In their defense
Gay men are learning how to protect themselves

[Note: When a colleague asks one to write a puff piece to promote his worthy community project, does doing so make one a bad journalist?
I had to ask myself this as I worked on a piece I really liked in the end. This is a slightly longer version, by the way, than the actual published article -- it's my "director's cut"!]

Robert Steckling confesses that a lifetime of training in karate, starting at the age of six, wasn’t his idea: “I didn’t want to go – my mother duped me into going by saying, ‘It’s gymnastics for boys!’ I don’t think that she knew I was gay back then,” he laughs, “but I think that, subconsciously, she saw it and figured it would be a good idea.” Nineteen years later, Steckling has long agreed with her and is passing on some of his knowledge in a self-defense workshop for gay men at the 519 Community Center.

He’s teaching the course with community activist Tim McCaskell, whose introduction to karate seems equally awkward. He explains how his partner Richard got him started in 1980, after an unsettling six months in Central and South America: “In those days, the general population’s only familiarity with tall Chinese men came from Bruce Lee movies. People would keep jumping out and making Chinese karate noises and striking poses.” During the subsequent year of karate training, McCaskell says his partner “would come home and show me some techniques and bounce me around and I figured I’d better learn some too just to defend myself!”

McCaskell’s work with gay youth in the years since then has showed him the continuing need for self-defense training. “I think that gay men, certainly of my generation, have always recognized that there’s a risk to being on the streets,” he says. “But oddly enough, the two people I know who’ve been bashed in the past – other than people I’ve met in the course – were both youth in the programs that I run. I think that young people certainly are vulnerable to that kind of thing.”

None of this is news to Karen Baldwin. For the last six years, she has headed the Anti-Violence Programme at the 519, keeping hate crime statistics and maintaining the Bashing Reporting Line. “In terms of visible violence in our community, it was much worse in the early 90’s,” she reports, “It’s not as present in the community’s sense of itself, that gaybashing happens here on a regular basis. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”

Baldwin is concerned about younger men getting complacent. “It’s kind of like the safe sex stuff: in practising safe sex, you’re acknowledging that there’s a risk. We have managed to make the education – mostly – that using condoms will protect you. There’s something similar between not wanting to acknowledge that violence is a risk and that HIV is a risk.”

“I see what she means,” Steckling says, “you crack the denial and you learn new ways to take responsibility for yourself and recognize danger. I think a lot of people around here just don’t see it unless it happens to them. They’re lulled into a sense of security because we’ve got a relatively safe community…but it still contains a certain amount of danger.” For example, “we had a student who lived in the neighbourhood, who was right in his apartment building lobby and somebody attacked him from behind. It probably only took a few seconds.”

It’s irony upon irony: black belts who’d never planned to learn karate, violent acts happening in one of the city’s safer neighbourhoods and the offer of a partial solution being ignored by men who don’t see a need for it. “I think men have a harder time acknowledging that the course is necessary,” Baldwin admits. As opposed to the long-running women’s course, “the gay men’s class has always been much harder to get folks out to. Maybe the guys think they’re at the health club and that’s enough, but being physically fit and being able to defend yourself are different things.”

McCaskell agrees. “Going to the gym and being buff and looking really big might mean that somebody would be less interested in attacking you but it certainly doesn’t give you the skills to defend yourself if somebody throws a punch. What you want is quick reflexes which being buff doesn’t necessarily produce. I think going to the gym is good but it doesn’t teach you how to defend yourself. That’s a different kind of skill.”

And a vital one, insists Baldwin: “We need to practice these skills because our normal response is to freeze. If someone’s yelling at you, if someone’s walking towards you, it doesn’t matter – it’s like ‘Oh my god, what the hell do I do?’ To be able to make the response somewhat automatic or come quickly, you’ve got to practice it.”

In stressing the need for self-defense, McCaskell is also aware of another irony -- the remaining men who do realize its value but fear they’re just not up to it. “A lot of gay men, because of the way that people have been socialized, have a lot of ‘phys ed. phobia’," he says. “Many of the self-defense skills that straight boys learn as a matter of fact, a lot of gay men don’t. It seemed that we could probably do something useful with giving people some basic karate and getting them comfortable with what it takes to defend themselves.”

“People may be afraid they’re going to find it’s too difficult,” says Steckling, making it clear that their course is not rigorous karate instruction: “We deal with real-life situations using techniques that people can learn with a certain amount of ease. I mean, you could handle a knife attack in twenty different ways but ten of them might require five years experience to know what you’re doing. I think the course teaches students enough capability and confidence and awareness to do something right away if they need to.”

It’s the capability, confidence and awareness provided by self-defense training that proves to be most important, far more than any single punching or kicking technique. According to one of last year’s trainees, grad student Scott Duggan, “the biggest benefit to the self-defense course is that it gives you more confidence when you get in a bad situation.” This may even prevent attacks, says Steckling, because such confidence “will help to dissuade an attacker who might be trying to find somebody to prey on.”

“More importantly, however,” says Duggan, “you learn how to avoid the bad situations in the first place!” That avoidance is key, insists McCaskell, because “in any kind of physical confrontation, it’s enormously unpredictable and even people that are very, very good can slip or trip and game’s over. All you need is a good kick to the head and you’re out. I always suggest people in the course go to a Jackie Chan movie, whatever one they want, because at the end, there’s all the outtakes. You’ve got to recognize that if somebody like him – who’s been training all his life, who’s a professional, and who’s doing scripted and choreographed moves – still manages to slip up, what does that mean for the rest of us?”

It means, Steckling maintains, that “in all cases, your highest priorities are your safety and survival. If you can run fast enough to get away from an attacker, that’s fine. I would run!” Even with a black belt? “I’m not gonna waste my time,” he laughs, “I’d run.”

“It’s all about keeping yourself safe. We’re not making you black belts,” Baldwin says, “This is a real basic course to give people some skills to have choices.” She too says the awareness of dangerous situations that self-defense training helps to develop is most important, because “you increase your vision of the world around you so you can see danger coming,” but dismisses any notion that this newfound ‘sixth sense’ of danger would be too unsettling. “Being aware and having some sense of how you might respond doesn’t make you more at risk and it doesn’t have to make the world a scarier place,” she says. Denial doesn’t make us safer!” she laughs, “it gives us the illusion of safety but it doesn’t provide it.”

This approach seems to have worked for Duggan: “I think Robert and Tim were great. They realized that we weren't experienced in self-defense and walked us through it with patience.” Baldwin says past evaluations show that “people really enjoy the instruction, feel like it’s appropriate and learn lots from it. I feel like we’ve really got a good team,” she says, without a trace of irony.


The 519 Gay Men’s Self-Defense course runs for five Saturdays, beginning October 14, from 1-4 pm. The complete course costs $15.
Call 416-392-6874 for details.