Psycho Bitch
Irradiated by LabRat
One thing that I see pretty commonly in discussions of rape and criminal violence against women in general, especially in the firearms community which is very used to the idea of shooting bad guys to stop them, is that women should simply be armed and shoot anyone who’s trying to seriously fuck with her. In basic principle, I agree with this; the only way to stop someone who has decided to do you serious violence is to return it in kind and hopefully in a terminal fashion, and if you are in the majority of the population that is less skilled and determined at assault than most violent criminals, then you had better be armed if you want a good chance. So yes, I agree with the principle and premise that a part of an overall solution of sexual violence against women by violent men is for women to be more capable as a class to respond with terminal violence.
What I see as a problem is when it’s put forth as a truism that women, if they don’t wish to be victimized, should just shoot the bastard and be done with it and if she didn’t she’s weak, silly, stupid, or on some level actually wanted the violence. In cases of rape this is especially problematic because most rapes are acquaintance rapes rather than “a stranger jumped out of the bushes” crimes and about the only way a woman doing such would be ruled as a righteous shooting rather than a homicide is if she was attacked on her way home from church group in a public park while wearing a snowsuit and the dead perp was out on parole for sexual assault, but when I started out mulling over writing something about exactly that issue, it occurred to me it’s rather a broader issue.
The issue with women and violence in self-defense in general isn’t as superficial as “the media and debased Western culture have taught us that all violence is bad and women are particularly susceptible”, it’s that even in a more traditional age and more traditional subcultures, boys receive a great deal of cultural training from birth giving them instructions on circumstances in which they might have to be violent in a justified way, and girls typically receive none at all. Boys are taught by, if not their fathers, than by fiction that part of the nature of manhood is that at some point or points you’re going to have to put up your fists and defend either yourself or your honor. Girls receive no equivalent messages; while a boy might grow up with the understanding implicit that at some point he might get into a fight with his schoolmates or a bully might try to push him around and he should be able to fight back if only to stop the bully, a little girl’s cultural experience of violence is that it’s something boys do, and that if it is any sense relevant to her, her experience of violence will be with a shadowy caricature of “bad guy” whose mental picture is something of a menacing version of the Hamburglar. When it comes to more mundane violence- boys’ violence- that’s the sort of things that, if her honor requires defending, will be covered by her fathers and/or brothers, and if they aren’t available, with a knee to the groin and a withering comment.
The cultural construction of manhood is wrapped up in violence; no matter what circumstances a boy grows up under or what his opinions of the rightness of it all might be, a boy does not grow up without a variety of what-if manhood tests in his head, like what to do if he encounters a bully in public that’s harassing him or his wife or girlfriend, or what to do if threatened by a mugger. From a woman’s perspective the degree to which many men dwell on such scenarios is often rather bizarre, because women are not initiated into and not held to the standards of manhood and manliness; manhood qualities and tests are far more on a man’s radar than a woman is, even if her presence and opinion is part of the scenario*. This can be taken to a scary unhealthy degree for men in general, as when there is the unspoken assumption that a man should be able to fight off overwhelming odds or else he’s less of a man, but the key point in general is that the possibility of violence among peers is part of the male cultural experience and identity from early childhood on, but not so for a woman. Women have extensive social rules and contexts, but none of them really include violence except in terms of the “catfight”, which is much more male fantasy than female experience for the most part- and is not a fantasy that ever includes real injury or death.
Male roles and fantasies and female roles and fantasies play out in fiction; nowadays girls get more role models that are active rather than passive, but the traditional girl adventurer isn’t the violent type. These types of characters usually solve their monster and bad-guy problems with wit rather than with force, and while it might be fitting for a girl adventurer to be good with a sword, she’s rarely good with a gun, and if part of her background includes such proficiencies, it’s rarer that she puts them to serious use in killing rather than using the skill itself for some other plot reason or just stating that the skill is there and proceeding as though it weren’t from there. Actual action-oriented heroines usually tend to be expilictly superpowered/far-from-normal, and whether she’s a presented as a more or less normal human or not, there’s a huge temptation on the part of writers to create drama by having such characters killed, de-powered, or raped.
