Imagining with the Body: Speculative Designs for Women's Embodied Empowerment in Feminist Self-Defense

Feminist self-defense combines physical self-defense with mental strength exercises through role-playing scenarios. It aims to challenge limiting beliefs about women's abilities to respond to interpersonal violence. We present the experiences from feminist self-defense classes in Sweden and the results of a set of speculative designs that combined contribute to imagine how technology could play a role in experiencing these holistic practices. The goal is to illustrate the potential of embodied interaction design to empower beginner feminist self-defense practitioners. To do so, the study was conducted via two methods: semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, and a participatory speculative design workshop with novice practitioners. The speculative concepts demonstrate how design can support the practice of feminist self-defense. Through this study we contribute to the corpus of embodied design interventions, in this case combining design for bodily movements with feminist consciousness raising in relation to the topic of gender-based violence.