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As far back as, you know, 17th century England,

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there was a law that said that

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a man could beat his wife with a stick

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so long as it wasn't thicker than his thumb (i.e. "rule of thumb")

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you know, and we still have that idea today.

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So when we talk about things like Cell 16 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_16]

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Brooklyn Women's Martial Arts,

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and other forms of feminist self defense,

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we shouldn't look at it as just a physical self defense,

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but also this growing recognition that

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that there are all sorts of ways that violence impacts women's lives.

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We need to make sure that people who might be abusive and violent

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know that every eye in the community is on them.

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Prisons and policing often protect those in power

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and do very little to nothing to those who, for those who don't have any power.

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So, they might decide that they don't necessarily need to act or intervene in some cases.

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Andrea Smith, one of the co-founders of Incite,

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actually talked about one very public incident in which

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a woman who was in a housing project in a city

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called the police because of a domestic violence incident with her partner.

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And when the police arrived, they decided, they looked around the projects

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and decided that,

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no, this woman actually didn't qualify for their protection,

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they didn't want to enter the public housing area

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to try to ascertain what was going on

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and possibly arrest the person who had abused her.

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And she got incensed, and asked for their badge number,

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and they decided that they were going to further brutalize her

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by beating her and arresting her and taking her in

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on some bogus charge

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because she had demanded that they offer her

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the same protection that they would

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a white middle class woman living in an affluent suburban neighbourhood.

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We've also seen that, um, especially in communities where the police

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are not seen as protectors,

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like low income communities of colour,

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or poor neighbourhoods,

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that for a woman to call the police

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and invite them into the neighbourhood

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often ostracizes her from the rest of the community.

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So the community will see her as

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calling the police in to further terrorize the community.

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And so whatever support she might have gotten from her friends and her neighbours

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and her co-workers and everybody else in the neighbourhood disappears

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when she calls the police in.

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So all these factors put women more at risk

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when they call in the police.

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And, again, it doesn't necessarily mean that the abuse is going to stop,

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because either the police showing up and arresting the person

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right then and there,

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and taking him out of commission for 24 hours,

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or, the police arresting the person and then pressuring the woman to file charges

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and often holding threats of perhaps removing her children,

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or doing something else over her head,

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communities haven't been able to develop,

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or haven't developed other means to solve,

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you know, interpersonal violence or abuse,

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so therefore, if the only solution seems to be to call in this, to call in the police,

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and the police can use this then as a way to say well

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we have to be in these "higher crime, higher violence communities" to prevent violence,

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without actually addressing all the other ways that violence can take place,

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without it necessarily being like one person physically hurting another person.

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I don't want to pinpoint one as THE root cause,

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but some of the root causes are

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this idea that women are the property of men,

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So as far back as 17th century England, there was a law that said

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that a man could beat his wife with a stick,

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so long as it wasn't thicker that his thumb (i.e. "rule of thumb")

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You know, and we still have that idea today,

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that women are somehow the property of the men that they are in relationships with,

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whether it be their fathers, or their husbands, or their boyfriends, or sons.

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There's this idea that it is OK to

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to exert power by any means necesary,

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whether it be like physical abuse, or emotional abuse, or mental abuse,

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or controlling someone economically.

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In East Harlem, In New York,

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which is a primarily black and brown, poor community,

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in New York City,

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um, residents formed what they called, um,

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what do they call them...

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Neighbourhood Watches,

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where they would actually go to the apartment

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of somebody who was involved in a domestically violent situation,

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either because the woman asked them to,

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or because a neighbour called in a complaint,

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and they actually went to the apartment,

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and they physically moved themselves in to the apartment for a while.

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And obviously they couldn't live in this apartment forever,

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but they would be there for a few days,

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and the abusive partner would know

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that he couldn't do anything while they were there,

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and even after they moved out,

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he knew that they could come back

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and that basically the community had taken it upon itself

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to say that we won't stand for this kind of violence,

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and this kind of abuse any more.

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In the mid- 1990's there was a group called

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Sista to Sista,

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s-i-s-t-a, not s-i-s-t-e-r

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which is a group of predominantly black and brown women,

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in the Bushwick area (north Brooklyn),

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and they recognized that they had to address

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interpersonal violence and state violence,

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so one of the things that they did was

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they started the sister circles,

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understanding that they couldn't necessarily rely on

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the police to help them,

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especially when police were coming into this community, their communities,

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and murdering people.

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So, two young women of colour

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were murdered around 2000 by the police,

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and there was like no, you know, like huge state outcry, there was no big shake-up

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about the fact that the police had murdered two young women.

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But they also recognized that there was a lot of interpersonal violence that was going on

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that needed to be addressed as well.

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So they started forming what they called the sister circles,

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in which they actually talked to each other,

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and they devised ways in which they could address abuse

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without relying on policing and prisons.

