Fighting back on feminist terms: Empowerment through self-defence training in neoliberal times

Abstract

In neoliberal times, patriarchal narratives about “women who ask for it” combine with the myth of meritocracy to make the slippery slope between safety advice and victim-blame slicker than ever. The only interventions that have shown empirical reductions in sexual assaults are “feminist empowerment” programmes that equip women with effective resistance skills. So, how can a feminist approach be distinguished from neoliberal discourses that responsibilise women for crime prevention while claiming to “empower” them? Drawing on the author’s experience as a feminist self-defence teacher in Aotearoa, New Zealand, this chapter suggests that a feminist approach should attend to empowerment as a political process with three interlocking dimensions: personal, collective and subversive. Examples are given of how this is, and could be, attempted through feminist self-defence classes.