Succinct, too. Unlike mine... :D
I can't improve in any meaningful way on the four tips Soycat gave you. They're perfect, and they cover the most important bases. The second -- remaining alert and ready for anything -- is key. Being aware of your surroundings is always a good thing, anyway. You're probably pre-adapted to it, not just through being generally observant and very visually-inclined but even through something as seemingly trivial as having ridden a motorcycle -- motorcyclists who're worth their salt tend to look not just directly in front of themselves but also further ahead, anticipating such things as someone opening a car door, some oblivious idiot pulling a U-turn in front of them, a dog running out from someone's property, children playing, etc, etc. That same kind of expanded awareness and ability to rapidly seize bits of environmental evidence and create possible scenarios from that, and to update, discard, and create new scenarios is pretty handy when you're out and about, especially when alone or in dicey circumstances. There's a limit, though: one of my kung fu teachers told me that, when he was younger, he got
so caught up with being hyper-vigilant that he began experiencing physical stress and great mental anguish every time he left his house. It was like he was imagining teams of ninja ready to pop out from every shadow. He almost nailed someone on the street who surprised him, with no malice, and realized he'd taken things a bit far. There's a fine line, in the extremes of it all, between paranoia and alertness.
Another of Soycat's points, about using the elbows, is a great piece of advice. The key is to avoid overt violence...subtle defenses/attacks and strikes that could be seen as 'accidental' are useful weapons if you want to avoid escalation or, certainly, legal hassles. Advanced martial techniques like joint locking, nerve attacks and the like are great for self-defense for just this reason: they do not look overtly 'violent,' unlike most punches and kicks, and also generally offer a great deal of control to the person applying the technique (not just control of the assailant but control of how intense the technique is in its application and what the other's response will be).
You undoubtedly know more about the law (in general, and in your jurisdiction) regarding assault and battery than I do, but it's my general understanding that you can claim self-defense if someone is in your face and being belligerent or otherwise threatening you. I most recently conformed this with a Las Vegas Metro policeman in the wake of being hassled by some bozo, and it seems to be what I've heard pretty much everywhere I've lived. In such cases, I believe you are within your rights to smack them one. Certainly to ward them off. And
certainly to inform them that they needed to step back or you will defend yourself (or, if you're ready to belt them, say "do not touch me"...it's almost an a***hole reflex, it seems, for the idiot hassling you to then touch you as if daring you or just to confirm their a**holery, and there you have your opening for showing them you mean business -- in my job this has happened quite a bit, though my response has so far never been more than quickly smacking their hand away and telling them to get away from me). Of course, if they do actually verbally threaten you, it's assault (at least, as far as I've always known...not just in the US, but in other countries, too) and you have a right to defend yourself.
I have heard -- and this undoubtedly varies with jurisdiction -- that if the other person is within so-many inches (six is what I usually hear) of you then you are justified in physically defending yourself if you feel threatened because at that point they leave you zero options and have absolute control over you...if they follow you when you step away, for example, you'd be defending yourself if you even did something so simple and devastating as a palm strike to the face ("I raised my hand to prevent him coming any closer after I moved back and he ran right into it. Golly. I guess his nose cartilage was just extra delicate, or something..."). If they're close enough you are in real danger, but if you know what you're doing -- and you don't want to get this wrong because you'll just provoke him -- the heel of your shoe on his instep, a quick groin shot from the ridge part of your hand between thumb and index finger, or an elbow strike to his chest while you adjust your hair could all be handy don't-mess-with-me signals. The shock of it may deter far beyond the actual physical pain or damage. "Hey, you're not supposed to fight back! What happened to the whole frightened rabbit thing?" And feel around on your own arms, legs, and upper chest and you'll probably find for yourself just where some of the handier and more easily targeted pressure points are on the human body. But getting away is better than all of these potentially-dangerous games, if getting away is a valid option. That's not just something I'm saying to you because you're a woman -- running away is the most superior martial art of all, including for someone like me.
