The girls from Year Ten classes 10L and 10M were given the important opportunity to take a girls self defence course for the whole day on Thursday the 2nd of December.
Bell Murphy from Women's Self Defence Network Inc - Wahine Toa. ran the full day course.
We were taught the basics on how to keep ourselves safe. We learnt about healthy relationships, consent, sexual harassment, and society and media's unrealistic beauty standards, among others.
We also learnt lots of physical techniques on defending ourselves against attackers in many possible scenarios. It's important for us to learn how to defend ourselves because 1 in 3 girls have experienced sexual harassment by the age of sixteen. We also learnt that not just men attack women (while a wide percentage of the attackers- 98%, is men) but women also attack men.
We all partnered up and practised the techniques on each other, using protective pads of course. We walked out of the course knowing not only how to protect ourselves physically but verbally as well. We learnt that using verbal communication (including yelling) is often all that is needed and physical hits aren't necessary to protect and keep ourselves safe.
Bell taught us to be confident and believe in ourselves because we don't deserve to be told we can't do things because we're women. As a whole, everyone who participated in the girl's Self Defense course now feels more prepared mentally and physically for any situation we may find ourselves in.
Because of the positive feedback, in the future all Year 10 girls will be completing this course in Term 4.