Customer Reviews

Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women's Self-Defense

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There have been plenty of how-to self defense books. Lots of pictures of techniques, lists of street-awareness skills, and recovery literature. This may be the first detailed treatment by an academic about what self-defense is what it does for the women who take it up, and why some people (including a disturbing number of feminists and government types) are so ambivalent about it.

Dr. McCaughey has done an excellent job of looking into the history of the self-defense movement, the philosophy behind it, and the people involved in it. She wasn't content to make grand pronouncements from behind her word processor. She went out, got involved in her subject, experienced it, and met the people who actually do what she writes about.

This book was written at least partially for an academic audience, so the general reader will have to wade through a little bit of jargon. The author leaves out a couple possibly useful points, and I do not agree with everything she says. But these are minor objections. The field of women's self defense finally has an inspirational scholar who treats it with the depth and seriousness it deserves.

As a former federal agent and owner of a personal protection company that teaches full-contact self defense for women and police defensive tactics, I found this book to be very good. While I may disagree with some individuals Martha spoke with, her book brings out what those of us who teach serious women's self defense have known for ages - SELF-EMPOWERMENT IS THE KEY !!! Good job Martha !

I would really recommend this book for feminists hoping to explore self-defense. So many feminists, myself included, have understandable ambivalence about self-defense, which has perpetuated some of the myths about rape we've been battling for decades. Still, this book does a nice job delving into theory and practice to show the difference between good and bad self-defense. I found the argument that self-defense makes feminism accessible for more women particularly compelling.

The main limitation to the book is that outside of the theory, it doesn't offer much for women living outside a major metropolitan area with many types of self-defense classes to choose from. Only in large cities can most women find an empowerment-based, female-only self defense class. What about the rest of us?

In "Real Knockouts," author Martha McCaughey tries several forms of self-defense (from Guns to Model Mugging to Karate) herself, and examines some of the myths that keep a so-called "rape culture" alive. To make her points she uses her experiences, extensive interviews with other self-defense class participants, and documented cases throughout history. Her style leans very much toward the academic.

Her point is compelling: as she goes through all these different courses, she realizes that to some degree, the fear women feel that moves them TO self-defense classes is a social construct; women in these classes are more than capable of doing damage to an untrained assailant, and a culture that promotes passive methods of self defense (don't stay out late, and don't drink) over more active ones (get yourself to a self-defense class, and learn to hit and say 'NO" forcefully) inadvertently creates confidence in a male assailant's mind, and doubt in a potential female victim's.

Certainly, there is some anger in this book; it's not light reading for someone already uncomfortable with the 'feminist' agenda. It accuses men of an unchallenged sense of superiority, and women of sending their anti-rape message in a rather disingenious (and borderline antifeminist) way. But, it raises a lot of good points, and really challenges some of the assumptions we make both in predicting the outcome of a male/female fight, and in trying to discourage them. I just wish that she'd been able to come up with more relevant statistics on success rates for women who have fought back; then she could have backed up her quite-sensible arguments with a measure of real-world proof/authentication. That to me would have been more valuable than the proffered selection of old court cases, logic, and anecdotal evidence.