Let Us Talk About the Thing Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here is what I have noticed over the years. When corporates plan a women’s self-defense workshop, a lot of time and energy goes into logistics. The venue, the schedule, the refreshments, the photographer for social media posts, and increasingly, the gender of the instructor.

You know what rarely comes up in the initial conversation? The crime. The actual reason the workshop exists in the first place.

Nobody asks: “What type of crimes will this workshop prepare our employees for?” Nobody asks: “How does your program address the psychology of criminal behaviour?” Nobody asks: “What happens when fear takes over and a person freezes?”

Instead, the questions are: “Can you send photos of past workshops?” and “Do you have a female trainer?”

This is not a criticism. It is an observation. And I share it because I believe that when companies understand what self-defense training is really about, they naturally start asking the right questions. And those questions have nothing to do with the instructor’s gender.

Crime Does Not Follow Our Rules

Let me share something fundamental about crime that often gets lost in the self-defense conversation.

Crime is not a gender conversation. It is not a dress code conversation. It is not a martial arts conversation. And it is certainly not a conversation about who is teaching the workshop.

Crime is a psychology conversation. And unless training addresses that psychology, it will not prepare anyone for anything real.

A criminal does not attack a woman because of what she is wearing. He attacks because he has identified what he perceives as vulnerability. That vulnerability might be distraction, isolation, hesitation, or a lack of awareness. These are the things that matter in crime. Not clothing. Not the gym membership. Not the instructor’s gender.

“A criminal is not thinking about what brand of karate you learned or whether your instructor was a man or a woman. He is thinking about whether you look like someone who will freeze or someone who will fight. Your training should focus on the same thing he is focusing on.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

The Three Phases of Crime That Your Workshop Must Address

This is the core of effective self-defense training, and I want to outline it clearly because I believe it will change how you evaluate any self-defense program.

Phase 1: Pre-Crime (Before the Attack)

This is where 80% of personal safety actually happens. Not during the fight. Before it.

Pre-crime psychology covers:

• Target selection: How criminals choose their victims. What makes someone look like an easy target versus a difficult one. This includes body language, awareness levels, walking patterns, and environmental positioning.
• Situational awareness: Not the generic “stay alert” advice, but specific, trainable skills. How to scan an environment. How to identify pre-attack indicators. How to recognise when something feels wrong and what to do about it.
• Social conditioning traps: Women, in particular, are socialised from childhood to be polite, accommodating, and non-confrontational. Criminals exploit this relentlessly. A good self-defense program teaches women to recognise when their social conditioning is being used against them and gives them permission to override it.
• De-escalation and avoidance: The best self-defense is not getting into a dangerous situation in the first place. This phase covers how to create distance, exit situations early, and use verbal and non-verbal tools to prevent escalation.

Phase 2: During-Crime (When the Attack Is Happening)

This is the phase most traditional self-defense programs focus on, but even here, most programs get it wrong because they treat it as purely physical.

• The freeze response: This is the single biggest factor that determines outcomes in violent situations, and it is almost never addressed in martial arts based programs. The freeze response is a neurological reaction to extreme fear. It is not cowardice. It is biology. And unless training specifically addresses it, no amount of kick-punch technique will help when the brain shuts down under real threat.
• Decision-making under stress: In a real crisis, the brain does not think in clean, sequential steps. Stress hormones flood the system. Fine motor skills deteriorate. Tunnel vision sets in. Training must account for this reality and teach gross motor responses that work even when cognitive function is impaired.
• Escape vs. engagement: Real self-defense is not about winning a fight. It is about creating an opportunity to escape. This requires a fundamentally different mindset than what martial arts teaches.
• Environmental use: Using objects, barriers, exits, bystanders, light, sound, and terrain. Real self-defense leverages everything available, not just fists and feet.

Phase 3: Post-Crime (After the Incident)

This is the phase that almost nobody teaches. And it is critically important.

• Immediate safety protocol: How to get to a safe location. Who to contact. How to communicate what happened.
• Evidence preservation: What to do (and what not to do) to preserve physical evidence that may be needed later.
• Legal rights and options: What are the victim’s legal rights? What complaints can be filed? What protections are available under law?
• Psychological recovery: How to deal with the emotional and psychological aftermath. Understanding that reactions like guilt, shame, anger, and numbness are normal. Knowing when and how to seek professional support.
• Preventing re-victimisation: How to recognise if a situation or relationship pattern is likely to lead to repeated incidents. How to create a safety plan for ongoing threats, such as domestic violence.

“Most self-defense workshops are 90% martial arts and 10% reality. They teach women how to punch a pad. They do not teach them how to think when their brain is screaming at them to freeze. They do not teach them what to do after the incident is over. They do not teach them how criminals actually behave. And then everyone wonders why the training does not work in real life.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

Why Martial Arts Is Not the Same as Self-Defense

I want to address this directly because this confusion is at the root of many poorly designed programs.

Martial arts is a wonderful discipline. It builds fitness, discipline, confidence, and character. I have deep respect for martial arts and martial artists.

But martial arts and self-defense have different objectives.

