Fight Like a Girl promotes self-defense

Arizona Republic
June 22, 2007


Fighting like a girl may be considered a weakness. Phoenix business owner Cory Kahabka thinks it is the best thing a woman can do. Kahabka, president and co-owner of Absotively, which helps merging companies integrate, is a fourth-degree black belt in karate and teaches martial arts on weekends.

For the past two years, he also has been teaching Fight Like a Girl, a rape escape class that is based on the inherent strengths and reactions of women.

"We teach them to use their strength, and their strongest muscles are in their legs," he said. "So we teach them to lie on their back and use their legs in self-defense situations."

Kahabka said that when he was first introduced to Fight Like a Girl by Phoenix resident Brad Parker, who developed the class, Kahabka thought it was counterintuitive to tell women to lie on their backs because that is the position a rapist would want them to be in.

"But a woman's legs are her biggest weapon, and they are aimed right at the attacker," he said.

Kahabka said that if an attacker sees that a woman is going to put up a fight, he is more likely to back off. Kahabka, one of several instructors of the class in the Valley and around the country, also teaches it sometimes as part of the women's driving safety course at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving. He counts 2006 Miss Arizona Hilary Griffith, a rape survivor, as one of his students. Griffith was at an event where Kahabka demonstrated the technique and later enrolled in his 2 1/2-hour class.

"Women walk out after the class so empowered it isn't funny," he said. "It's incredible."