This is starting to take on a resemblance to a feminist rant, and I suppose in part it is, but I want to stress that I don’t think these patterns are necessarily the result of misogyny or sexism; these are simply the fictional patterns that occur to writers and their audiences as the way the world works, and are happily consumed by women and men alike. The primary fanbase of some of the most egregious examples of extremely gender-polarized fiction are often women as well. It works precisely because it’s an easy mental role for women and girls to occupy and project themselves in as part of the fantasy. Rape and/or a truly severe beating occurs as a dramatic idea to so many male writers not because they hate women, but because they are horrified by the notion and therefore it seems like a natural dramatic direction. A male character being similarly treated could not come through the plotline without being seen by most of the audience as having been emasculated and therefore no longer eligible for heroic status, therefore it doesn’t happen to them nearly as often.
This isn’t mean to be about fiction any more than it’s meant to be about feminism, but fiction and fantasy are mental models that both reflect and shape how their creators and consumers see themselves. It’s merely meant to be a powerful reflection of my primary argument: violence and how it relates to themselves is as much a part of men and male experience as sexuality, but it’s not nearly so much a part of women and female experience. Men play out in their heads how they might deal with a violent encounter, with whatever mixture of dread and bravado, but most women simply don’t think about it unless forced to, at which point fear and confusion tend to reign because it is so outside their experience and mental modeling of the world and themselves.
On a less explicitly violent level, this is reflected in the kinds of cultural training boys and men receive to be assertive or to push or reinforce boundaries; standing up for yourself is again included implicitly under the umbrella of manhood. Women and girls, on the other hand, are encouraged not to be loud or rude or overly assertive- the idea being that her role is to be polite and cooperative and that people will respect a nice girl like that. Respect is received for being “good”, not earned by standing up for it. Women and girls who are aggressive in establishing and enforcing boundaries usually wind up with some variant of the “bitch” label, depending on context; mean bitch, crazy bitch, frigid bitch. Some don’t mind, but another thing that tends to be tied up in the “girl” experience is that social acceptance and social alliances and ties are emphasized- being an outcast comes with punishment and usually lacks recourse to any sort of “cool loner/rebel” alternative image.
All of this translates into a basic tendency- and desire- to fit developing social situations into one of the categories that are mentally familiar and seen as applicable to the girl or woman in question. This is the primary ground in which sexual predators operate; as long as doubt can be maintained that his intentions are truly predatory, then desire to not be bitchy and a belief that behaving correctly will protect her boundaries can be pushed all the way into a rape that she may not even fully convince herself was rape, or a belief that the blow was earned or somehow accidental. Violence is what the shadowy Violent Man does: so long as he can maintain he is not Shadowy Violent Man, then that must not be exactly what happened. Defending herself with force is not in the mental checklist of “ways to respond to an unpleasant situation”, so having it occur to her that that was even an option may come late or not at all- and in the meantime, the message from outside suddenly goes from “do not be a bitch at any cost” to “why didn’t you defend yourself (did you want it?)”
Obviously there are lots of women who are completely capable of using force in their own defense or in the defense of others; I’m making a broad generalization, not a statement of absolute truth. What I AM saying is that broadly speaking, men and women grow up with far different mental modeling and training for seeing situations as ones in which some defense, small or large, is required- and that for a woman who has been brought into contact with cold and violent reality by force, often the situation is not nearly so simple as “buy a gun and next time shoot the bastard”, or “learn martial arts”. It’s one that has to start with her own identity and the core assumptions and values of how she views the world and others.
*One bizarrely common thing I’ve seen is the idea that, if a man is harassed and humiliated in public by a rude, pushy man in front of his girlfriend, she will be attracted to the man who successfully dominated him. Guys, this is exclusively a male fantasy/fear; the woman in question may have be alarmed by the situation, but she experiences a strange bullying man chiefly as a threat of male violence, not sexy masculinity. She may be dismayed if she feels suddenly unsafe, but only men experience this scenario as a manhood contest.
