24:48,549 --> 00:24:52,620 suffragists in England what we call the suffragettes they experienced a lot of 306 00:24:52,620 --> 00:24:57,940 physical assault and harassment and the association between the necessity of 307 00:24:57,940 --> 00:25:00,299 self-defense became more obvious for them 308 00:25:00,299 --> 00:25:04,840 British suffragettes faced intense physical assaults from anti suffragists 309 00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:09,370 they had rotten fruit and urine soaked rags thrown at them they were literally 310 00:25:09,370 --> 00:25:14,110 pushed shoved kicked punched by counter protesters 311 00:25:14,110 --> 00:25:18,340 and often by the police in fact police brutality was one of their major 312 00:25:18,340 --> 00:25:22,990 problems and complaints they learned that no one was going to protect them 313 00:25:22,990 --> 00:25:26,650 especially not the police so they had to protect themselves this is my favorite 314 00:25:26,650 --> 00:25:31,090 part of this whole presentation is they formed jiu-jitsu for self Suffragette 315 00:25:31,090 --> 00:25:35,679 self defense and they actually advertise it and their votes for women newspapers 316 00:25:35,679 --> 00:25:40,299 so how cool is that so now there's like reenactor groups that dress like 317 00:25:40,299 --> 00:25:43,690 suffragettes and study suffragettes jujitsu 318 00:25:43,690 --> 00:25:48,820 Edith Jared was the instructor she was a long time jiu-jitsu practitioner and she 319 00:25:48,820 --> 00:25:52,510 had was already teaching jiu-jitsu classes when the suffragettes started to 320 00:25:52,510 --> 00:25:54,160 suggest that they should learn self-defense 321 00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:58,450 so she organized this class just for them they actually had very public 322 00:25:58,450 --> 00:26:03,700 demonstrations they used some police officers as their examples and they they 323 00:26:03,700 --> 00:26:07,929 were openly practicing until they began to be investigated more and more by the 324 00:26:07,929 --> 00:26:10,480 police and then they had to go underground they had to practice in 325 00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,630 secret they had to hide from the police they actually created a suffragettes 326 00:26:13,630 --> 00:26:17,020 bodyguard to protect their leaders and these were all women trained in 327 00:26:17,020 --> 00:26:21,220 self-defense and jiu-jitsu who could protect the leaders who were constantly 328 00:26:21,220 --> 00:26:26,559 being arrested and re-arrested by the police so they were really stretching 329 00:26:26,559 --> 00:26:31,059 the boundaries of what was proper feminine behavior and they were 330 00:26:31,059 --> 00:26:35,650 criticized obviously as being too masculine not only in their practice of 331 00:26:35,650 --> 00:26:38,890 self-defense but in their advocacy of women's rights and so you can see this 332 00:26:38,890 --> 00:26:43,360 criticism to political cartoons mostly it kind of mocks them it mocks the 333 00:26:43,360 --> 00:26:50,410 police at the same time saying look how scared the police are and there was post 334 00:26:50,410 --> 00:26:54,250 cards were were really popular so even the post cards would mock the 335 00:26:54,250 --> 00:26:57,690 suffragettes who studied self-defense 336 00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:04,570 American suffragettes were inspired by this but the militant tactics of the 337 00:27:04,570 --> 00:27:08,470 British suffragettes were kind of controversial so there was a woman named 338 00:27:08,470 --> 00:27:13,450 Shelley Emerson she was working in Jane Addams whole house in Chicago and she 339 00:27:13,450 --> 00:27:16,270 had a chance to hear the British suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst 340 00:27:16,270 --> 00:27:21,730 speak and Pankhurst was describing what was happening in in England at the time 341 00:27:21,730 --> 00:27:26,950 in Britain and she was completely Emerson was completely just overwhelmed 342 00:27:26,950 --> 00:27:29,200 she was like I have to do something I want to go I'm gonna I 343 00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:34,120 want to participate in this so she traveled back with Pankhurst much to her 344 