Then there's always the fibbing option, if you're okay with the idea that you really were threatened and that The System was failing you in its not recognizing that. It'll come down to "he said, she said," and here being a woman may actually provide some advantage because (a) if someone like me was claiming that someone like you hurt them, most judges probably would have a hard time believing I didn't deserve it and (b) a large male's not all that likely to trumpet the fact that a much smaller
girl beat the hell out of him. But, really, in circumstances a little more confrontational than what you describe (more anger and direct threat of harm), it's not hard to provoke someone to throw the first punch if you need them to, though at that point you'd better for damn sure have the capabilities to respond (with force or by fleeing rather expeditiously). If you're responding in kind, it's always seemed easier to me to defend than to launch that first attack, anyway. But, please, don't respond in kind -- with a strike (and it'd better be more than just one strike...once you get going, don't stop but follow through until he's out of commission or until you can escape) -- unless you are willing and able to go all the way or have backup close at hand...it's like what they say about not pulling a gun unless you're really ready to kill someone or how the Gurkhas don't unsheath their kukris unless they're going to draw blood. A halfway-committed physical defense is a recipe for disaster.
Of course, it's not that simple, and if a judge decides you used 'excessive force' (especially if you're trained as a martial artist, never mind that it's a myth that even a well-trained martial artist is a killing machine...that pop-culture and media myth has become part of legal precedence, unfortunately) or otherwise doesn't like what you did, even if defending against someone armed with a lethal weapon, you can get convicted. There're plenty of nightmare stories out there about people who were jailed as a result of actions taken in self-defense (most especially where their attacker died...so easy for someone to fall and hit their head, or die from a fairly 'innocent' strike because they had some arteries already loose, or whatever). It sucks. But I do, I fervently hope, digress from what is relevant to your original post...
Might as well digress a little more and talk about the fighting/pushing/physical-mental-confrontation aspect of it.
I am a martial arts evangelist but I freely admit that the benefits of martial arts will be more esoteric than immediately (violently) applicable -- it will take years of sweaty effort for you to be able to skew the odds significantly in your favor through martial arts training, though mental and attitudinal benefits relevant to incidents such as you describe will begin to manifest sooner. I can speak of physical altercations from years of training but only one real incident, at least as an adult (it was fundamentally different than all the fighting I was forced into in my youth). Others have more incidents under their belts, but I learned a lot from just this one and I hope I never have another (by which I mean that I have had many potential incidents but managed to control each and defuse the situation, and in my current job I have many minor scuffles but nothing, as yet, that was all-out fighting). In my only serious adult fight, when I was unable to prevent onset of overt violence, I handily trounced my assailant but my efforts were anything but the pretty, flowing movements I'd been doing for so many years...it was messy, violent, and dirty and also happened to be in the worst possible location (at night on a moonless night, on broken ground littered with hurricane debris, in a confined space, with a third party getting in the way). My training obviously played a role in the physicality of it -- not one of the person's punches never connected with me, I had absolutely no hesitation in responding to his first attack (a kick -- he was a boxer, aTae Kwon Do black belt, and bad-boy streetfighter in his younger and healthier days) and, indeed, came in with my kicks as he was withdrawing his leg. And my two initial kicks' targets were purposeful even if I didn't consciously choose them -- bladder and groin -- which is the kind of thing that comes from conditioned responses over a long period of time. Once I had him on the run with my kicks I closed on him, while still maintaining my reach advantage, and just pummeled his face while parrying his punches because I knew that, if I stopped, he'd really, really hurt me (he later came after me with a machete, but that's another story). Just as in some of my training, I never once actually
blocked a punch but used
my punches as simultaneous parries down my centerline and when he kicked me, at the outset, I didn't block but quickly pulled back just enough inches that he didn't contact me and then followed his leg back with my own kick and immediately lunge-shuffled forward for the second kick so that I could nail him hard in the groin...definitely not conscious at that point but a conditioned response and about the only elegant part of the whole affair.
I hated this person, with good reason, but every time my fist smashed into his face and made that
noise I just hated what I was doing...but I knew that I
had keep hammering away at him to get him down and either knock the overly robust sumbitch out or I'd be beaten to a pulp, and I'm too attached to my teeth to allow that. I recall each and every one of my strikes and defenses as if it was slow motion, and it seemed to last forever (long enough that I became keenly aware that I was not enjoying rearranging his face as much as I thought I might -- I'd wanted to do it for months -- but that I had to keep at it 'til he was no longer a threat) but the reality was that the bulk of the fight lasted
maybe eighteen seconds or so before he keeled over and my punches that I was almost counting were essentially a flurry. There's a scene in
Spider-Man where Tobey is discovering his new powers and watches in wonder as his opponent's fist comes toward him in what seemed slow motion, and that is exactly how my opponent's fists seemed to me, telegraphed beyond belief even though it was so profoundly dark where we were. I could easily have killed this person in the weeks before, I'd thought, because of what he represented in my life at that time, but when it came down to it on that night (after I tried to talk him out of fighting and he stupidly attacked me) I applied just enough force to take him down and keep him down...it was self-defense all the way and the only concession to 'spite' that I made was to drop my knee on to his groin when I had him down, to keep him numb. Part of me wished I'd hurt him more. Broken his leg at the knee, or something. The f***er more than deserved it. He really deserved far worse, and it wouldn't have taken much to break something. As it was, I broke his (already broken) nose and his entire face was swollen and gashed for weeks after.