September 14th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
My mom is plenty horrified at how (socially) aggressive she perceives me to be … which probably less aggressive than I actually am. My dad, I’m pretty sure, is secretly pleased/amused.
Men play out in their heads how they might deal with a violent encounter, with whatever mixture of dread and bravado, but most women simply don’t think about it unless forced to, at which point fear and confusion tend to reign because it is so outside their experience and mental modeling of the world and themselves.
I totally play out such things in my head in great detail all the time, especially when I was doing 2 AM walks home from work the, albeit on a very well lit street >___> (and then I regret stopping my martial arts training). It’s actually very reassuring to see you write this, as I often wondered mid-imagining if I was being psychotically paranoid.
September 14th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
One bizarrely common thing I’ve seen is the idea that, if a man is harassed and humiliated in public by a rude, pushy man in front of his girlfriend, she will be attracted to the man who successfully dominated him. Guys, this is exclusively a male fantasy/fear; the woman in question may have be alarmed by the situation, but she experiences a strange bullying man chiefly as a threat of male violence, not sexy masculinity. She may be dismayed if she feels suddenly unsafe, but only men experience this scenario as a manhood contest.
That may well be true (the fact I managed to ring both ends of the Female Personality Bell Curve in my two marriages likely taints my viewpoint), but I hope you will agree that any intimate relationship will be detrimentally affected by such an encounter. The actual causative factors may be more complex, but the result is painfully the same.
I doubt its possible to quantify either party in a relationship’s contribution, but the female’s trained assumption of male protection (and the manipulative behavior that engenders) combined with the male’s expectation of fulfilling that responsibility are both variably and profoundly damaged whenever failure is imposed upon them by some outsider to the relationship (family members meddling is a different kind of stressor, I think). Add to this that most cultures don’t offer a great deal of guidance in successfully coping with failure and your “exclusively … male fantasy/fear” still creates a powerful and all-to-real effect - particularly in the young or inexperienced.
One of my more insightful observations from Krav Maga class is that, while it is indeed “OK to hit the girl” (she’s paying for the same experience you are after all), you can’t really train yourself to ignore the societal mores we all have drummed into us during childhood without inflicting psychological damage to yourself. I still need reminding not to hold back too much during training with a woman and I’ve yet to talk to a female fellow student who wasn’t worried to some extent that she won’t react to an actual attack as quickly as a man “automatically” will. I’m confident enough in our training, but I have to wonder if “sanity” isn’t one of those hypothetical states that doesn’t actually exist in the real world.
September 14th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
The actual causative factors may be more complex, but the result is painfully the same.
I won’t disagree. The point I was sort-of making wasn’t that this can’t cause problems anyway, but the way the men perceive the situation is very, very different than the way women do, and the specific fear that she will see the other as more of a man- and therefore better/more attractive- is completely false.
Some women who have been “trained” to seek male protection as you put it will feel threatened if they think he can’t or won’t do the job, some who just see the situation as a threat period will be dismayed if the man in question tries to live up to the “manhood test” and does what she sees as unnecessarily escalating the situation, and some who are living in a narcissistic fantasy world who have no conception of what violence is actually like at all might like the idea of being fought over- regardless of what she thinks of either of them involved. In the fortunately-rare case of the latter, the object of her fantasy has nothing to do with how much of a man either of them is and everything to do with the idea of being so desirable as to be worth the effort.
“Rigid gender roles and unspoken expectations of others to live up with them hurt both genders” isn’t really an uncontroversial statement, though. I’m just pointing out that often the constructions we make inside our heads- as in this specific example- involve the other person/gender thinking and judging in ways they simply don’t because that paradigm isn’t a part of their life. Kara’s point above is another good one- women will judge other women harshly for being “too aggressive” or being “paranoid” and unfeminine to think about violence at all, but men rarely will for the same behaviors.
