Women Encouraged to Learn Self-Defense

NORTHRIDGE —  Ever since Elizabeth S. Peisner completed a self-defense course at Cal State Northridge, she is more alert and ready for an attack.

When a friend came up from behind and smacked her on the back at a recent party, Peisner recalled, she instinctively elbowed the man in the chest, sending him tumbling over a sofa.

“It makes you more aware of your surroundings,” said Peisner, a 23-year-old senior. “It changes the way you walk, how you carry yourself.”

Peisner demonstrated her moves at CSUN Wednesday as part of a seminar to teach women how to avoid becoming victims of sexual assault. She said four rapes were reported on campus last year.

Wearing padding on her hands and body, Peisner kicked at her instructor and blocked him as he tried to grab her.

Representatives from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Valley Trauma Center, campus counseling services and area hospitals attended the event. Peisner, a student senator and member of the CSUN Date Rape/Sexual Assault Policy Committee, organized the seminar.

Peisner recently completed 14 hours of a course called Rape Aggression Defense. The class, which is for women only, is free for CSUN students.

University Police Lt. John Smither, who teaches the course, said attackers don’t expect women to fight back. “Most men don’t expect a woman to be assertive. They expect them to be compliant,” he said.

In the class, women learn to deliver head butts, elbow and knee strikes, kicks in the shins and foot stomps, Peisner said. They also learn to escape when being grabbed from behind and to yell to attract attention.

The course empowers women, said Peisner, a Woodland Hills resident.

“They will be aware that they are not victims, that their gifts and their instincts will benefit them,” she said.

But the course doesn’t encourage students to use brute force against attackers, added Peisner.

“It doesn’t teach you to think you can take on Mike Tyson. It’s stun and run--that gives you enough time to get away,” she said.

Marilyn Stotts, an outreach coordinator with a Northridge Hospital Medical Center sexual response team, said she took the class after realizing anybody can be a victim. Stotts is enrolled in a session that ends tonight.

“I would always prefer to talk or think myself out of a situation, but it’s good to have the training in case somebody really wanted to do me in,” Stotts said. “My hope is I’ll never need the training.”

The Rape Aggression Defense class costs $20, $10 for the class and $10 for the program, for women who are not CSUN students. For more information, call CSUN at (818) 677-2764.