00:27:34,120 --> 00:27:38,890 parents dismay and she began to participate in the militant tactics 345 00:27:38,890 --> 00:27:46,660 there she was arrested at one point she went on hunger strike she was force-fed 346 00:27:46,660 --> 00:27:51,000 and when she left prison she became even more militant than she when she went in 347 00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:56,620 so she began to advocate for the study of jiu-jitsu right just like the other 348 00:27:56,620 --> 00:28:00,040 British suffragettes and in fact she helped Sylvia Pankhurst organize a 349 00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:04,090 People's Army so they got very militant they all started training in jiu-jitsu 350 00:28:04,090 --> 00:28:08,710 they started carrying clubs with them to fight back against the police she had 351 00:28:08,710 --> 00:28:13,120 her skull fractured twice by police batons and that's part of why she became 352 00:28:13,120 --> 00:28:17,880 an advocate of jiu-jitsu self-defense 353 00:28:18,060 --> 00:28:22,510 now women in the United States did not experience the same kind of police 354 00:28:22,510 --> 00:28:26,440 brutality but they did have their own experiences with violence there was a 355 00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:31,840 suffrage parade in 1913 in Washington DC and the parade really ended in chaos as 356 00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:36,220 the crowd kind of started to push in against the paraders against the 357 00:28:36,220 --> 00:28:41,530 marchers and women describing pushed and shoved and kicked and sexually assaulted 358 00:28:41,530 --> 00:28:45,310 and they made their complaints known at it to a congressional investigating 359 00:28:45,310 --> 00:28:48,250 committee afterwards and their biggest complaint was that the police did very 360 00:28:48,250 --> 00:28:53,590 little and in some cases the police were actually egging on the crowd so you can 361 00:28:53,590 --> 00:28:57,580 imagine what happens after this 1913 parade we see suffragettes organizing 362 00:28:57,580 --> 00:28:59,530 self-defense classes here in the United States 363 00:28:59,530 --> 00:29:03,910 I don't know how widespread this is I only have a few examples of it because 364 00:29:03,910 --> 00:29:07,930 most of these women did it in secret they didn't want the negative attention 365 00:29:07,930 --> 00:29:11,320 that was associated with the British suffragettes and the militants there so 366 00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:14,980 they would they refused to give their names to the few reporters that did show 367 00:29:14,980 --> 00:29:18,610 up and say we want to report on what you're doing but there were suffragettes 368 00:29:18,610 --> 00:29:22,740 self-defense classes advertised in the months right after the 1913 parade 369 00:29:22,740 --> 00:29:29,080 especially we saw boxing classes and the the whole concept was that they needed 370 00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:35,050 to prepare to defend themselves against these anti-suffrage protestors okay a 371 00:29:35,050 --> 00:29:41,470 much more controversial reason why women signed up for self-defense classes was 372 00:29:41,470 --> 00:29:46,730 violence in the home all these public discussions about harassment and 373 00:29:46,730 --> 00:29:54,350 violence in the home really we're focused on this masher conversation or 374 00:29:54,350 --> 00:29:58,820 about women campaigning for the vote but women's rights activists wanted to 375 00:29:58,820 --> 00:30:03,230 highlight the actual truth and the truth was that the actual sources of violence 376 00:30:03,230 --> 00:30:07,640 against women were more often from the men that they loved in their own homes 377 00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:12,020 now a few prominent feminists pointed out the radical truth about violence 378 00:30:12,020 --> 00:30:18,020 against women and they said that men are primarily the perpetrators of violence 379 00:30:18,020 --> 00:30:22,220 against women in their own homes and that the domestic sphere is not so 380 00:30:22,220 --> 00:30:28,640 protected as people claim so this idea of the other on the straight on the 381 