Fighting Back Gender-Based Violence and (re)Finding Body Autonomy through the Practice of Women’s Self-Defense.

A lot of work has been done about the vulnerability of women, the different types of violences they face as well as its impacts on their body. However, very little research has taken the approach of an agentivity of women through the appropriation of violence, as a tool to fight back from patriarchal violences. This presentation discusses the subject of women’s self-defense, and the different ways of learning how to become violent allows them to inhabit their bodies, their social interactions and urban environments, through changed practices and emotions.

This presentation is based on ongoing PhD research in geography about women’s self-defense in Paris and London, and draws on participatory observations in self-defense classes, interviews with teachers and students, and surveys distributed during these lessons.

Studying women’s self-defense allows us to understand the different body techniques implemented by women before, during and after studying self-defense. Furthermore, gender norms surrounding women’s posture, body autonomy and the use of their muscles are intensely reshaped through the learning of this defensive violence. This topic also provides us with an opportunity to rethink women’s status as eternal victims, as preys or as passive: in the case of feminist self-defense, women actively fight for their autonomy with techniques designed by and for women (Dorlin, 2020). Feminine violence also tackles our perception of the “perfect victim”, from a sociological, legal, and moral perspective, and what fighting “like a girl” means (Young, 1980).

Highlighting the continuum of violences faced by women, as well as its impact on their bodies remain a subject of utmost importance. However, learning how women actively fight their vulnerabilities using defensive violence may also allows us to rethink the interactions between gender, violence and space, from the scale of the body to the scale of the city.