My point is that from this one experience much of what I'd heard in kung fu classes was field-proven, and here's the gist of that:
(i) "he who hesitates meditates horizontally" -- you relate the story of the female black belt who just lost her martial way when surprised by her husband...well, it'd be easy to say that perhaps her conditioning as a female in our society made 'violent' physical response such a hurdle that she would never overcome it fully, and I think that's a valid point to a degree, but I think the same is not much different for many males. I know that I never took too naturally to smacking people around. Martial arts training, with good teachers, can help us overcome that hesitation but it may take quite a while. Being hit, hard, for the first time is a shock and will very often leave you open to follow-up attack because you're basically just reeling, more from shock than initial pain. Hitting someone, with anything even close to commitment, comes with a similar degree of shock. And many martial arts schools specialize so much in pulling the punch during sparring that when a real situation arises they do what they're conditioned to do and either fail to connect with their techniques or do so only with a fraction of their real power, as they would when sparring with a classmate. I think being able to control and pull punches is a necessity for most sparring (it also refines control greatly and improves technique), but sometimes you just need to go all the way and sometimes a heavy bag or dummy just isn't enough.
Anyway, what happened to her could easily have happened to me that night. I could have hesitated in disbelief or in fear just as easily as I channeled my inner Bruce Lee. It's one of those things that you'll never know until it happens. And just because I responded 'instinctively' (I hesitate to use that word...the Asian concept of "no mind" is more like it, in that you train and train and train until those regimens are thrown away and utter blankness, overlaying a profoundly ingrained library of technical skills, is the order of the day) that time does not necessarily mean that I will not hesitate if I ever find myself again in a similar situation. In my current job I experience physical threats of varying degrees and I do tend to hesitate, on purpose, because most are not serious and are just products of drunkenness or believing the Vegas "let it hang loose" myth, but I've had a few more serious altercations and, so far, what I needed to be there was there. Other than a few incidents in which my elbow got people (literally) off my back, the most serious incidents yet have involved groups of men and I discovered that a lot of such situations can be defused through attitude (not backing down and trying to seize some control over the situation by, in my case, telling them quietly and with control that they needed to leave) and through a firm push -- guiding push, not a shove (big difference) -- to help them along their way. Last Friday, when the Strip was a war zone, I singlehandedly removed two different groups of troublemakers from where I was just by quietly informing them that they needed to leave (a justifiably more strident turn of phrase would have escalated things and there was no way I was going to show them any fear...in fact, I really wasn't afraid at all, this time, and was ready to go nuclear on the biggest one of them if any of them moved in an inappropriate way, a possibility for which I was pretty adrenalized) and by placing my hands on their backs and letting them feel my strength and that there was no yielding on my part. Much of that a bluff, of course...these were sizable young men, all of them, and I am not looking forward to ever fighting, for real, four determined assailants all by myself. But, as great dudes like Sun Tzu and Rommel would tell you, you never let your enemy know the truth of your own disposition, and deception is perfectly honorable.
My size and the pressure from my hand probably helped, but I have seen women do the same kind of thing...pump up the attitude to compensate for physical disparities (and their mental aspect that "she's just a girl") and it can be the same effect. The key, I think, is to never let them know how scared you are. In my experience -- I'm hardly a streetfighter but in this current job I have a
lot of minor confrontations with belligerent idiots -- most people who seem to be looking for trouble are not actually wanting for or ready for a real fight...they're like bullies, in that they'll be blowhards or try hard to be menacing but are, really, cowards. I mean, when I see some loudmouthed, vigorous male who's over 6' tall, 200 pounds, and in his late 20s or early 30s yelling at me what he's going to do to me (they get braver the more distant they get, unless they're temporarily or permanently nuts...
