“Self-Defence begins with the belief that you’re worth defending”

I’ve practiced Martial Arts since I could walk. I grew up in gritty gyms and slummy sports halls. Both my parents were Karate-Kas, so when they went training, they brought me with them. I sprawled on greyish-green mats that smelled of sweat and dedication, watching my parents and their friends wreck pads, and each other, in a flurry of fists and kicks. My mum taught a Saturday morning class in a dodgy snooker hall (it was a club in the evening and a studio on the weekends, and always smelled of smoke) in Harlesden where we lived. On Mondays it was at the Tabernacle in Ladbroke Grove. When I was 17, I started practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and a decade later I am in love with the art more than ever. Self-defence has always been more than accessible to me- it’s a normal, part and parcel aspect to my life. And I’ve never really thought much about it.

It wasn’t until I started facilitating a queer fight club with an artist, now friend, who reached out for a queer, femme of colour martial artist on social media, that I began to think of the multitude of ways my upbringing in martial arts gave me an embodied sense of philosophical and feminist practice. Our workshops, which combine martial arts, herbalism and movement meditation, centre the QTIPOC (queer, trans, intersex people of colour) community. Our workshops are embodied and emotional observations that explore physical and meta-physical methods of self-protection, self-care, and self-love. These sessions, funnily enough, were my first foray into London’s queer scene- I found it both comforting and surprising. I hadn’t heard of the word ‘non-binary’ before. I’d never been in a room with so many queer people. And I’d certainly never considered the fact that martial arts can often be inaccessible to our community. I’d grown up with my mother coming home from competitions with black eyes, matching circuit times with men in training. I’d grown up around Black men consistently proving their abilities, winning the World Championships a multitude of times. Women and people of colour engaging in self-defence practices was nothing new to me. But I realised my inclusive experience of martial-arts was not necessarily common- it was something to celebrate. But also, coming into the realisation that I myself was queer, and how important bringing myself into queer community was for this understanding, came with the realisation that although the Dojos (martial arts schools) I have always existed in are open-minded spaces, marginalized identity has never been centred. This is not necessarily a negative thing – when you come to train, you come to train. The focus is on the Self, on being centred, on harmonising Spirit. These spaces are for everybody. But this is conditional – to first walk through the doors of an academy, to engage in your first self-defence class, you have to know, or be ready to begin to know, that you yourself are worth defending.

For me, Fight Club was an initiation into queer culture. Being queer is something more than a sexuality- it is a way of life, identifying your being with liberation, with freeing ways of existing, of loving. People engaged in “alternative lifestyles” often find themselves at the mercy of capitalistic exploitation – experiencing institutional racism, gender-based violence, assault and harassment. Many sex workers I know are queer. Whether nurtured or neglected by society, the healing nature of our work is often at the expense of our own physical and emotional safety and boundaries. We may be drawn to the work out of necessity, or instinct, or both, or neither. Healers come in many different forms. There is virtually not a single sex worker, person of colour, womxn or queer person who has not experienced a threatening or violent situation, specifically in intimate and domestic situations. The normalisation of sexual and gender-based violence are a direct result of systemic misogyny, and it is sexual minorities and marginalised communities who experience this type of violence most profoundly. As blood trickles down, it is often femmes and queer-presenting people who feel the brunt of societies aggression and are left to pick up the pieces of our own, and everybody else’s, lives. Misogyny and hypersexual representations of femininity that we are exposed to as soon as we are born, often render us ill-equipped when it comes to dealing with intimidation and violence of a sexual nature- not just physically, but emotionally- and sometimes, when it comes to community, strategically and supportively. For womxn and minority groups, at once engaged in the struggle for social equity, in work that defies capitalism such as healing and community organising, struggling to make an ethical dime all the while fighting for respect and the freedom to be ourselves, we are constantly and underhandedly met with the message we are not worth defending, not by the state, by our educational, religious and social institutions, nor by our partners or employers – or by our own selves. By this same token, and to be discussed in a future essay, we must also be aware of how men become contributors to this violence- by their own experiences of physical and emotional abuse, shame, encouragement to suppress vulnerability and non-heteronormative sexual feelings, there is a devastating effect on these men’s lives and of those around them.

A womxn’s body is so often under scrutiny, particularly in times of vulnerability, it seems strange that when something violent or damaging is inflicted upon us, people’s reaction is often to look away and ignore. We need to remember that by being bystanders to such situations we are taking the side of the offender, and dis-enabling people to take agency of their own healing after experiencing harassment or surviving assault. I have been assaulted several times – self-defence helped me look after myself, physically, in those situations. But in the situation where I was spiked, for example, self-defence had more of an impact in the days following. The difference with this situation was that when it happened, I thought I had been around friends- I found a lack of support from several people I trusted, and that was difficult. Being aware of the well-being of the community is something that is stressed in any good martial arts class, when it’s practice as a sport is secondary to it’s primary function of building resilient and self-aware individuals – standing up for ourselves, and showing solidarity for and offering protection to those who are oppressed, is absolutely practicing self-defence. Self-defence is also withdrawing from places, and people, who don’t make you feel safe- not just dodgy men in dark alleys, but friends, partners, mentors, and anyone else who is knowingly or unknowingly engaging in neglectful or abusive behaviour.

The words at the top of the page, “self-defence begins with the belief that you’re worth defending” is a mantra that my teacher often reminds us of in class. With these words, he reminds us, not just that we are important, but that part of our practice as martial-artists is to remember that we are- and to remind each other of this, too. It is impossible to learn how to defend yourself without having a community, however small, who is also engaged in your development. My teacher reminds us also that “self-defence starts in the morning- when you first get out of bed.” Self-defence, healing, progression-life- is war – but, it is a war of love. In order to win, we must take each day as it comes. We must start the day aware, aware of the challenges that we may possibly face, the trust that may be broken, the lies that may be told – the love that may be given, the joy that may be shared.

Self-defence practices should be at the very root of community building. We need to start by remembering that we are worth defending, and we need to remind our friends and communities of this too. The Black Panthers were not only effective community organisers who provided medical, educational and legal services to the Black community, they also upheld the belief that it’s members should take up arms and learn how to defend themselves and the community. We should continue this legacy, with a constant reminder that we are worth defending. Through self-defence we can empower our minds, bodies and spirits, on an individual and collective level. With training, dedication, dialogue, debate, reflection and love, in the name of justice- we become warriors.