From an early age, young females are constantly reminded of the dangers that they may face in their lifetime. This has caused girls to regularly acknowledge their own supposed vulnerability and therefore, they will take the appropriate precautions to prevent becoming a victim of an attack.
Women are forever being reminded to never walk home alone, not to get too drunk, try to go home with a friend, never leave a drink unattended, and so on. Although this advice is well intended, it has resulted in many young females merely avoiding situations in which they could meet potential danger.
However women are rarely informed about how they should react if they are confronted with a dangerous situation.
The Huffington Post quoted that roughly 20 per cent of women will be sexually assaulted throughout their time at university; however I’m sure if you ask the majority of female university students they would not know how to react in a sexual assault situation.
I’m sure that many girls share the same mentality as I do and think “it will never happen to me,” and continue to avoid certain areas or doing certain things as opposed to actually learning to defend themselves.
At this year’s Welcome Fair, a stall advertising a free women’s self-defence class caught my eye and caused me to question my own abilities at being able to defend myself and then it dawned on me that I would probably be absolutely useless. The following week I went along to one of the classes and what took place in that hour and a half truly did impress me.
The vast amount of girls who had opted to learn self-defence was astounding, however what really amazed me was the people who ran the class.
Not only had they given up their free time for no payment to ensure that girls felt more confident but they also seemed to genuinely care about the girls having effective defence skills and they even showed how to project those skills to a real life situation.
I am proud to be a student of a university that is actually taking proactive measures to ensure their students remain safe and a huge thank you to those individuals of Smart Martial Arts who have already made me feel more confident in my ability to defend myself.
