Over on the Cornered Cat Facebook page right now, there’s an active discussion about something someone said to me at the Gun Rights Policy Conference last weekend. (Go read the discussion; there are too many comments to summarize here.)
Don’t want to re-open that discussion here, but do want to focus on something one of the commenters said. She wrote,
… I don’t think women have to be taught by women. I’ve had great instruction from hard core former military men, but they never once reminded me I was a woman or talked down to me. Did they change some things because I was a woman? Probably, but it was not a point of conversation. This guy that Cornered Cat mentions has a really bad attitude, and I’d want nothing from him. But frankly, I want women to learn good shooting technique and I’ve seen too many women taught poorly by other women.
It’s that last, bolded part I wanted to talk about today, because this is exactly what drove me to drop my other sources of income so I could concentrate solely on building Cornered Cat as a training business. There’s a huge number of women out there right now who have a desire to reach out and to work with other women, but too many of these women have not yet developed the skillset to do that well. I want to come alongside and help those women grow their skills and their businesses.
I’m always impressed when I talk to women who have a heart to help other women get into the firearms world, and especially into the self-defense corners of that world. I love that! I love it so much that it thrills me to see it being done well. I love to watch competent women at work and I love to meet women who work hard to learn what they need to know in order to reach others even more effectively.
Thank you for saying this, Kathy, because I think it’s important. Thai is exactly why I view the training I have coming up (NRA RSO and Instructor courses) as nothing more than steps along the journey to becoming qualified to teach shooting and self-defense to women. Though I think those credentials are helpful, they will be the beginning of my journey to becoming a teacher, rather than the end of it. And I’m okay with that. Frankly, the skills that I want to share with other women are too important to fall victim to an instructor’s ego trip.
Kathy, thanks again for all you do. Fb is sucking the life out of me, too. I responded to your post on fb, but I’m itching to take this to the next level. Many days I feel like we’re stuck in that dream where you’re running as fast as you can but not really going anywhere.
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I want to be a firearms instructor and I want to be a good one. I am taking my time. Please come to Georgia and have a class here.
Love to! Please drop me an email (pax at Cornered Cat dot com) to talk specifics. I bet we can make it happen. 😉
You are my favorite Glockophile 🙂 I think the Cornered Cat is coming about at the perfect time.
Honestly, I think the whole “men can’t teach women” mantra is way overblown. I’ve taught women different skill sets for the past 30 years without any real issues. The skill set for personal protection is certainly no different. At least IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion) of course. Rather than repeat a post I did months ago, I’ll simply link to it if you don’t mind:
http://eiaft.blogspot.com/2012/04/training-im-best-no-really-just-ask-me.html
Looking forward to making your blog part of my day!
Bill
Bill ~
Thanks for your comment, and the link. Let me be very clear here: I have never said, nor taught, that men cannot teach women. I would be shooting myself in the foot if I said something like that, since nearly all of my own instructors and mentors have been good men who do excellent work for all their students, both male and female alike.
I have said (and believe) that the training industry as a whole has done a poor job reaching the female side of the market. I also believe that our failure to do that as an industry has created some important gaps in what many female students hear during their classes. We need to work to fill those gaps. Sometimes that’s best done within the context of a female-only class. Women do have a natural advantage in teaching such classes, but plenty of male instructors have also taught women-only classes over the years and done a good job at it.
A good instructor strives to meet the needs of all students within the class. But given the dynamics of a multi-person class, when the percentage of female students is low, it’s all too easy for an instructor to leave out critical information that applies only to women or mostly to women (such as strength-saving ways to rack a slide, or the practical dynamics of crimes such as rape that are perpetrated almost entirely against women). With limited time to cover a lot of ground, information that’s valuable to only a few students naturally falls out of the program or becomes curtailed in favor of material that applies to the majority of the students. That’s where the industry has been for many years.
Fortunately, the growing number of women within the self-defense community means that missing pieces like this naturally become more obvious, which means that fewer instructors will leave these factors out of their lectures as they see more women in each class. That’s a good thing! Even so, I think we will continue to see a need for female-centric classes for a long while yet, because those gaps are still there far too often.
Thank you so much for all the great information you have shared with us all! I found your blog/website a few years ago when my journey into learning everything I could about guns began, and I found it INVALUABLE. My husband bought me your book (though we are both reading it!) and I would LOVE to incorporate it into a Women’s Only class I’m putting together. Will you allow me to reference to portions of your book (of course I would point out that it is coming from your book)? Is it possible to buy this book in bulk (getting a special bulk rate)?
Thanks for the kind words, GG. For bulk purchases of the Cornered Cat book, you should contact my publisher — Skip Coryell at White Feather Press. You can reach him at (269) 838-5586 or via email to skipcoryell@hotmail.com.
Please drop me an email to discuss using the book in your classes. My email address is at the bottom of this page. Looking forward to hearing from you!