00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:32,630 street this shadowy stranger they start to call that into question and say is 382 00:30:32,630 --> 00:30:36,490 that really the real threat against women and obviously their answer is no 383 00:30:36,490 --> 00:30:41,120 this is best illustrated by a crime spree that happened in Chicago right 384 00:30:41,120 --> 00:30:46,670 around the time that Nellie Griffin was attacked here in Oakland 1905 to 1906 so 385 00:30:46,670 --> 00:30:50,750 if you go through the Chicago papers there's all these really high-profile 386 00:30:50,750 --> 00:30:56,630 cases of women being attacked and killed and the implication of almost all of 387 00:30:56,630 --> 00:30:59,960 these articles is that they're being killed by some shadowy stranger on the 388 00:30:59,960 --> 00:31:05,090 street as you know some dangerous stranger but I was curious about this 389 00:31:05,090 --> 00:31:09,980 because we know that that is often not the actual source of violence against 390 00:31:09,980 --> 00:31:14,690 women so I wanted to know about the 24 cases so I looked at these 24 cases and 391 00:31:14,690 --> 00:31:18,140 I went back and included the cases in the years leading up to it as well and I 392 00:31:18,140 --> 00:31:21,680 looked at a five-year period and what I found is that there were 99 women 393 00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:26,240 murdered during that time period in Chicago and 85% of them were killed by 394 00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:31,490 men they knew husbands suitors neighbors friends no relatives and 67 percent were 395 00:31:31,490 --> 00:31:35,900 killed at home or at work and the numbers are probably higher because 396 00:31:35,900 --> 00:31:40,070 there was a at least like 10 that I couldn't identify who killed them or 397 00:31:40,070 --> 00:31:44,980 where they were killed so this is appalling but it points out what the 398 00:31:44,980 --> 00:31:49,640 many of the women's rights advocates were saying at the time is that the home 399 00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:51,860 was really the most dangerous place for women 400 00:31:51,860 --> 00:31:55,700 so the reality that women are most at risk for violence from the men in their 401 00:31:55,700 --> 00:32:00,530 own lives further shatters this notion of the home is a protected domestic 402 00:32:00,530 --> 00:32:05,030 space that men were women's natural protectors and this inspired radical 403 00:32:05,030 --> 00:32:08,480 women's rights activists to write about it to talk about it Charlotte Perkins 404 00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:11,990 Gilman said there's this popular masculine myth that assumes that man is 405 00:32:11,990 --> 00:32:15,770 woman's natural protector but he is in fact often the worst danger she can hope 406 00:32:15,770 --> 00:32:20,660 to meet and so she actually started advocating mostly through her fiction 407 00:32:20,660 --> 00:32:23,299 writings that women study boxing and jujitsu 408 00:32:23,299 --> 00:32:27,230 to defend themselves and a lot of the characters in her book start off very 409 00:32:27,230 --> 00:32:30,740 weak and by the end after training in boxing in jujitsu they're very strong 410 00:32:30,740 --> 00:32:35,150 and powerful so she argued against the stereotypes 411 00:32:35,150 --> 00:32:38,929 that gendered women is weaker and less capable of violence she said there's no 412 00:32:38,929 --> 00:32:42,230 reason whatsoever why the female should not use violence whenever it's necessary 413 00:32:42,230 --> 00:32:46,220 in fact she said girls of today taught a little plain skill in wrestling and 414 00:32:46,220 --> 00:32:51,919 boxing are far safer from their protector than they were once before so 415 00:32:51,919 --> 00:32:56,140 women's self-defense represents this radically empowering idea of autonomy 416 00:32:56,140 --> 00:33:00,410 but this issue of violence against women especially violence in the home would be 417 00:33:00,410 --> 00:33:03,950 a concern that would be raised by future generations of feminists it would 418 00:33:03,950 --> 00:33:09,049 definitely not be resolved or really addressed much in this generation and 419 00:33:09,049 --> 00:33:13,970 again there's a lot of