Busting the ball myths (part three) - leave the groin on the beach!

One day in June I watched a morning TV show, and they talked about female self defense. It was rather a brief segment. A female Krav Maga instructor asked the show’s male host to play an attacker to demonstrate some basic moves. Normally a very cocky personality, he suddenly became quite shy and made a face when she said “…now knee the attacker in his groin” and her knee stopped just a few centimeters from his (quite prominent) bulge. I think these popularizations in public broadcastings are relevant, but unfortunately, often perpetuate some misconceptions. 

Using male hosts for demonstration of female self defense and
mentioning his testicles as a target can be a bit awkward. 

This time I will discuss an important aspect, and although maybe it cannot be classified as a typical myth, it significantly affects female self defense training. In one of my earlier posts, I already mentioned that one of the continuing maladies within the self defense and martial arts community is the inappropriate usage of the word groin. Why is it so important? Because it is incorrect and misleading terminology, and the wrong terminology means half-hearted and ineffectual training. If you looked up the word groin in Wikipedia you would learn that:

In human anatomy, the groin is the junctional area between the abdomen and the thigh on either side of the pubic bone. This is also known as the medial compartment of the thigh which consists of the adductor muscles of the hip or the groin muscles.

As you see, anatomically, the groin is a relatively large area of the human body and relates rather to the muscles forming this region. However, the real and intended target located there are obviously the testicles (although there are some exceptions I have not mentioned yet) and not any muscles or connective tissue. Techniques such as the kick or knee to the groin should therefore be referred to as the kick/knee to the testicles. The same for the hand-executed techniques, an instruction ‘grab his groin’ does not explain that you have to get his scrotum in a tight lock first, neither his penis nor the inner thigh or the perineum. So why do we more often hear groin instead of testicles?

There are many possible reasons. The main one is that self defense is not a pretty topic and many instructors in order to avoid any awkwardness, use more neutral wording to soften the subject a little bit, not to scare away the female course attendees. Yes, the testicles are male reproductive organs and understandably having a casual talk about crushing them between the sturdy striking area of the knee and the man’s pelvic floor on a morning TV show might be too much. A more 'tactful' language conveniently does not cause embarrassment (although it apparently still did to the show’s host 😊), it might not scare away the more sensitive and lenient of us, but it also does not help us in learning self defense in the most proper way and can be critically misleading with some deadly consequences. All women and girls, similarly to me and my classmates in Linda’s course, should be given precise information regardless of the sensitivity and controversiality of the subject. Only then we will be able to bring down our attackers on their knees, securely and in a blink of an eye. To properly kick, knee, or grab testicles, women should understand this prime target well; they should learn not to aim for the inner thigh, penis, or pubic region, they should know the location of testicles depending on the clothing, state of arousal, and immediate temperature and fully understand the desired trajectory and mechanics behind each move and the physiological and psychological effect on an attacker. With a very vague word groin, all of this is hardly possible.

Ring the two bells! 

Linda was very professional, neither she tried to sugar-coat anything, nor she made any compromises in teaching us all the dirty tricks. She did her best to be very exact and spot on, and she mainly used the medical terms testicles and scrotum. On the other hand, I admit her classes were also fun, and she did not refrain from using other metaphorical expressions, especially if it helped with understanding and visualization of a particular technique. 

Although a serious subject, female self defense does not need to be a sterile uptight activity, there is always room for using more colloquial language. There has been already a very interesting discussion going on in the blog comments and just to mention again that testicles can be called: eggs, to signify their fragility, size, and shape; nuts because of the crackability of testes or jewels being precious to the man and anxiously protected; balls as a sports equipment when explaining kicking or hitting or even bells when you need to 'ring the bell' he is about to do something wrong. In addition, sack/ball sack, bean bag, or pouch can be used for the scrotum when referring to this pendant wrinkly skin appendage.

So yes, there are plenty of synonyms and metaphors to choose from. I found out that the English word groin is also used for coastal structures built to prevent erosion of a beach. So maybe we should leave the groin on the beach 😊.