As far back as, you know, 17th century England,
there was a law that said that
a man could beat his wife with a stick
so long as it wasn't thicker than his thumb (i.e. "rule of thumb")
you know, and we still have that idea today.
So when we talk about things like Cell 16 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_16]
Brooklyn Women's Martial Arts,
and other forms of feminist self defense,
we shouldn't look at it as just a physical self defense,
but also this growing recognition that
that there are all sorts of ways that violence impacts women's lives.
We need to make sure that people who might be abusive and violent
know that every eye in the community is on them.
Prisons and policing often protect those in power
and do very little to nothing to those who, for those who don't have any power.
So, they might decide that they don't necessarily need to act or intervene in some cases.
Andrea Smith, one of the co-founders of Incite,
actually talked about one very public incident in which
a woman who was in a housing project in a city
called the police because of a domestic violence incident with her partner.
And when the police arrived, they decided, they looked around the projects
and decided that,
no, this woman actually didn't qualify for their protection,
they didn't want to enter the public housing area
to try to ascertain what was going on
and possibly arrest the person who had abused her.
And she got incensed, and asked for their badge number,
and they decided that they were going to further brutalize her
by beating her and arresting her and taking her in
on some bogus charge
because she had demanded that they offer her
the same protection that they would
a white middle class woman living in an affluent suburban neighbourhood.
We've also seen that, um, especially in communities where the police
are not seen as protectors,
like low income communities of colour,
or poor neighbourhoods,
that for a woman to call the police
and invite them into the neighbourhood
often ostracizes her from the rest of the community.
So the community will see her as
calling the police in to further terrorize the community.
And so whatever support she might have gotten from her friends and her neighbours
and her co-workers and everybody else in the neighbourhood disappears
when she calls the police in.
So all these factors put women more at risk
when they call in the police.
And, again, it doesn't necessarily mean that the abuse is going to stop,
because either the police showing up and arresting the person
right then and there,
and taking him out of commission for 24 hours,
or, the police arresting the person and then pressuring the woman to file charges
and often holding threats of perhaps removing her children,
or doing something else over her head,
communities haven't been able to develop,
or haven't developed other means to solve,
you know, interpersonal violence or abuse,
so therefore, if the only solution seems to be to call in this, to call in the police,
and the police can use this then as a way to say well
we have to be in these "higher crime, higher violence communities" to prevent violence,
without actually addressing all the other ways that violence can take place,
without it necessarily being like one person physically hurting another person.
I don't want to pinpoint one as THE root cause,
but some of the root causes are
this idea that women are the property of men,
So as far back as 17th century England, there was a law that said
that a man could beat his wife with a stick,
so long as it wasn't thicker that his thumb (i.e. "rule of thumb")
You know, and we still have that idea today,
that women are somehow the property of the men that they are in relationships with,
whether it be their fathers, or their husbands, or their boyfriends, or sons.
There's this idea that it is OK to
to exert power by any means necesary,
whether it be like physical abuse, or emotional abuse, or mental abuse,
or controlling someone economically.
In East Harlem, In New York,
which is a primarily black and brown, poor community,
in New York City,
um, residents formed what they called, um,
what do they call them...
Neighbourhood Watches,
where they would actually go to the apartment
of somebody who was involved in a domestically violent situation,
either because the woman asked them to,
or because a neighbour called in a complaint,
and they actually went to the apartment,
and they physically moved themselves in to the apartment for a while.
And obviously they couldn't live in this apartment forever,
but they would be there for a few days,
and the abusive partner would know
that he couldn't do anything while they were there,
and even after they moved out,
he knew that they could come back
and that basically the community had taken it upon itself
to say that we won't stand for this kind of violence,
and this kind of abuse any more.
In the mid- 1990's there was a group called
Sista to Sista,
s-i-s-t-a, not s-i-s-t-e-r
which is a group of predominantly black and brown women,
in the Bushwick area (north Brooklyn),
and they recognized that they had to address
interpersonal violence and state violence,
so one of the things that they did was
they started the sister circles,
understanding that they couldn't necessarily rely on
the police to help them,
especially when police were coming into this community, their communities,
and murdering people.
So, two young women of colour
were murdered around 2000 by the police,
and there was like no, you know, like huge state outcry, there was no big shake-up
about the fact that the police had murdered two young women.
But they also recognized that there was a lot of interpersonal violence that was going on
that needed to be addressed as well.
So they started forming what they called the sister circles,
in which they actually talked to each other,
and they devised ways in which they could address abuse
without relying on policing and prisons.