humor associated with this with the criticism if you do 420 00:33:13,970 --> 00:33:17,150 teach women's self-defense what are they gonna do especially these suffragists 421 00:33:17,150 --> 00:33:21,860 they're gonna start to beat their husbands in the home dominate their 422 00:33:21,860 --> 00:33:30,200 husbands okay so that's kind of women's self-defense during that time period you 423 00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:34,580 are probably aware then that there was this second wave of women's self-defense 424 00:33:34,580 --> 00:33:38,960 that emerged in the 60s and the 70s here we go this is a better picture shows you 425 00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:43,610 the sixties and seventies and they became associated with this again this 426 00:33:43,610 --> 00:33:48,950 idea of empowerment this rebirth of the self-defense movement was really tied to 427 00:33:48,950 --> 00:33:53,870 these feminist consciousness raising sessions at the time and these new 428 00:33:53,870 --> 00:33:57,380 self-defense movements were committed not only to the physical empowerment of 429 00:33:57,380 --> 00:34:00,740 women but to these discussions about the realities of violence and where violence 430 00:34:00,740 --> 00:34:05,230 actually stems from so activists were focused on dispelling 431 00:34:05,230 --> 00:34:09,190 this narrow myth of the stranger danger and they're looking at the multiple 432 00:34:09,190 --> 00:34:12,700 sources of harassment and violence the women encounter not just on the street 433 00:34:12,700 --> 00:34:17,619 but at work and in their homes and they focused on challenging these harmful 434 00:34:17,619 --> 00:34:21,970 gender test stereotypes and this pervasive rape culture and we see their 435 00:34:21,970 --> 00:34:25,659 fight obviously continuing on from the 60s and 70s there's a little bit more in 436 00:34:25,659 --> 00:34:30,550 the 90s see self-defense instructors talk about like a third wave popularity 437 00:34:30,550 --> 00:34:34,240 of self-defense and today there's something called empowerment 438 00:34:34,240 --> 00:34:40,050 self-defense ESD people are actually like certified in this and most of these 439 00:34:40,050 --> 00:34:46,510 instructors were trained in the 60s and 70s within these feminist self-defense 440 00:34:46,510 --> 00:34:54,399 courses and then they created ESD which is kind of tied to that earlier movement 441 00:34:54,399 --> 00:34:59,050 and their focus is on women's physical and personal empowerment setting 442 00:34:59,050 --> 00:35:03,460 boundaries and de-escalation service training but also looking at larger 443 00:35:03,460 --> 00:35:08,430 social issues like gender socialization rape culture sexism racism classism 444 00:35:08,430 --> 00:35:13,930 holding perpetrators responsible and these ESD classes have really taken off 445 00:35:13,930 --> 00:35:17,619 especially in the last three years or so there's been a lot more demand for 446 00:35:17,619 --> 00:35:23,350 self-defense classes especially among immigrants women of color and so these 447 00:35:23,350 --> 00:35:28,290 classes really are tied to these earlier waves of feminist self-defense courses 448 00:35:28,290 --> 00:35:31,810 so the self-defense training that emerged in the early 20th century was a 449 00:35:31,810 --> 00:35:36,550 way for women to powerfully claim their bodies as their own for centuries women 450 00:35:36,550 --> 00:35:40,270 were told that they needed to rely on men to think for them to vote for them 451 00:35:40,270 --> 00:35:44,380 and to protect them in this context then when women decided to train in 452 00:35:44,380 --> 00:35:47,970 self-defense they were loudly and boldly shouting enough is enough 453 00:35:47,970 --> 00:35:51,310 through self-defense training they were asserting their right to their humanity 454 00:35:51,310 --> 00:35:56,470 by empowering themselves physically and politically I don't like to end with my 455 00:35:56,470 --> 00:36:01,900 own voice I like to end with this really cool video I found from the 1920s / 30s 456 00:36:01,900 --> 00:36:06,030 it's a little bit out of my time period but you've got a walk 457 00:36:34,529 --> 00:36:37,569 as soon as I realize I'm going to be attacked 458 00:36:37,569 --> 