The legacy of Susan E. Smith

In my last post I heavily criticized the way most self defense instructors and book authors taboo testicles as a self defense target. But it was not always like that. Especially the 80ties broke some kind of social inhibition surrounding this organs. Depiction of male genitalia and their vulnerability became a common theme in popular culture. Traditional martial arts ceased being considered an effective way to win a fight especially when a woman’s dignity and her life is at stake. This also meant that testicles lost their long-lasting privilege of a sacred spot. The self defense systems became geared more towards effectiveness than to sportiness.

During this time one of the truly revolutionary self defense book written by Susan E. Smith ‘Fear or Freedom’ came out in 1986. As a feminist she emphasized that women should not rely on men when it comes to their safety but to take matters into their own hands, sometimes quite literally. She interviewed survivors of sexual attacks and their experience materialized in her own system. Absolutely superb is the chapter about the techniques of the last resort self defense, in which she stresses that initial compliance followed by sudden execution of one of the three drastic incapacitating techniques can be a ticket to freedom. She provides an unprecedented information on testicles as a target. With absolutely no reservation she explains in detail and through some realistic illustrations how  woman under a sexual assault should perform a move she called ‘the testicle twist’ on exposed testicles of an assailant, giving a highly empowering lesson to any female reader: ‘What power  women can have knowing that there is one technical but simple, no-fail defense for rape’. Truly an excellent book, the type we really miss nowadays.  

You can borrow this book via archive.com or buy it on Amazon.I will dive in some of the information in her book in my later posts.