And one example that was given was
one of the women came to the sister circles and said
my ex boyfriend has been stalking me, you know,
he's been psychologically intimidating me,
and I'm getting worried that this is going to keep escalating until he becomes
physically violent with me.
And they talked with her, and they devised a plan,
and, I'm going to like shorten the version, because I'm sure a lot of planning went on,
it wasn't like they just like automatically had this instinct.
And what they did was,
they went and confronted him at the barber shop where he worked,
in front of all his co-workers,
and said look, this is what you're doing to this woman,
you need to stop.
And what happened was,
that the men in the barber shop that worked with him said
hey, that's really messed up, you need to stop,
and his boss even said if I hear about this again,
you're fired.
You know, like you are not going to be harassing this woman any more.
And this is the kind of thing that they were doing,
because they couldn't rely on the police
to keep them safe.
Cell 16 was a women's liberation group,
it actually, it was formed in the late 1960's,
and I think maybe by the early 1970's had disbanded.
But during their time they were based in the Boston area of Massachusetts.
They did several things.
They did patrols of areas in which working class women were
getting out of factory shifts late at night.
So they understood that women who didn't have resources to say, like,
have someone come pick them up, or didn't have their own cars,
were vulnerable to violence when they were getting off their factory shifts late at night,
and walking to the public transportation.
So what they would do, is they would patrol
in pairs, or you know, in groups,
and they would offer to walk women to where they were going.
So whether it be walking them to the train station
and making sure they safely got into the train station,
or walking them to their houses,
to make sure, again, like the sisterhood societies, that they were safe
from external threats, relying on this idea that there's safety in numbers.
And they would watch out for suspicious behaviour,
you know,
and it's not the same "suspicious behaviour"
that the government tells you to, like, look for today.
But you know, like, hey, there's this man that seems to be standing there,
you know, for absolutely no, you know, no purpose, like,
what are his intentions?
Is he going to assault somebody?
Or is he waiting for his girlfriend or his wife to get off of work?
You know, but actually putting
potential assailants on notice too,
that there were people involved in, you know, like watching out for everyone's safety.
They also were one of the first women's groups to offer self defense classes for women
with a feminist slant.
Sot they actually said, you know,
women have the right to be safe and secure in their own bodies,
and they need to have the skill set and the tools
to be able to defend themselves physically,
if they are attacked,
and so they offered free Taekwondo classes to women
so that women could learn to defend themselves,
and they weren't always needing to rely on somebody else to do so.
In 1974, 1975, going on this same premise that women have the right to be safe
and secure in their own bodies,
two feminist martial arts activists
Nadia Telsey and Annie Ellman started Battered Women's, oh, sorry,
Brooklyn Women's Martial Arts, um, in Brooklyn New York,
and they basically started the first dojo specifically for women,
in which they wanted women to be able to train and learn how to defend themselves.
They made it sliding-scale, so that if a woman couldn't afford to pay for classes,
she didn't have to, or if she could only afford to pay a little bit she could,
and women who could afford to pay more, did.
And they also offered childcare at all of their classes,
understanding that they didn't want women with children to say
well, I can't take these classes because I don't have a safe place to put my child
or my children,
you know, and also understanding that when women become mothers,
they're just as vulnerable, if not more vulnerable to violence,
because you know they don't necessarily have all the
access and resources and mobility that, you know, single women might.
So, and, this is, their dojos continued on to this day,
in the 1980's they re-named themselves The Center for Anti-Violence Education,
recognizing that it's not just women who face violence.
Um, so they actually started doing trainings for, um, transgender people,
they started doing trainings for, after 9/11, they started doing trainings for
groups that were specifically working with South Asian populations
that were more vulnerable to the racist backlash post 9/11,
and like, how to like, deal with safety and security
not just from the physical aspect,
but also tactics like de-escalation, knowing what to look for, like
trying to get a situation away from a dangerous place,
without actually having to use your fists.
They also recognized that
violence is one of the things that held all these different types of oppression together,
so they weren't just focussing on violence against women,
and white-washing this idea of women,
but they were understanding that
women with the least amount of resources were the most vulnerable to violence.
So, like, women of colour would be vulnerable
not only to interpersonal violence,
but were more vulnerable to state violence as well.
You know, and violence from the police;
and weren't necessarily in a position to be able to call the police.
Poor women were less likely to be able to get away
because they were poor and they didn't have the resources and opportunities to do so.
And so they did a lot of work around also educating people around the fact that
there are all these different oppressions that intersect,
and you can see violence as one of the glues that holds together all these oppressions.