Gender Violence

As Gender Violence and Autonomy: Resistance and Resilience through Practices of Self-Defense argues, countering threat of harm through practices of self-defense is a key move to fostering autonomy within a culture of gender violence. In often mundane, but sometimes quite obvious ways, persons belonging to groups routinely threatened with harm on the basis of gender or sexuality often adjust or restrict behavior and action to avoid possibility of harm. Such restrictions to autonomy are typically connected to taking on a passive victim role. Developing self-confidence can significantly counteract such harms to autonomy for those living within a culture of gender violence. Building on decades of research philosophically interrogating autonomy, and with a martial arts background spanning over 25 years, Sylvia Jane Burrow shifts the theoretical focus from passive victimhood to agency, developing a novel analysis of autonomy development under everyday threat of gender violence. With the support of empirical research on fear and vulnerability, the theory presented in this book establishes that cultivating self-confidence through self-defense training is significant to both resistance and resilience.

Gender Violence explores the myths and realities of the threat of gender-based violence and active forms of resistance to it.... [Burrow] advocates specifically for martial arts and self-defense programs rooted in feminist frameworks. These are the most successful because they resist rape culture while increasing the capacities of women and other people with marginalized identities who face high risk for sexual violence. This book is a must-read for anyone working at the intersections of gender-based violence prevention and somatic practice. Essential. All levels.-- "Choice Reviews"

Sylvia Jane Burrow is associate professor of philosophy in the Department of Humanities at Cape Breton University and adjunct professor in the faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University.