September 14th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
LabRat, excellent post! We ARE not only programmed differently pretty much from birth, but also tend to approach things differently as a function of sex. My belief is that men are more reactive, while women tend to be more analytical in most circumstances where violence is a possibility.
I would say that I have been VERY impressed with both the Israeli military women I’ve met, and the Swedish females in their military. They are much more like Kara’s comments and much less like the stereotypical American female. On the down side are the cultures that are predicated on the female as property, as women have no rights and no way to fight back, period…
September 15th, 2010 at 5:33 am
Excellent post!
This explains another phenomenon that was puzzling me; the randomly violent female character, which you see a bit of in real life sometimes. There isn’t a social framework provided for women to learn when violent or even impolite action is called for, the way there is for men, so there’s not only more challenge in learning to use it, there’s also challenge in learning to use it appropriately.
September 15th, 2010 at 6:40 am
One of those posts that makes the interplays seem obvious now that you’ve said it. Thanks.
On a side note, I think this is part of why I love FireFly so much. Strong female and male characters that find a balance.
Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill ‘em right back! … You got the right same as anyone to live and try to kill people. — Captain Mal
September 15th, 2010 at 7:56 am
“What I see as a problem is when it’s put forth as a truism that women, if they don’t wish to be victimized, should just shoot the bastard and be done with it and if she didn’t she’s weak, silly, stupid, or on some level actually wanted the violence.”
- I think you’re smearing a bit here. Believing in personal responsibility for safety doesn’t place one in the “She secretly wanted it” crowd. Typically the type who present the violent solution as a truism do so out of a belief that you SHOULD carry a gun, that you SHOULD shoot your assailants, and that if you don’t, it’s not that you deserve what comes to you, but you are being a parasite upon the safe society produced by those who do.
I think you’re also mistaken about male culture to some degree. Defeat is not shameful; a stab wound that left you in the hospital while a mugger made off with your wallet is something to show off, a self-affirming thing. It’s not losing, but never making a stand, which is shameful in male culture.
September 15th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Dora the Explorer needs a Glock.
—-
Defending herself with force is not in the mental checklist of “ways to respond to an unpleasant situation”, so having it occur to her that that was even an option may come late or not at all- and in the meantime, the message from outside suddenly goes from “do not be a bitch at any cost” to “why didn’t you defend yourself (did you want it?)”
I’ve seen this argument made before, and it has merit, but I think there’s some of this: There isn’t a social framework provided for women to learn when violent or even impolite action is called for, the way there is for men, so there’s not only more challenge in learning to use it, there’s also challenge in learning to use it appropriately. to it as well, and I think it’s well summed up in the popular quote: Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
I don’t think one has to be “a bitch” to be assertive, (though, I am speaking from the experience of a guy, so, I don’t have a good first hand knowledge of what pressures are placed on women to conform) but women are given so little official imprimateur to be assertive that they don’t learn how to do so without being a bitch.
If that makes sense.
And of course, you’re right, that this is totally cultural.
September 15th, 2010 at 11:58 am
The ‘de-powering’ trope is so prevalent in sci-fi novels written by women that I can identify the gender of the author quite reliably by it’s use.
And it’s really annoying sometimes. I assume this speaks to some fairly widespread internal narrative in women or something.
September 15th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
I think you’re smearing a bit here. Believing in personal responsibility for safety doesn’t place one in the “She secretly wanted it” crowd.
Well, trying to paint in VERY broad strokes does mean I wind up smearing the honestly well-intentioned and concerned over with the nasty bits, yeah. I should clarify I DON’T think most male self-defense advocates fall into this pattern, but I also have in fact seen a truly depressing amount of “she didn’t fight back, she wanted it” in discussions about rape or other criminal violence… but especially rape.
I think you’re also mistaken about male culture to some degree.
Probably I am. Once again I’m going off the worst of what I’ve seen, but being definitionally outside it means I haven’t really got the picture of what’s representative either.
