[title subtitle=”WORDS Liesel Schmidt
IMAGES courtesy Defensive Empowerment for Women”][/title]
Throughout history, women have been known as “the fairer sex” and considered more delicate than men, relegated to gentler pursuits deemed safe and proper. For centuries, they were kept from the battlefront in wars and banned from serving in the military or any other position requiring strength and stamina. And while the world has come a long way in their viewpoint of just how strong women are and has reexamined the ways in which we’ve been underestimated, there is one hard fact which no amount of progressive thinking or feminism can change: the world is a dangerous place for women.
Statistics are staggering in their evidence supporting this truth, and countless women all over the world face dangers every day—and some of them are all too close to home. “Domestic violence and sexual abuse survivors are overwhelmingly women and girls,” says Rannsom Carey, co-founder of Defensive Empowerment for Women (DEW). Created in 2016 by Rannsom and Marylen Schultz, DEW is a program of seminars and classes that teach women the fundamentals of self-defense and the importance of recognizing dangers, working with them to build empowerment and give them the tools they need to make themselves less vulnerable—all at no cost.
“The CDC estimates that approximately one in four women will encounter physical violence at some point in their lives, and one in three women will be sexually abused. While no survivor is ever at fault for the actions of their abuser, we aim to provide them with tools that can help minimize their risk of being attacked,” Rannsom goes on. “Our goal is to help women take back their voices and the power that is innately theirs with exercises that remind them that their bodies belong to them and that they are well within their rights to say no and to turn down unwanted advances. We show them that there are ways to escape a volatile situation.”
Over the past four years, DEW has grown to include Ashley Keenan, Rainee Easley, and Shanna Poorbuffalo, and the team has a shared passion for empowering women that is very personal. “Marylen and I started training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu with our husbands as part of our fitness journey, but it quickly developed into an activity that allowed our confidence to grow and our wounds to heal in addition to fostering a lifestyle that embodies strength and empowerment. We talked about our personal experiences regarding harassment and abuse and realized that training helped us overcome those mental obstacles. We felt much more empowered and, because of that, decided to start a nonprofit where we could share our knowledge with other women,” says Rannsom.
“Most of the women in our organization and those who attend our seminars have histories rife with tragedy, abuse, harassment, and trauma. I was overwhelmed by a desire to help them in much the same way becoming a jiu-jitsu practitioner helped me. The self-defense aspects of our training bring awareness to the importance of not only knowing the technique, but also understanding typical predatory behaviors and red flags, paying attention to one’s surroundings, and the psychology of healing from trauma.”
And with the dangers that women face, these are invaluable things to learn, regardless of who they are or where they live. “Unfortunately, the biggest dangers for women are their own intimate partners or male family members. The majority of attacks and abuse are perpetrated by someone the survivor knows,” says Rannsom. “Women are overwhelmingly the victims of violent crimes. Eighty-two percent of sexual assault victims under eighteen are female, and ninety percent of adult victims are also female.
I believe that some of the greatest dangers for women start when they are children. We often expect girls to be quiet, soft, and always pleasant. If they get emotional, we tell them that they’re being whiney or dramatic, so they grow up with a desire to be people pleasers. Consequently, when they see red flags, they don’t always know how to say, ‘Stop doing this, it makes me feel unsafe,’ because they don’t want to be perceived as someone who overreacts. We also live in a culture in which we are constantly distracted by technology, so a woman can easily become a target if she is walking alone at night while staring at her cell phone instead of her surroundings. In our seminars, we extensively cover stranger versus non-stranger tactics so that women and girls can be more aware of what warrants threatening behavior.”
With their travels and the number of attendees that their seminars and classes have seen, the difference that DEW has made over the course of its existence has been invaluable, giving women a new source of strength and support that they otherwise might not have had. And while having the strength to fight off an attack is extremely important, so, too, is knowing when to put that strength to the test and when to use evasive tactics to avoid a physical challenge.
“We conduct our seminars from a trauma informed perspective. We start each seminar by walking the attendees through a series of grounding techniques that are meant to help someone who may be triggered by some of the material that is covered in our course. We try to stress the importance of escaping instead of engaging in a full-on fight, as most men are going to be able to overpower a woman, but we do cover what to do in the event that a woman is brought to the ground or pinned to a wall,” Rannsom says. “We not only show women self-defense moves but talk about what to look for in a predator and how to understand and know the signs of danger. Some of the most important things that women take away from our seminars are self-defense skills, a greater education about predators, and an ability to recognize the signs.”
In all that they do, Rannsom and the other women on the DEW team aim for one important goal: to prove that women are not powerless and that they can defend themselves against danger. Women might once have been considered weak, but DEW shows just how strong women can truly be.
Find them on Facebook: Defensive Empowerment for Women
114 W. Main Street, Ada, Oklahoma
580.399.9604