those are the ones to really be worried about) if only he wasn't being restrained by the 102-pound girlfriend holding his arm...well, it's kinda hard to get too terrified of some virile hunk of man who can truly be held back, despite his determination to come beat the hell out of me, by such a petite person. But there are real threats out there, and more for women than for men, and overcoming the hesitation is key. Again, ultimately this really comes under the "be prepared" part of Soycat's advice
(ii) if it's deteriorated to the point of a physical altercation, do not relent and don't stop until the sucker is no longer a threat to you. Strength, reach, and technical proficiency are only ever
part of the story -- it's your attitude that's going to even the odds at least partway. Surprise -- including surprise that someone like you (a woman) who should be meek and compliant -- is a
very potent weapon (for evidence, look no further than the whole idea of Blitzkrieg) and tenacity makes up for a lot of innate imbalances in a confrontation. I've been bested by women in martial arts sparring, plenty of times...the physical is the least of it. But if you go for it, go for it 100% or you'll likely be worse off than you were before. "Never get off the boat, unless you were going all the way." I hope this never applies to you.
(iii) on a related note, there
can be a place for the "no mercy" attitude of the evil karate instructor in
Karate Kid...if someone has made things deteriorate to the point that you need to hurt them, whether with some handy weapon or with your body's intrinsic weapons, don't let compassion and feeling sorry for their blood loss derail you. Go for the eyes, use that knee to ensure they never breed, slap your hands so hard on both ears that they bust an eardrum...whatever it takes. They started it and you've got to assume that they'd do the same or worse to you if they could. Besides, there's not too much of this sort of damage that's going to be truly permanent and serious, and what concerns you at this point is doing your best to walk away the least injured. Again, I would hate to see you in a situation where physical fighting was your only option, but this idea has a metaphorical value that's more widely applicable. Shame and merciless mocking, for instance, can be a potent thing.
(iv) you never know where or when you'll be threatened, and you rarely can tell right off the bat how serious are such threats. You may need to fight or escape under highly suboptimal conditions (environmental, intrinsic, etc) so, again, be prepared. You don't need to necessarily be always sizing up escape routes and lines of sight but when that voice inside you responds to the hairs on the back of its neck rising, listen to the voice and get a quick grasp on where you are, who is around, and what weapons, hazards, and refuges are at hand.
(v) never fight 'fair.' Assuming that you're responding to an attack or to a real threat, your opponent doesn't deserve fairness, anyway. If you're forced to defend yourself against someone larger and stronger than you -- even a couch-potato male would qualify, probably -- there's an asymmetry that is decidedly unfair, anyway, and it's not in your favor. Do whatever you need to do to try to rectify this imbalance. Fight dirty. Remember the knife-fight scene early on in
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In my fight, my very first defense was a toe kick straight in to his bladder, the idea (again, not really a conscious decision but just something that
happened, which is what the whole point of all that training was in the first place) being to not only hurt the sumbitch and possibly make him urinate blood for a while but to perhaps make him wet his pants (didn't work, though) so that he'd be demoralized and disengage. One of my longest-term kung fu instructors stressed to us that not only is kung fu essentially Chinese dirty-fighting but that the ultimate concept for self-defense is to take out the opponent's knee (jump spinning 360-degree back kicks are for showing off and training...most real kicks in Chinese systems are delivered below the waist) and then walk over to pick up a metal trashcan or two-by-four, beat the hell out of them while they're on the ground and whimpering over their knee, and then get out of there before the police arrive. :D
And yes, 'the glare' is an essential weapon. Like I said, most people who start trouble -- whether it's with some behemoth like me or a petite woman such as you -- will chicken out when it comes down to it, and attitude will trump physicality most of the time. It is hard to overcome the tendency to remain polite and be nice -- I feel it, so it's not like it's unique to women -- but at the point where those two bozos were pushing the limits of social convention, which was pretty much right off the bat, they neither deserved your politeness nor your attention. You had no need to respond to them -- in these cases, with other people around, you could have ignored them completely and treated them as the nonentities they were -- nobody has a
right to expect you to respond to them, ever. What they really deserved, of course, was a good swift kick to the groin, but I bet that if you let your contemptuous silence and the insane-cat-like glare in your eyes show them that this was your belief they'd have backed off. If not, if they tried to box you in or restrain you, the next step is to run over the f***er's foot with your shopping cart or car ("whoopsie!") or create a fuss that'll send him red-faced and scurrying in the face of public scrutiny. Shame will go a long way as a deterrent. And watching
Thelma and Louise for inspiration -- not so much the killing-the-dude part and the whole canyon-dive bit -- can't hurt...lots of wisdom in that movie.