There isn’t a social framework provided for women to learn when violent or even impolite action is called for, the way there is for men, so there’s not only more challenge in learning to use it, there’s also challenge in learning to use it appropriately.
I think both you and Mousie made a good point here, yes. There ARE some women and even some men that will slap women with some variant of the “bitch” label for nearly any real act of assertiveness- from some men, especially when the assertion is of the nature “I am not in any way available to you, go away”- but the lack of real structure and education in how and when to be assertive has its effects as well.
Jon: you want a look into the internal narratives of women, if you have the patience for it, read fanfic, which for some reason is 90% written by women. It’s… not necessarily a comfortable look, though it IS very interesting.
September 15th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I’m honestly not sure if this is gendered or not, but the biggest problem I’ve had with “anyone tries to kill you, you try to kill him right back is, as you said, it’s so rarely the Hamburgular. I could shoot the Hamburgular. I can’t shoot my boyfriend John who has a pet cat and a sick mother and used to rub my back until I fell asleep and this is so unlike him that maybe I really did send some mixed signals. The emotional complications of aquaintance rape and domestic violence are too confusing for many women-many people-to even *report* it, so saying “why don’t you just shoot him?”, to a victim who doesn’t even want to get him in trouble, is absurd. Fuck, even if I’m sure John is abusing me, turning him into a bloody corpse is still totally emotionally unthinkable, and I don’t know if that’s a woman thing or a “most decent human beings, when you strip away the bravado” thing.
September 15th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Actual action-oriented heroines usually tend to be expilictly superpowered/far-from-normal, and whether she’s a presented as a more or less normal human or not, there’s a huge temptation on the part of writers to create drama by having such characters killed, de-powered, or raped.
I think that is one of the reasons that I liked the Sarah Conner character from T2 much more than T1. The T2 Sarah Conner didn’t go looking for another Reese (although the story does say that she’s been with a string of tough guys) but decided to become what she needed to, through nothing more than dedication and training. (Not that I disliked the character in either.)
Of course, in retrospect, her being institutionalized could be construed as depowering, but she was certainly unconquered even there.
September 15th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Yeah, the Sarah Conner character was more aversion/subversion than a fulfillment of that particular trope.
Ellen Ripley is in a bit of grey area. She kicks ass under her own power and usually better than anyone else there, but they also felt it necessary to torture her in every gratuitous way possible…
September 15th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Adirian: Typically the type who present the violent solution as a truism do so out of a belief that you SHOULD carry a gun, that you SHOULD shoot your assailants, and that if you don’t, it’s not that you deserve what comes to you, but you are being a parasite upon the safe society produced by those who do.
First, “If you’re safe without a gun, it’s only because you’re a parasite on the safe society produced by guys with guns” would seem to imply “If you don’t carry a gun, you deserve to be a victim.”
Second, if that’s what they mean, they’re fools. We don’t have a safe society because of a few macho dudes with guns who are willing to shoot anyone who looks at them wrong; for a demonstration, look at parts of the world where everyone is armed and ready to start shooting.
Our safety comes from (1) social conditioning in non-violent ways of defining and enforcing boundaries, asserting claims to property, either pushing back or yielding to the claims of others, etc., backed up by (2) the legal system and its armed enforcers. Random Guy With A Gun isn’t really upholding either of those; what he has is another option for surviving if the system fails him and he’s forced to resort to violence.
September 15th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Mark Z. said, First, “If you’re safe without a gun, it’s only because you’re a parasite on the safe society produced by guys with guns” would seem to imply “If you don’t carry a gun, you deserve to be a victim.”
A) Adirian specifically denied that in his actual comment that you didn’t quote.
B) Go ahead, lay out the logic that would make that follow. It doesn’t imply that in any way.
September 15th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
A) He denied it, yes. I’m saying his denial is unconvincing in light of the rest of what he said.
