We got back to the self defense series last week, and I was reminded again, how silly it feels. But, I still stand by my previous statement that while it feels totally silly, it is definitely necessary.
Re-iterating what I have said before, we practice these self defense moves with our training partners- people we see all the time, even trust with our lives by letting them pull our arms to lock out our elbows, choke us until we tap, so on and so forth. These are people we laugh, and sweat with multiple times each week.
But violence against women does happen. Sometimes in the sexual predator, lock you in the basement kind of way, or even sometimes woman against woman in say a bar fight (rare, but hey, this is Philadelphia) . As I have stated before, I would rather practice and feel silly in the mat room now and be able to protect myself on the street later.
So yes, my white belts, it looks and feels silly, but intended to keep you safe, and we all know an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
For anyone who wants any stats on violence against women, here is a link to NOW.org Not the most up to date, but certainly the most cited out of the few sites I looked through.
Stay Safe!
A Skirt on the Mat 
I’m not convinced self defence training is actually of much use, because it is invariably trained with either no resistance or at best light resistance. That’s not how we train everything else in jiu jitsu, so it is odd that when it comes to self defence, a lot of BJJ schools do it exactly the same 100% compliant way an aikido or traditional JJ school would do it.
I’m a big fan of Matt Thornton when it comes to this topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL05Es8LVAQ