00:36:41,710 I hold my back more firmly to my side I grip his wrist 459 00:36:41,710 --> 00:36:45,519 brought his arm forwards and upwards and place my disengaged arm across his body 460 00:36:45,519 --> 00:36:50,259 in this position it's quite easy for me to dislocate his elbow although his 461 00:36:50,259 --> 00:36:57,039 other arm is free it's quite impossible for him to strike me and I'm nearly as 462 00:36:57,039 --> 00:37:01,180 soon as I feel his arm around my neck I lean slightly forward grip his wrist and 463 00:37:01,180 --> 00:37:06,039 elbow and by bending my knees I know my center of gravity roughly speaking my 464 00:37:06,039 --> 00:37:15,220 hips below his center of gravity and by bending sharply forward notice I do not 465 00:37:15,220 --> 00:37:19,150 intend to break away from his grip by bending well back encourages wait onto 466 00:37:19,150 --> 00:37:22,509 his toes I turned my body place his arm under mine 467 00:37:22,509 --> 00:37:27,359 and in this position is quite easy for me to dislocate his 468 00:37:30,130 --> 00:37:34,869 I had his ankle please my hand between his shoulders and kick away his only 469 00:37:34,869 --> 00:37:42,400 support now I'm going to give him a real throw I'm gripped in the same manners 470 00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:46,779 before the time not having learned he's lucky this time I draw his body upwards 471 00:37:46,779 --> 00:37:50,710 to is in the form of a hoop and I gently on the floor placing one foot in his 472 00:37:50,710 --> 00:38:04,569 tummy the answers in the infirmary don't forget to do your make up money can I 473 00:38:04,569 --> 00:38:07,349 answer any questions 474 00:38:16,260 --> 00:38:23,829 my mom is 95 now and was a phys ed teacher in coach for an entire career in 475 00:38:23,829 --> 00:38:29,020 the middle of the 20th century and she wrote a master's essay the equivalent of 476 00:38:29,020 --> 00:38:35,609 a thesis about the development of basketball and women's track and other 477 00:38:35,609 --> 00:38:41,109 non-contact sports for women as more appropriate than women studying 478 00:38:41,109 --> 00:38:47,950 self-defense so as part of the backlash but also as part of a concern for 479 00:38:47,950 --> 00:38:55,240 women's health and fitness so many women by the 1930s and 40s were being steered 480 00:38:55,240 --> 00:39:00,880 out of self-defense and into more acceptable sports for women I was 481 00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:04,780 wondering if any of that came up in the earlier period in the sources you 482 00:39:04,780 --> 00:39:09,970 consulted yeah and prior to this time period that I'm looking at so in the 483 00:39:09,970 --> 00:39:15,609 1880s and 1890s when women started to really become more involved in athletics 484 00:39:15,609 --> 00:39:21,160 there was this concern that it was too masculine that it was going to impair 485 00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:26,710 their ability to have children in fact dr. Edward Clark wrote this whole essay 486 00:39:26,710 --> 00:39:30,339 about her book about how it was dangerous for women to study to go to 487 00:39:30,339 --> 00:39:34,630 school and especially athletics women physicians started to fight back against 488 00:39:34,630 --> 00:39:38,349 that that's why a lot of the women's colleges started to include physical 489 00:39:38,349 --> 00:39:43,329 fitness classes and the training of women in all different types of sports 490 00:39:43,329 --> 00:39:48,339 became more common and popular in part because of women's colleges but what 491 00:39:48,339 --> 00:39:53,650 they found is that after this period after this wave of feminism and the 492 00:39:53,650 --> 00:39:56,380 emphasis on the right to vote and everything in the 30s and the 40s there 493 00:39:56,380 --> 00:39:59,920 was a backlash not only against like you're talking about not only against 494 00:39:59,920 --> 00:40:04,089 athletics but against women going to college again and women's colleges 495 00:40:04,089 --> 00:40:07,660 actually ended up having to go co-ed in order to survive because people were 496 00:40:07,660 --> 00:40:10,839 pulling their young women out of school saying it's not preparing them for 497 00:40:10,839 --> 00:40:14,109 married life they're coming to independent many of them are choosing 498 00:40:14,109 --> 00:40:19,690 careers instead of family and so we see a backlash against it in the 30s in the 499 00:40:19,690 --> 00:40:23,230 40s so this period I'm talking about is a really short time period between kind 500 00:40:23,230 --> 00:40:28,360 of 1890 and 1920 and parallels this feminism of the suffrage 501 00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:34,120 era yeah and I'd like to study the self defense from this time period that 502 00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:37,450 you're talking about the 40s and 50s because what I notice is they're still 503 00:40:37,450 --> 00:40:41,500 women training in self defense in the 40s and 50s but look how a sexualized 504 00:40:41,500 --> 00:40:46,360 this imagery starts to be this is the like the late 20s and I noticed the 505 00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:50,020 twenties and thirties they're there they're seen as a lot more sexual or 506 00:40:50,020 --> 00:40:54,760 feminized versions a lot of makeup and a lot of like look at me I'm so pretty 507 00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:58,300 so I think that that's what's going to be happening in the thirties and forties 508 00:40:58,300 --> 00:41:01,930 but I haven't really dived into to look at what changes because they can't make 509 00:41:01,930 --> 00:41:10,570 it go away entirely women are still studying self-defense yes an appropriate 510 00:41:10,570 --> 00:41:14,170 form of exercise and the only reason you really need exercises to prepare your 511 00:41:14,170 --> 00:41:25,390 body for motherhood is the concept yeah did you have a question thank you for 512 00:41:25,390 --> 00:41:32,740 speaking and I had a question if you know about Bay Area programs I know that 513 00:41:32,740 --> 00:41:38,710 like maybe ten years ago I took a class here on campus that was given by the 514 00:41:38,710 --> 00:41:44,800 police department here on campus I think the program was rape and now it's rad do 515 00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:49,540 you know of it and are there any other like meetup groups and the other thing I 516 00:41:49,540 --> 00:41:57,130 also had a question on was why Chicago why did you focus on finding murders in 517 00:41:57,130 --> 00:42:02,710 that city was it because of women were political there or there was more 518 00:42:02,710 --> 00:42:10,780 activity with jujitsu or if just the newspapers wrote more about it sure the 519 00:42:10,780 --> 00:42:15,070 Chicago focus was because of the newspaper articles were highlighting all 520 00:42:15,070 --> 00:42:18,940 the cases of murder and violence against women but they were also highlighting 521 00:42:18,940 --> 00:42:23,680 the masher problem at the same time and they were kind of conflating the issues 522 00:42:23,680 --> 00:42:28,510 with violence so I wanted to look at that case that city specifically to try 523 00:42:28,510 --> 00:42:32,440 to figure out what was causing all of this rash violence against women was it 524 00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:37,240 really this shadowy stranger on the street as they were suggesting or was it 525 00:42:37,240 --> 00:42:40,290 the violence in the home so that's what made me call attention to 526 00:42:40,290 --> 00:42:45,450 that as far as different self-defense classes yeah I have lots of opinions any 527 00:42:45,450 --> 00:42:49,200 self defense class is good in the sense that you're learning something which you 528 00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:52,950 didn't have before you went in but there are very good self-defense classes that 529 00:42:52,950 --> 00:42:56,910 are more focused on this idea of gender socialization and understanding the 530 00:42:56,910 --> 00:43:00,060 roots of violence against women and those classes unfortunately the best 531 00:43:00,060 --> 00:43:03,930 ones are in the East Bay in Oakland and I can give you a list of instructors 532 00:43:03,930 --> 00:43:08,220 there that are trained in feminist empowerment self-defense but there but a 533 00:43:08,220 --> 00:43:13,650 lot of the police focused self-defense courses actually harken back to this 534 00:43:13,650 --> 00:43:16,500 earlier time period and they suggestion at women's places not really on the 535 00:43:16,500 --> 00:43:23,010 street there's a lot of warnings about about maintaining your safety and 536 00:43:23,010 --> 00:43:29,250 security mostly by avoiding going out so and that has a lot of connotations from 537 00:43:29,250 --> 00:43:32,760 this earlier period that said that when a woman's place was in the home so I 538 00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:37,260 don't always like the focus of some of those self-defense classes so yeah we 539 00:43:37,260 --> 00:43:41,430 can talk afterwards I'll give you a list of great instructors so Wendy thank you 540 00:43:41,430 --> 00:43:43,620 very much that was such an interesting talk 541 00:43:43,620 --> 00:43:49,860 you had mentioned early in the talk about the self-defense being focused on 542 00:43:49,860 --> 00:43:55,740 or only white sort of white upper-middle class women being able to afford it can 543 00:43:55,740 --> 00:44:00,770 you talk a little bit about where we are today in terms of race and ethnicity and 544 00:44:00,770 --> 00:44:05,610 economic socioeconomic status and and being at this being available to them 545 00:44:05,610 --> 00:44:12,600 yeah it's still a major issue most of the self-defense classes now tend to be 546 00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:17,490 through women young women tend to be exposed to that through college so it's 547 00:44:17,490 --> 00:44:22,620 still it parallels mostly middle and upper-class white women who have access 548 00:44:22,620 --> 00:44:26,910 to college education and that is a big concern and self defense advocates want 549 00:44:26,910 --> 00:44:31,860 to bring self-defense into the high schools so that it's accessible to all 550 00:44:31,860 --> 00:44:38,910 women young women and young men growing up in line with that since 2016 with the 551 00:44:38,910 --> 00:44:42,450 rise of hate crimes a lot of self-defense instructors come up to me 552 00:44:42,450 --> 00:44:45,060 and tell me that they're seeing a whole new population of people coming into 553 00:44:45,060 --> 00:44:48,120 their self-defense classes so most self-defense classes now are not 554 00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:51,990 women's self defense classes necessarily and they're changing the name and 555 00:44:51,990 --> 00:44:55,320 changing their marketing of it because they have a lot of people coming in 556 00:44:55,320 --> 00:45:00,119 diverse gender sexualities and from different parts of society that want 557 00:45:00,119 --> 00:45:02,280 self-defense training because they're feeling more threatened and this 558 00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:05,339 atmosphere so they're actually seeing a rise and they're they're not happy about 559 00:45:05,339 --> 00:45:08,609 the reasons why people are coming in obviously but self-defense is seeing 560 00:45:08,609 --> 00:45:14,940 another wave yeah I had actually a couple of suggestions and then a 561 00:45:14,940 --> 00:45:20,130 criticism okay one is you know Alice ski blush a the director 562 00:45:20,130 --> 00:45:25,760 so she's an early film director start in France came to this stage she wrote a 563 00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:31,589 produced a movie called making of American citizen in 1912 which 564 00:45:31,589 --> 00:45:34,680 really goes to a lot of what you're saying it's really focused on domestic 565 00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:38,670 violence of forints I supposed to be Russian immigrant he beats his wife 566 00:45:38,670 --> 00:45:44,640 constantly and he comes to us where it's not permitted and it's it the woman is 567 00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:49,380 not really empowered in the film except at one point where a guy comes along and 568 00:45:49,380 --> 00:45:54,089 sees him beating her with a stick and takes the stick away and shows her how 569 00:45:54,089 --> 00:45:58,710 to beat him but it's meant more it's kind of a comic scene but it is very 570 00:45:58,710 --> 00:46:02,700 interesting she also did a movie by the way about an all-woman 571 00:46:02,700 --> 00:46:09,480 society I think she did that while she was in France the other thing is is so I 572 00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:13,740 think her work is really interesting but the other thing is about the connection 573 00:46:13,740 --> 00:46:18,300 especially when you talk about Roosevelt and the so manly in this movement the 574 00:46:18,300 --> 00:46:23,280 rise of the cadet movement which starts in your period the 1880s 1890s at 575 00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:28,619 schools and here you know there was a woman's parallel so when the Pershing 576 00:46:28,619 --> 00:46:33,480 rifles starts and schools start developing cadet Kors women's schools 577 00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:38,570 also have cadet scores we had a cadet score so at Sana's in the Normal School 578 00:46:38,570 --> 00:46:42,960 there were two companies of the Cadet Corps one was all men one was all women 579 00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:47,609 so around that I found this in the archive so a round of the turn of the 580 00:46:47,609 --> 00:46:52,970 century there was an all women Cadet Corps and you saw you might look into 581 00:46:52,970 --> 00:46:59,310 that military training paramilitary training that's kind of a parallel so 582 00:46:59,310 --> 00:47:02,770 the other thing is a kind of critique when you talk about immigrants 583 00:47:02,770 --> 00:47:09,220 women a color which today is often seen as synonymous you're talking about 1880s 584 00:47:09,220 --> 00:47:15,370 1890s really before World War one really even into the 20s in these northern 585 00:47:15,370 --> 00:47:20,590 cities like Chicago or st. Louis or New York out here in California what we 586 00:47:20,590 --> 00:47:25,800 think of people of color african-americans Asians Hispanics or 587 00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:30,310 mexican-americans very small almost minuscule part of the urban population 588 00:47:30,310 --> 00:47:37,210 and so when I think you're right about the focus being on what we would say 589 00:47:37,210 --> 00:47:41,350 white middle-class but really was Christian I mean it was really wasps and 590 00:47:41,350 --> 00:47:45,340 it was really the idea of white Protestant middle-class women and the 591 00:47:45,340 --> 00:47:51,000 other was not so much people of color it was southern Europeans Catholics Jews 592 00:47:51,000 --> 00:48:00,460 Irish who were the urban underclass so you know I the point is there the groups 593 00:48:00,460 --> 00:48:04,870 are different so when you say immigrants of people of color it's not synonymous 594 00:48:04,870 --> 00:48:13,960 in your period as it is or nearly is today yeah no exactly and in fact when I 595 00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:20,050 say that men of color and immigrant men were often portrayed as the shadowy 596 00:48:20,050 --> 00:48:23,500 stranger I'm talking mostly about Italian men yeah that were portrayed as 597 00:48:23,500 --> 00:48:31,690 this dangerous danger and Asian men at the time depending on the villain in 598 00:48:31,690 --> 00:48:37,270 this movie is clearly a Russian it's not clear if it's a Jew or Christian he's 599 00:48:37,270 --> 00:48:41,860 clearly in Eastern European and so I think there were all of these classes of 600 00:48:41,860 --> 00:48:46,060 immigrants that were seen as and though the movie is really about socializing 601 00:48:46,060 --> 00:48:49,780 people to be American it's really interesting because Gilles Bechet was 602 00:48:49,780 --> 00:48:57,610 quite radical but her view of America is very kind of that Americanism protects 603 00:48:57,610 --> 00:49:02,440 women that, that women in America cannot be beaten or abused in this way that 604 00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:06,580 they can in Europe so it doesn't reflect reality necessarily but it is an 605 00:49:06,580 --> 00:49:08,280 interesting view 606 00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:10,680 yeah that is really interesting thank you 607 00:49:12,220 --> 00:49:16,700 Are there any other questions? Or comments? 608 00:49:17,300 --> 00:49:19,280 OK, thank you. 609 00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:23,720 (applause)