Oh...if you're considering self-defense courses, please don't waste your time if it's some one or two day seminar, or something like that. I have a real problem with many such courses in that they very, very often (even when taught by proficient martial artists) run women through a few unrealistic scenarios and almost invariably offer solutions to those scenarios that involve all sorts of exotic kungfoolery...big mistake, because people who're not used to training their bodies to do specific things will never grasp or retain such complex sequences and, in fact, the drills are often unnecessarily complex and will likely
reduce the effectiveness of a woman's response to a real attack.
One example I remember a female roommate showing me was, in response to being grabbed from behind (this seems to be a favorite in such classes -- it happens, but it's probably not that common and is a
really stupid way to attack someone) to lift up their legs and allow themselves to fall to the attacker's feet and then double over and kick up at his face or torso from below. Yeah, right. Here's an idea: when the attacker's got you from behind like that he's tying up
both of his hands whereas you've got two hands (even if the attacker's arms wrap around your upper arms or even elbows) and two feet free...if anyone's at a disadvantage it's him, and you can nail him in the face (backfist or finger jab or claw to the eyes, or smack him with the back of your head if you're of similar height), groin (hammer fist or kick from below), or knee, shin, and instep (kicks and stamps) now that he's kind enough to get you close to these tender targets. No acrobatics necessary, and no potentially-lethal going to the ground. Leave the rest to Jackie Chan and his stuntmen.
Same with all the exotic escapes and grappling that they show you as response to someone grabbing your wrist. Those exotic solutions have their place in advanced martial arts classes, usually in the context of reversing an assault so that you hold the advantage, but
not in a self-defense workshop that lasts a few hours. If someone gabs your wrist you need to focus not on what they have
taken from you but what they have
given you and what you have left, and among those are one arm and two legs. Someone grabs your wrist to restrain you and it's easy to just freeze...but, instead of freezing, or struggling to free your trapped hand (or doing some exotic twisty thing to free your hand -- too many of the techniques in these workshops teach women to turn their backs or spin, and that is usually a Very Bad Idea) just use your other hand to smack the sumbitch upside the head. He's holding your wrist...fine...punch him square in the nose with your free hand. He'll probably let go or loosen his grip, anyway, and -- regardless -- it's very easy to free a restrained hand when it's being restrained by just one hand. In fact, it's basically impossible to stop someone getting their hand free when you're holding their wrist, even if you've got the proverbial kung-fu grip in your arsenal, and if the idiot's trapping your one hand with his two then you are
really enjoying a serious advantage with your free hand. Yeah, baby...he wants to hold your hand, you smack him in the face, throat, eyes, or anywhere else, or destroy his knee joint with a low kick. Let him have that hand. He's all yours at that point, the idiot. Better yet, pull on his hand so that when you hit him the effect is magnified by his own mass meeting your strike. Much more straightforward, and much safer, than what they teach in many of these stupid courses.
Of course, in all of these there's the danger of hesitating, or freezing, whether through outright fear, conflict over getting physical, or even being burdened with so many possible response that none materializes. I've certainly hesitated many times in classes. It's hard not to and, like I said, there's ultimately only one real way to know that you won't, and that's the hard way.
There's also the possibility of a woman who's completed such a course getting a false sense of her own physical supremacy -- yes, confidence is a good weapon, but not when it's based on something other than reality. The Tae Bo infomercials used to infuriate me because they'd show the testimonial of some woman who said that she felt not only more confident, in general (a good thing), but that she felt able to handle herself if she was attacked in the street...in fact, I seem to recall her gleefully recounting how she now almost taunted potential attackers. I couldn't f***ing believe it, anyway. Got news for you, baby:
Billy Blanks may be able to prevail in a street fight but all you're doing is aerobics. Terrible. Tae Bo is not a martial art and it's not self-defence.
Anyway, for my money, if you're thinking of some kind of physical training a good martial arts school is the best solution and will benefit every aspect of your life -- self defense is the least of it and that's just as well, 'cos it'll take a while to get to the point at which you can meaningfully use your fighting skills in a real situation. If you want training in the more immediate term, here's a thread from a while ago in which I linked to what I think is probably the best self-defense-workshop concept out there (Model Mugging) and the entire thread could be useful to you right now (great points in the original post, too):
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=79623Well, my response got -- big surprise -- all meandering and digression-filled, but I hope something in it is useful. Be careful and don't let them ever get you on the defensive when it's
they who should be minding their p's and q's...easy to say, I know, but what they don't need to know is that you're very likely just acting the part and not necessarily convincing anyone but them of your badassedness.
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BTW I missed the hell outta you! :hi: :loveya:
