Whats the deal with woman self defence?

[Azzazzin]

Why do women need to defend themselves differently than males?

Why can't they take a regular martial art class just like every other normal person...

Just never made sence to me???

[Tom Yum]

Good question.

Women and men are physically confronted in defferent ways. Egos clash and one guy tries to beat down the other for giving him a dirty look; still happens to this day at clubs and bars. Guys get into fights for a number of silly reasons (most having to revolve around egos). Sometimes a guy can be a target of a hate crime or a robbery. For example if you are light skinned and you end up in Houston's 5th ward after 10pm looking like Ward Cleaver, you might be a potential victim of the above reasons.

Women are usually targeted by people they know (rape) or random robberies. The reasons being that they are smaller and considered weaker.

To answer your question, men have a genetically given strength threshold and mentality that will allow them to fight back relatively easy. Women are generally weaker and smaller and are often raised to be passive. So women need to learn to take action, use natural body weapons, sharpen their reflexes and use leverage against an allmost allways larger and stronger opponent. If you are a male, 6' and 180 lbs and athletic you could 'instinctively' put the hurt on even bigger guys without training, but how about a 5'6" 125 lb female?

[kengar]

Why do women need to defend themselves differently than males? Why can't they take a regular martial art class just like every other normal person...

In some aspects women don't have to defend themselves differently, but when dealing with rape prevention the class outline will be much different than what men need/want. Women SD classes are set to fit a specific subject, assault and rape. As stated by Tom, women tend to be attacked from different angles and methods as to where men can be attacked in the same manner they usually have a face off with one another. This requires training scenarios that fit the types of attacks that assaulted women have faced. Though everything I have done and have seen in a Women's SD class a man can effectively use as well.
I will first say that I like traditional MA for their purpose. The problem is that many schools do not teach their students the applications and how to make them work in the street. Nor do they delve into the subject of rape & prevention.
You also have to take the fact that there are single mothers, and other women, who can not spend hundreds of dollars and years training to learn to defend themself. A good WSD class should be able to quickly teach simple and effective techniques and others actually go into discussions about rape and how to deal with trauma.

Ken