Interview with Dr. Wendy Rouse

Interview conducted by Shannon Bennitt
October 28, 2024

 

Shannon Bennitt: What has your experience been doing martial arts? What inspired you to learn it?

 

Dr. Wendy Rouse: I started studying martial arts when I was a child. I was inspired to learn it after watching the movie Karate Kid. I was bullied a lot in school and training in martial arts helped me feel more confident and secure in myself. 

 

Bennitt: What drew you to the women’s self-defense movement? When and how did you first learn about it?

 

Rouse: I trained in martial arts for about twenty years before I started teaching my own students and teaching self-defense workshops for women and girls. I wanted to help empower people with the skills to be able to feel confident and safe. I wanted women to know that they have the ability and power to protect themselves.

 

Bennitt: What was the process of writing your book, “Her Own Hero”? What was the most interesting or unexpected thing you learned?

 

Rouse: The most unexpected thing I learned was the long history of the women's self-defense movement. I thought it only went back to the 1970s, but I learned that women were studying boxing and jiu-jitsu for self-defense as early as the early twentieth century. 

 

Bennitt: What inspired these women in the Progressive Era to learn self-defense? How did they learn?

 

Rouse: Progressive Era women learned self-defense to protect themselves from the harassment and violence they encountered on the street, in their workplaces, and in their own homes. While marching for the vote, suffragists faced violence not only from anti-suffragists but from police. This shocked them and many became advocates for all women learning self-defense. British suffragettes trained a bodyguard of women in jiu-jitsu to fight back against the violence. Women of the era were taught that men were their "natural protectors" and that they should look to the men in their families to protect them. But feminists pointed out that the men who were supposed to protect them were often the people who perpetrated violence against them. Shattering the myth of the "natural protector," feminists encouraged women to learn self-defense to protect themselves and each other. 

 

Bennitt: How did the women’s self-defense movement align and overlap with the suffrage movement, considering they were happening around the same time?

 

Rouse: Women in the suffrage movement encountered violence from anti-suffragists and police in the fight for the vote. This, along with the realities of violence against women, helped some suffragists realize that their political oppression and physical oppression were inextricably linked. Therefore there could be no political empowerment without physical empowerment. Self-defense training was the ultimate act of resistance in a society that denied women the knowledge of how to protect themselves and tried to convince them that they were too weak to fight back.

 

Bennitt: How was the women’s self defense movement of the 1960s and 70s similar or different to that of the Progressive Era?

 

Rouse: The two movements were very similar. The feminists of the 1970s resurrected many of the arguments of the suffragist self-defense advocates - recognizing that the political is also personal. Through consciousness-rasing sessions, the 1970s feminists called attention to the problem of sexual assault and family violence. Feminist self-defense advocates organized self-defense classes taught for women by women and opened up the first women's martial arts schools. They challenged gender stereotypes that depicted women as too weak to fight back and insisted instead that women were strong and capable. 

 

Bennitt: Why is it important for women today to learn about movements like this?

 

Rouse: It is important for women today to learn about our history. We shouldn't take for granted that previous generations of feminists have fought for the rights that we have today. We should remember that the rights we are fighting for now will also be passed to future generations. Our shared history of oppression and resistance is powerful. We must understand how it has shaped us so that it can help guide us to where we want to go.