4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Weed's Seeds, December 28, 2006
This review is from: Girls Fight Back!: The College Girl's Guide to Protecting Herself (Paperback)
Know a young woman--daughter, sister, best friend's kid--beginning college? Send a copy of Girls Fight Back! in your next care package. Erin Weed, founder of the organization Girls Fight Back!, wrote this book especially for college women. It has lots of good information on easy and doable ways for any college women, from freshman to PhD candidate, to enhance her safety.
Weed's saga began when her good friend and sorority sister, Shannon McNamara, was murdered in 2001. Since then, it's been her calling to educate women on real risks and safety strategies. A recent college graduate herself, she speaks the language of today's college girls. This book is positive and upbeat, emphasizing what women CAN do to keep safe while enjoying the full richness of college life.
And indeed her message is of joy, richness, fullness. Of recognizing how the just even the threat of violence can rob women of really living and loving life. And, more importantly, of recognizing how much women can do to stay safe.
Part of what makes this a great book for young women heading off to college is its brevity: short, engaging, easy to read. Weed writes in contemporary college lingua franca about today's girls' real concerns. Stories from real life, from the lives of women Weed's met over her travels and speaking on campuses, graphically illustrate her points. Most young women on campus can recognize themselves and their issues in these pages.
One example of her use of "college-speak" is her adaptation of Gavin De Becker's list of ploys and manipulations. In The Gift of Fear (whose first chapters are among the best about intuition and recognizing manipulation), De Becker names some of the ploys "forced teaming," "typecasting," and "too many details." Weed rewrites them as "there's no U in team," "engaging insults," and "t.m.i (too much information)." Her explanations are shorter, as in a paragraph rather than a page or two. And the story she uses to illustrate all the ploys is not De Becker's woman returning to her apartment with an armload of groceries but specifically a college woman returning to her apartment after an evening of partying.
In some ways this book's brevity is also a flaw. She gives short shrift to domestic violence (about 3 pages), which is the single most common cause of women's trips to the local emergency room. While she has great advice on all those little boundary violations that can signal dating/domestic violence, she has little on what to do if you are in that sort of relationship, or if your best buddy is.
Reading is not doing. Physical skills require at least initial physical learning, with qualified instruction and feedback. To her credit, Weed spends little time on technique, instead recommending that women actually take a class. I am, however, disappointed in her suggestion that women look to the campus or municipal police department. Better referral sources are to be had from sexual assault and battered women's organizations.
In addition, Weed makes no mention of the women who created the current wave of feminist women's self-defense over 35 years ago. Nadia Telsey, Jaye Spiro, Annie Ellman, and Janet Aalfs, to name a few, are still teaching and training teachers today. While Weed claims to have learned from the best and gives credit to male instructors whose base is law enforcement, she neglected to explore the groundbreaking, self-defense work of women, whose efforts laid the foundation for Weed's own mission. What does that say about women's empowerment? Women have for decades taken the lead to educate law enforcement institutions about violence against women, and continue to struggle to get them to consistently take the problem seriously. I would encourage the author to empower herself by finding out what women are doing for women's self-defense.
While much of the advice in Girls Fight Back! focuses on one's awareness and attitudinal habits, these and other non-physical skills also need practice. Good self-defense classes provide that venue with feedback and reinforcement, as well as a supportive environment to enhance learning. As a self-defense instructor for over a decade, I've found that skillfully facilitated classes with others break down the sense of isolation, finding others who are also concerned about safety and have their own stories to share. This greatly helps increase one's confidence and knowledge, which are among the best predictors of a woman's successful self-defense. And Weed highly recommends you find such a class.
Still, the best book on women's self-defense is Debbie Leung's Self-Defense: The Womanly Art of Self-Care, Intuition and Choice. Published 15 years ago, it's advice is still right on. Alas, it is out of print. Sometimes used copies can be had through Amazon.com. [...]
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Girl Power!, April 12, 2007
This review is from: Girls Fight Back!: The College Girl's Guide to Protecting Herself (Paperback)
Although the book is brief and lacking in techniques, it makes up for it in explanation of warning signs and the importance of intuition. I have also read "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin De Becker, which is extremely well written. Weed often refers to that book and draws from it for her own teaching. I had the opportunity to see Erin Weed at a college demonstration for self defense. I thoroughly recommend that, if you have the opportunity, you see her in action, you will not regret it. She has the gift of being able to balance the serious with humor, and she is very well educated in the art of self defense. There are defense moves that she showed me that I will keep with me forever. She also understands the college aged woman and what she faces, which is strongly portrayed in her book. I thoroughly recommend this for women of all ages, especially women in college that may not know what dangers await them. The only reason that I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 is because there is just no substitute for the physical teachings of self defense. Those visuals are needed to fully grasp the concepts. But, this book comes close. Knowledge is power people!
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