Self-Defense & Violence Prevention Blog

Stephanie Paterik recently wrote about Fight Like a Girl. I include an excerpt:

Fighting like a girl may be considered a weakness.

Phoenix business owner Cory Kahabka thinks it is the best thing a woman can do.

Kahabka, president and co-owner of Absotively, which helps merging companies integrate, is a fourth-degree black belt in karate and teaches martial arts on weekends.

For the past two years, he also has been teaching Fight Like a Girl, a rape escape class that is based on the inherent strengths and reactions of women.

“We teach them to use their strength, and their strongest muscles are in their legs,” he said. “So we teach them to lie on their back and use their legs in self-defense situations.”

Kahabka said that when he was first introduced to Fight Like a Girl by Phoenix resident Brad Parker, who developed the class, Kahabka thought it was counterintuitive to tell women to lie on their backs because that is the position a rapist would want them to be in.

“But a woman’s legs are her biggest weapon, and they are aimed right at the attacker,” he said.

Kahabka said that if an attacker sees that a woman is going to put up a fight, he is more likely to back off.

Read entire article by Stephanie Paterik.

I have not seen that method of self-defense in action. It seems dangerous to lie on one’s back to escape rape, but the class gets a lot of credit and praise, and so far I have never heard of an unhappy student.

Of course, I assume running away still works better when viable.

What do you think?