After slamming her palm through his nose, Erin Weed threw her knee into senior Ben Bradley's groin in the center of a circle comprised of Dartmouth College women. Although no actual contact was made, Weed, the founder and sole member of Girls Fight Back, taught the women the basics of warding off assailants at a self-defense clinic Monday night in Collis Commonground.
Weed started Girls Fight Back, a sexual abuse prevention organization dedicated to teaching self-defense to women, in 2001 after her college friend Shannon McNamara was brutally murdered in her Charleston, Il., apartment. Weed travels to high schools and colleges to educate students about sexual abuse and to teach self-defense, and has trained at some of the top self-defense facilities in the country.
After telling Shannon's story, recounting the history of Girls Fight Back, and discussing basic prevention techniques, Weed assembled the audience into a circle and demonstrated self-defense moves on Bradley, the one male in the room, who posed as an attacker.
Weed stressed the importance of having a sequence of strikes in mind, and began the demonstration by pinpointing all possible vulnerable spots on Bradley's body.
After a palm strike to the nose of an attacker, "step two is the groin strike," followed by a blow to any of the other vulnerable spots on an attacker's body.
In addition to practicing basic moves with the women, Weed taught them how to use any item in a pocketbook as a weapon. She also reminded women that they could be themselves while still being alert and cautious.
"I won't teach you not to wear high heels, but I will teach you to take one off and use it as a weapon if you need to," Weed said.
Weed believes in the ability of women to defend themselves if they have the correct training.
"There is nothing more dangerous than a pissed off woman," Weed said. Along theses lines, she said that "fear can make you quite the badass." Intuition, fear, and anxiety work together during an attack, and women need to act on their intuition and take advantage of the physical power that fear instills in them, Weed said.
Weed acknowledged that most men are harmless and good-natured, but women still need to be prepared for the sociopaths who exist.
"I want to applaud all the good guys out there. It just happens that there are a few bad apples," she said.
Amy Kurtz '06 said she brought the Girls Fight Back program to Dartmouth because she too was personally touched by Shannon McNamara's tragic death. Kurtz was friends with McNamara's younger sister during high school.
"I think it is important for all women to be informed about sexual assault and violence, and a part of that education, along with many other things, is self-defense," Kurtz said.
Some participants felt that one of Weed's most important messages was that many rapes are acquaintance rapes, and women need to be prepared to protect themselves against friends as well as strangers.
"I think self-defense is really important; I took Rage Aggression Defense. I think the empowerment is the most important thing, knowing you have the power to speak up," Robin Rathmann-Noonan '05 said.
The audience remained engaged and active throughout Weed's presentation, and giggles and laughter often echoed through the Commonground in response to her light-hearted nature and relaxed tone of voice.
"I thought it was both funny and informative," Liz Allen '06 said.