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And one example that was given was

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one of the women came to the sister circles and said

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my ex boyfriend has been stalking me, you know,

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he's been psychologically intimidating me,

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and I'm getting worried that this is going to keep escalating until he becomes

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physically violent with me.

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And they talked with her, and they devised a plan,

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and, I'm going to like shorten the version, because I'm sure a lot of planning went on,

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it wasn't like they just like automatically had this instinct.

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And what they did was,

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they went and confronted him at the barber shop where he worked,

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in front of all his co-workers,

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and said look, this is what you're doing to this woman,

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you need to stop.

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And what happened was,

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that the men in the barber shop that worked with him said

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hey, that's really messed up, you need to stop,

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and his boss even said if I hear about this again,

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you're fired.

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You know, like you are not going to be harassing this woman any more.

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And this is the kind of thing that they were doing,

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because they couldn't rely on the police

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to keep them safe.

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Cell 16 was a women's liberation group,

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it actually, it was formed in the late 1960's,

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and I think maybe by the early 1970's had disbanded.

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But during their time they were based in the Boston area of Massachusetts.

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They did several things.

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They did patrols of areas in which working class women were

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getting out of factory shifts late at night.

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So they understood that women who didn't have resources to say, like,

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have someone come pick them up, or didn't have their own cars,

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were vulnerable to violence when they were getting off their factory shifts late at night,

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and walking to the public transportation.

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So what they would do, is they would patrol

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in pairs, or you know, in groups,

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and they would offer to walk women to where they were going.

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So whether it be walking them to the train station

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and making sure they safely got into the train station,

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or walking them to their houses,

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to make sure, again, like the sisterhood societies, that they were safe

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from external threats, relying on this idea that there's safety in numbers.

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And they would watch out for suspicious behaviour,

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you know,

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and it's not the same "suspicious behaviour"

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that the government tells you to, like, look for today.

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But you know, like, hey, there's this man that seems to be standing there,

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you know, for absolutely no, you know, no purpose, like,

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what are his intentions?

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Is he going to assault somebody?

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Or is he waiting for his girlfriend or his wife to get off of work?

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You know, but actually putting

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potential assailants on notice too,

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that there were people involved in, you know, like watching out for everyone's safety.

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They also were one of the first women's groups to offer self defense classes for women

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with a feminist slant.

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Sot they actually said, you know,

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women have the right to be safe and secure in their own bodies,

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and they need to have the skill set and the tools

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to be able to defend themselves physically,

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if they are attacked,

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and so they offered free Taekwondo classes to women

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so that women could learn to defend themselves,

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and they weren't always needing to rely on somebody else to do so.

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In 1974, 1975, going on this same premise that women have the right to be safe

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and secure in their own bodies,

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two feminist martial arts activists

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Nadia Telsey and Annie Ellman started Battered Women's, oh, sorry,

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Brooklyn Women's Martial Arts, um, in Brooklyn New York,

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and they basically started the first dojo specifically for women,

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in which they wanted women to be able to train and learn how to defend themselves.

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They made it sliding-scale, so that if a woman couldn't afford to pay for classes,

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she didn't have to, or if she could only afford to pay a little bit she could,

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and women who could afford to pay more, did.

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And they also offered childcare at all of their classes,

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understanding that they didn't want women with children to say

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well, I can't take these classes because I don't have a safe place to put my child

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or my children,

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you know, and also understanding that when women become mothers,

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they're just as vulnerable, if not more vulnerable to violence,

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because you know they don't necessarily have all the

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access and resources and mobility that, you know, single women might.

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So, and, this is, their dojos continued on to this day,

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in the 1980's they re-named themselves The Center for Anti-Violence Education,

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recognizing that it's not just women who face violence.

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Um, so they actually started doing trainings for, um, transgender people,

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they started doing trainings for, after 9/11, they started doing trainings for

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groups that were specifically working with South Asian populations

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that were more vulnerable to the racist backlash post 9/11,

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and like, how to like, deal with safety and security

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not just from the physical aspect,

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but also tactics like de-escalation, knowing what to look for, like

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trying to get a situation away from a dangerous place,

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without actually having to use your fists.

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They also recognized that

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violence is one of the things that held all these different types of oppression together,

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so they weren't just focussing on violence against women,

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and white-washing this idea of women,

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but they were understanding that

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women with the least amount of resources were the most vulnerable to violence.

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So, like, women of colour would be vulnerable

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not only to interpersonal violence,

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but were more vulnerable to state violence as well.

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You know, and violence from the police;

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and weren't necessarily in a position to be able to call the police.

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Poor women were less likely to be able to get away

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because they were poor and they didn't have the resources and opportunities to do so.

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And so they did a lot of work around also educating people around the fact that

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there are all these different oppressions that intersect,

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and you can see violence as one of the glues that holds together all these oppressions.