B) The logic is that if you aren’t carrying a gun, you aren’t doing anything to earn your safety; you are, in Adirian’s words, a “parasite”. Therefore, you don’t deserve to be safe, and when you get robbed or murdered, that’s just the natural order of things and you have no business complaining. Am I reading this wrong? If so, please explain.
September 15th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Mark Z., where it fails is the leap between you aren’t doing anything to earn your safety and when you get robbed or murdered it’s just the natural order of things. The disconnect between you and Adirian is that your logic rests on the common, false, and horrifying premise that if you could (or maybe should) do action A and don’t, and effect E results, you therefore deserve effect E. That would make the victim of any preventable accident deserve it; and virtually all accidents are preventable in theory.
Recently I had so much trouble with new smoke alarms going off in the wee hours that I removed them, and have not yet found a better model to replace them. I could and should replace them. If I die in a fire, do I therefore deserve it? I do not. It doesn’t make a house fire the natural order of things, and something I have no business complaining about.
This false premise is quite prevalent though unnoticed; it lurks underneath a lot of nasty ugly conclusions.
September 15th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Mousie762: Reading back over the thread, the problem I’m having is the word “parasite”. It moves the entire statement from the realm of reasonable precautions to moral condemnation of those who somehow have something they don’t deserve. We can talk about how many smoke detectors it’s reasonable for you to have, but when you call the Fire Department and tell them you’re trapped in your burning house, they don’t call you a “parasite” for expecting them to do something.
It’s a lot to read into one word, and maybe Adirian will come back and clarify his meaning, but I won’t argue with you about it any further.
September 15th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Mark Z: It sure looks to me like you and Adirian are saying the same thing: that (some of) those “who present the violent solution as a truism” are being sanctimonious dicks. I read Adirian’s comment as a caricature of, say, internet tough-guys, and “parasite” as a deliberate exaggeration.
September 15th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Concerning bullying a man in front of his girlfriend … any cop who has a lot of experience with domestic disputes can tell you that there is a good chance that both the man and the lady will beat the snot out of the bully.
Smoke alarms: I think a mechanical wall timer to turn off the alarm for up to a half-hour is a good idea. You don’t want to permanently disable it … you just want it to shut up while you are making toast.
September 16th, 2010 at 5:40 am
bluntobject - Yeah, Adirian was presenting the point of view of the “type who present the violent solution as a truism”.
Speaking not of rape but of crime in general, robbery, murder, etc., one of Sir Robert Peel’s principles of policing is “Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
For most of history there were no police forces, everything we think of as a police function was done by the citizenry. Peel intended police to aid the citizenry, not take over duties and jealously guard them as privileges. I think the history of London shows the value of his principles, and how crime increases when they fail.
Failure in one of these citizen’s duties does not make the victim in any way deserve the effects or in any way make a citizen or.police officer responsible for the effects; it is always and solely the responsibility of the criminal.
September 16th, 2010 at 6:21 am
Yes, I specifically referred to “the type.” I have sympathy with this worldview, I can see how somebody would hold it, but it is not one I hold; it’s my firm belief people can contribute to the safety of society without shooting bad guys or even carrying a gun. Some people can be parasites of public safety, but it’s a whole lot more than not playing Batman - just the act of calling the police when the neighborhood kids are cheering on a fistfight contributes to public safety, after all. Even in war not every soldier has the same duty, nor does every soldier stay on alert 24/7 - and outside certain bad neighborhoods in which you’re more likely to get shot down than you are as a soldier in Iraq during the opening months, our civil society can’t remotely be compared to being in a state of war.
Even if you don’t contribute in any way to the security you enjoy, you still don’t -deserve- to be raped - being a parasite is not equivalent to contributing to the problem; I don’t have a hell of a lot of sympathy for the woman who ignored people shouting for help in the past, never bothered to call the police for the woman across the hall who runs into doors with some frequency, or who ignored the obviously abused children living in the upstairs apartment, but she still doesn’t deserve to be raped. (This ceases to apply when somebody betrays a more fundamental responsibility in not contributing to security; a mother overlooking the fact that her boyfriend or husband is raping her daughter only doesn’t deserve rape because that would be too kind for her - she deserves worse.)