When a corporate workshop is essentially a martial arts demonstration labelled as self-defense, employees walk away feeling good about themselves. They had fun. They punched some pads. They took some photos. But their actual ability to handle a real crime situation has not meaningfully changed.

The Comfort Zone Problem

I want to talk about one more thing that I think is really important.

The current trend of demanding a female instructor is, at its core, about maintaining the comfort zone. The reasoning is: women will be more comfortable with a female trainer, so they will participate more, and the workshop will be more successful.

Here is the problem with that reasoning. Crime is specifically designed to operate outside your comfort zone. Every single element of a criminal attack is about overwhelming the victim’s sense of safety, control, and comfort. The shock, the speed, the aggression, the violation of personal space, the exploitation of trust. All of it is engineered to push the victim out of her comfort zone so completely that she cannot function.

If training never takes a woman even slightly beyond her comfort zone, it has not prepared her for the reality of crime. It has just provided a comfortable experience that looks good in the company newsletter.

And here is the part that I think is truly important. When we focus on making women comfortable, we are, however unintentionally, focusing on their insecurities and fears. We are saying: “We know you have these limitations, and we will design around them.” A criminal does exactly the same thing, except the criminal exploits those insecurities and fears instead of designing around them.

“When the focus is on comfort, the focus is on weakness. And weakness is exactly what a criminal is looking for. Self-defense training should be building strength, not accommodating fragility. Every time we design training around fear, we feed the fear instead of fighting it.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

The Domestic Violence Reality

Let me share a specific example that always brings this issue into sharp focus.

One of the most common forms of violence against women is domestic violence. The aggressor is usually a man. Usually someone the woman knows intimately. Usually someone she lives with.

A woman in a domestic violence situation cannot choose to only interact with women. She has to face a violent, aggressive, disrespectful man every single day. She has to talk to him. She has to navigate around him. She has to protect herself and possibly her children while sharing a living space with her attacker.

Now, if this woman’s self-defense training was conducted by a female instructor specifically because the company wanted her to feel comfortable and not have to engage with a male authority figure, what has that training actually prepared her for?

The training should be building her capacity to stand her ground in the presence of a threatening male. To speak firmly. To make decisions under pressure. To not freeze. To act. If the training environment itself avoids any male presence, it misses the opportunity to build exactly the resilience she needs most.

I am not suggesting that training should be uncomfortable or aggressive. Far from it. A professional male instructor creates a safe, respectful, controlled environment. But within that safe environment, the woman gets to practise engaging with a male presence, building confidence and competence in a setting where she knows she is supported. That experience itself is part of the training.

What Your Employees Actually Need

Let me boil it down to what I believe your women employees genuinely need from a self-defense workshop.

1. Understanding of criminal psychology. How predators think, how they choose targets, and how they exploit fear, politeness, and hesitation.
2. Practical awareness skills. How to read environments, identify warning signs, and make smart decisions before danger materialises.
3. Freeze response management. Understanding why the brain freezes under threat and practical techniques to break through it.
4. Simple, effective physical responses. Not complex martial arts forms, but gross motor movements that work under extreme stress with minimal training.
5. Verbal and psychological strategies. How to use voice, body language, and psychological positioning to de-escalate, deter, or create opportunities to escape.
6. Post-incident knowledge. Legal rights, evidence preservation, reporting options, and pathways to psychological support.
7. Confidence that comes from competence. Not the surface-level confidence of “I attended a workshop,” but the deep confidence that comes from actually knowing what to do.

None of these require a specific gender of instructor. All of them require a specific quality of instructor.

The Bottom Line

Self-defense is about crime. It is about preparing women to recognise, respond to, and recover from criminal violence. That is the only focus that matters.

The gender of the instructor is irrelevant to that focus. The instructor’s knowledge of crime psychology is relevant. Their understanding of how fear works in the human body is relevant. Their ability to teach practical, stress-tested responses is relevant. Their sensitivity, professionalism, and track record are relevant.

When we make the conversation about gender, we lose sight of the crime. And when we lose sight of the crime, we fail the very women we are trying to protect.

“The most dangerous thing we can do in self-defense training is focus on everything except the crime. The victim’s clothing does not matter. The martial arts style does not matter. The instructor’s gender does not matter. The crime matters. The psychology of the crime matters. And the woman’s ability to handle it matters. Everything else is a distraction. And distractions, in a crime situation, can be fatal.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

A Final Word to Corporates

You are already doing something wonderful by investing in self-defense training for your employees. That investment shows genuine care, and it matters.

All I am asking is that you direct that investment toward what will actually make a difference. Choose a program that addresses crime psychology, not just physical techniques. Choose an instructor who can prepare your employees for the reality of violence, not just the appearance of readiness. And choose based on expertise and outcomes, not on a criterion that has nothing to do with the quality of the training.

Your employees deserve the best protection you can give them. And the best protection comes from the best preparation. Let us make sure we are focused on that.

“The real question is not ‘Who is teaching?’ The real question is ‘What are they teaching, and will it work when it matters most?’ Answer that question honestly, and you will find the right instructor. Every single time.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph