Closer to Combating Gender Violence
Written by Karl Hennen
Celebrity, entrepreneur, film industry professional, and martial artist Chan Kong-sang, better known by his stage name, Jackie Chan, once said, “We learn martial arts as [a way of] helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.” Paralleling Chan’s maxim, Niki Thomas has endeavored to introduce a Registered Independent Student Organization (RISO) at UH Hilo teaching women Krav Maga. A freshman double-majoring in Astronomy and Biology, Thomas hopes offering a resource on campus for anyone identifying as female will be a move forward in preventing gender violence. Thomas’ experiences with applied learning of Krav Maga make a solid argument for strength: an empowered teacher can help facilitate equally capable female protégés.
Born in Antioch, California and later moving to Concord, Thomas attended high school in Las Vegas before deciding to study abroad upon graduation. She ultimately hit on a South Korean university for its unique culture, location, and developmental opportunities. It was there Thomas discovered the pathway that would lead her to acquiring a black belt within Krav Maga.
Niki Thomas presenting her black belt Krav Maga Certificate.
“When I first got to Korea, my university only limited me to a certain amount of credits per semester, so I could only take so many classes,” Thomas describes. “Because of that I had a lot of time on my hands. I always wanted to learn a martial art and felt I needed to go to the gym. [Laughs.]”
The combination of desiring to exercise and obtain knowledge of a martial art pushed Thomas to explore a district in Seoul called Itaewon, a community and district notable for its population of American expatriates. It was in Itaewon that an English-speaking gym offered courses on Krav Maga. Thomas decided the classes sounded like something worth a shot.
“On the first day I attended, the instructor taught a women’s seminar about how to use unusual objects in everyday life: things you have on you, like a scarf, a hat, a pen, and how you could use [them] as a woman. It had practical use,” Thomas contends. She remembers the rush of elation and what she thought during the seminar.
“‘Holy crap, now if something happens to me, I could potentially know what to do.’ I had never thought of that before,” she recalls. “As a woman you grow up knowing how to fear the world. Adults tell you all the time, ‘If you do these things, you could get raped or assaulted’. There was a really huge contrast in my view of the world before I did Krav and afterwards. Before, it was like, ‘These (violent conflicts) are just things that could happen to me. I’m not a big person and it’s a little bit terrifying’. Afterwards, it was like, ‘To hell with that, I can protect myself’. I just didn’t want to be a statistic.”
Krav Maga, Hebrew for “contact combat”, is a hybridized form of self-defense developed by Hungarian-Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld in Israel. Primarily employed by the Israeli military, the system amalgamates realistic fight training with boxing, grappling, Judo, Jujutsu, Muay Thai, savate, and Wing Chun, among other martial arts. Refined for applications by military personnel, law enforcement, and civilians, Krav Maga has earned a reputation for its efficient, albeit punishing, counter-attacks. It is also noteworthy for its yielded knowledge, which Thomas acquired while driven to progress along its unorthodox belt system.
“In [traditional] Krav Maga, there is actually not a belt system,” explains Thomas. “But the reason we adopted one is because once it came to America, they (martial arts professionals) almost wanted to label levels of proficiency. The way most Americans could understand that was a belt system. In Krav Maga it’s different, it’s almost at the discretion of your instructor and it really heavily weighs on how your instructor perceives your understanding of the material.”
It took Thomas, for example, twelve grueling hours to acquire her green belt— a belt test which despite offering a temporary break was as long as it was arduous. Thomas, however, was determined to demonstrate her knowledge through physical, applied learning. At her instructor’s suggestion she trained harder. She practiced moves surpassing her usual quota, bypassing her blue belt exam for the one offering a brown. Thomas’ brown belt test began with two hours of cardio including jumping jacks and military crawls before the actual examination began. It featured drills with music played at loud volumes to gauge her endurance and thinking ability under low-energy, stressful situations. In addition, she was tested on her handling of such weapons as firearms, knives, and sticks. Her teacher informed Thomas she needed to be drilled for one more hour – her sixth – to obtain a black belt. Uncertain of her chances, she lasted another sixty minutes. A few weeks later Thomas received her belt.
“I felt amazed,” Thomas conveys, looking back on her reaction. “Like [the victory was] a female thing almost— this idea that you weren’t good enough for things that men are really great at. [Krav Maga is] a male-dominated martial art and so, considering that, some of the males in that class were my friends but were really sexist about it. They used to go easy on in me in exercises. In Krav Maga you can be any size, any stature, any gender; you can be anyone. Getting a black belt felt like retribution, like (saying), ‘Ha! You thought I couldn’t do it because I have a vagina and I proved you wrong. My ovaries don’t define me.’ [Laughs.] I felt really accomplished.”
Despite her joking, Thomas understood her obtaining a black belt was a personal achievement which could be applied to notions of womankind.
“I felt empowered as a woman,” she continues. “When you are getting cat-called on a street, or guys think they can do whatever they want to because they have a preconceived notion of how women are, they would not be prepared for a woman to know Krav Maga [or that] she might be equivalent to them in terms of strength and power. Now I can go out anywhere at anytime and feel completely comfortable with myself, no matter who is around me. I can say, ‘That’s okay. I know I could get out of that situation if I came across it.”
For some of her friends Thomas’ knowledge of Krav Maga was a double-edged sword. While most would often feel as protected as Thomas felt empowered, a few would indirectly criticize her. If they bumped into her on accident, they would kid with Thomas that the gesture would push her to kill them. Thomas believes this is partly due to a double-standard for women proficient in martial arts.
Rather than be upset by the unexpected backlash, Thomas grew motivated to share her abilities in Krav Maga with other women so they might feel similarly strengthened. With her own instructor, Gideon, Thomas began to offer female-oriented seminars in South Korea; she also taught her girl friends in informal settings. Her brown and black belt tests went hand-in-hand with the teaching. With her instructor easing her into educational scenarios, Thomas reaffirmed her understanding of Krav Maga by demonstrating it to individuals occupying her former role as student.
“While I was in Korea, if I was going to teach Krav Maga in a classroom setting, I always taught it with my instructor because he has more experience than I do,” Thomas describes. “We would do women’s seminars, so it was open to women. It particularly attracted a crowd of women from the U.S. Army base. They were concerned with violence from military men and how they could successfully defend themselves. At they end, they understood human anatomy— considering Krav uses your body against you, you could be [any size physically] and still have it used against you.”
Thomas and her instructor taught the women Krav techniques with household, everyday, and obscure objects to defend themselves, just as Thomas had learned during her initial seminar with the martial art. Additionally, they were coached on a simple yet practical repertoire, like a twist of a wrist to bring someone to the ground. The military women were comforted by the realization they could also stand their ground with little effort. In later seminars, Thomas and her instructor gave trainings specific to rape scenarios. Female attendees emerged feeling they could be more in control of those situations. During the seminars, male Krav Maga martial artists would assist the military women, who appreciated applying their learning to similar real-life figures who might endanger them.
Besides formal instruction, Thomas exercised her own applied learning when she offered informal Krav Maga lessons to friends. Although she lacked a classroom, Thomas’ ambition to pass on her knowledge remained— her friends grateful for her support like the military women at the seminars.
“I would have discussions with friends, perform demonstrations with a traveling partner who knew it, and they would get the hang of it,” Thomas explains. “Every time they did it, it was extremely rewarding. They would just be so grateful and happy about it [because] the tiniest little moves I showed them could save their life. It felt really good teaching people Krav. It was sharing that power.”
Thomas returned to the United States for the rest of her higher education. She eventually settled on UH Hilo because of its astronomy program and smaller classes. Having a father who once lived in Kauai, Thomas found that the campus imparted a familiar feeling. The change of scenery, however, did little to change her resolve to continue making Krav Maga a part of her and other women’s lives.
“What I was really hoping for when I got here would be able to have a RISO or club to teach Krav Maga to women,” opines Thomas. “I know it sounds kind of weird, like I’m choosing to exclude men, but I’m choosing to that because the statistics of what happen to women are horrible. I’d like to change that. Especially with the rise of the Title IX and universities having to deal with sexual harassment, [I would like to] make UH Hilo proactive in suppressing those results. I would like to have a club for women to come in, anyone at any time of the year. I would teach them Krav. I wouldn’t use a belt system. It would literally just be if you want to know some self-defense.”
Thomas’ proposed Krav Maga RISO would also be a support network for women to describe their experiences or worries to each other and, if needed, be guided to other female-oriented resources on campus. However, Thomas has run into some difficulties in bringing her RISO to light.
One problem she encounters is location; she cannot hold Krav Maga seminars at the University Life Center due to issues of liability in the event a club member is injured. The RISO approval process means Thomas needs individuals to hold officer roles – regardless of their gender – and is looking for anyone with interests in female empowerment and martial arts to consider membership. Her club would be specifically for women and welcome men to assist members in learning how to employ techniques against male figures. While Thomas’ club would be open to all genders and martial artists, with the latter group relevant due to Krav Maga’s hybrid nature, she hopes they understand her target audience is ultimately women.
Thomas believes women’s understanding of Krav Maga would be pertinent to real-life situations for self-defense. It could potentially benefit them as she has succeeded in other areas of their experience. She elaborates on how the applications of the martial art run as deep as new realities for womankind:
“Krav Maga changed my life in a substantial way. It gives me the confidence to go about and be safe, but it also gives me confidence in general. I feel like it’s showing in my work and in my grades. I feel like I’m excelling in male-dominated courses now, more than I ever did. Knowing that I conquered Krav Maga, which is also supposed to be a male dominated thing, I feel I can conquer anything that’s male-dominated. It definitely affected the way I see myself and the way I go about pursuing knowledge.”
Thinking back to when first she picked up Krav Maga, Thomas recalls a disturbing fact from her instructor—in all of his years of teaching, none of his male students were required to use their Krav Maga in real-life situations. However, his seven female pupils – the minority, contrasting his largely male classes – had to employ Krav Maga as self-defense at some point in their lives. Thomas asserts this is from another double-standard of gender that persists within cultures and society today.
“People already assume men are capable of handling themselves and treat them likewise,” she contends. “I want to teach women to be different from what people expect them to be.”
Having profound ideas to match a champion’s heart and spirit, Thomas perceives her cause to be a more than worthy one. Women have struggled against misogynistic discourse, institutions, and violence from various realms, including but not limited to martial arts. Thomas is a strong woman justified in wishing to find like minds at UH Hilo. She will be closer to combating discrimination; she also will be closer to combating to harm towards women. With a new female-oriented Krav Maga RISO on a hopefully-near horizon, gender equality may not be so far away.
Niki Thomas is a freshman at UH Hilo. Clubs and individuals wishing to contact Thomas for information on Krav Maga (including guest invitations) may reach her via nkthomas@hawaii.edu.