September 16th, 2010 at 6:31 am
I don’t know about sanctimonious pricks. I interpret the ideas as being more a mode of “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” - which is an impossible way to live your life, and is as silly, and for the same reasons, as wanting to grow all of your own food. You are letting paranoia about public society reduce the benefits you gain from being a part of it.
It’s something to pity.
And no, the idea of the parasite is not a caricature; the word is positively pleasant applied to the first sort of person I described, who ignores things going around them which they are fully capable of doing something about; they have absolutely no right to in turn expect society to look after them.
September 16th, 2010 at 9:08 am
My daughter was raised being taught how to defend herself in certain scenarios. I know that this presumes an ideal situation, but we tried to teach her basic defensive moves that can be adapted to fit the situation
I removed my smoke alarms several years ago. I’ll trust the cats to claw me awake if something alarms them.
September 19th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Great post here.
First, I’m glad you wrote this and I’m glad Kara said what she did in comments, because while reading this post, a memory stirred and I started feeling slightly odd about it. I remembered in high school I was new and the star pupil in band, having stolen the thunder of a very talented but less studious drummer who’d been there for years already. This guy was witheringly hostile to me- little creampuff me- and I wore dresses every day, prim, proper. My mind worked through scenarios of encounters in the hallway at school, usually ending with me straddling him killing him with my hands bare but for their perfect manicure. I feel less odd about that. Sauce for the goose, and all that…
The other thing is that until a woman has a man overpower her, she will never have the first blush of a concept of how very much stronger men are than we. I understand the societal reasons for our mindsets differing, but if there is such thing as evolution, I wonder why we don’t act to subvert that social tendency- why don’t we evolved 21st century beings act decisively to ensure that women understand situational awareness and ways to defend themselves? To do otherwise is to remain in the firm grip of endarkenment.
September 20th, 2010 at 4:46 am
perlhaqr - “Dora the Explorer needs a Glock.”
May I disagree slightly and say that, as an explorer, she is bound by a professional code to carry a Webley. Swiper no swiping would finally be effective once and for all.
Now, I guess I’ll be on-topic. My sister is my mother’s child from her first marriage, my father is her step-dad. She went through a rough relationship with a jerk and my father’s constant advice was, “If he hurts you, hit the bastehd. If is is stupid enough to get back up, hit him again.” Fast forward to the day she left for college as my father handed her several cans of pepper spray and instructions to carry one and keep the others handy. He told her that anyone who made her physically uncomfortable was to be sprayed. She was told to even spray her new boyfriend if he made her uneasy and she laughed, thinking it was a joke. My father was dead-serious.
In the years since my sister went to school and I grew up to have my own family, I have wondered why more people don’t teach their daughters to stand up for themselves. My sister’s father, while a very nice man, just never taught her the importance of self-preservation. As such, my father fought a losing battle trying to get her to be more willing to be violent.
I will admit that when I see another child push my daughter to the ground or hit her, I sometimes am more tempted to intervene than I would be with my son. I have to make myself stand by and let her handle it. The first time I told my crying daughter at a party, “Don’t whine to me for help, the other kid pushes you again, knock him down” I was met by shock from most of my family members, but my father laughed and complimented me. One day, she stole her cousin’s toy from her hands, and when my niece put her on the floor and took it back, she was scolded by my sister-in-law to give it back and share. The sister-in-law was not amused when I didn’t let my daughter take the toy back, and even patted my niece on the head and told her that she did a good job.
Thank you, Labrat, for giving voice to something I have always struggled to. I hope it is okay if I print a few copies of this to show a few people.
September 20th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Absolutely, Butch.
September 21st, 2010 at 10:09 am
Butch: Maybe. Webleys are totally awesome, but there’s a lot to be said for having more than 6 shots on hand.
Good on you for teaching your daughter to stand up for herself.