“Bring back self-defence classes for women – it’s the feminist thing to do”, writes Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in the Guardian. That’s right, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, more typically to be found writing such gloriously quotable effusions as “Why it’s OK to cry about this election”, is writing kick-ass pieces about kicking ass in the Guardian. This is strange but good.
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Who are you and what have you done with the real Guardianista?May 21st, 2015 |
 41 comments to Who are you and what have you done with the real Guardianista? |
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Ironically, a failure to understand the “paradox”, the difference between causality and culpability, is at the root of both actual victim-blaming and false accusations of victim-blaming. In the victim blamers’ syllogism, “A had a causal effect on B, and cause is a synonym for is-to-blame-for, therefore A is to blame for B”, obviously the major premise is at fault, yet it’s the *same* faulty major premise in the false accusers’ first syllogism, “A is not to blame for B, and cause is a synonym for is-to-blame-for, therefore A has no causal effect on B”. So the typical false accusation of victim-blaming actually implicitly supports real victim-blaming!
Um… what? It’s English, but I can’t figure out how it all fits together.
I nominate roystgnr’s comment for SQOTD.
“Strange but good.” Yes, I suppose so, in a very limited way. But expecting a few martial arts classes to provide any significant degree of self-defense is unrealistic. For the most part men are stronger than women, and such a defense is unlikely succeed (and might actually make things worse). Frankly, I think kicking, screaming, and eye-gouging would be far more effective in most cases, and that is what should really be taught in such classes. Kick-boxing? Not so much, other than for general fitness.
But if Ms. Cosslett were truly serious about women’s self-defense she would be calling for the repeal of the prohibition on handguns. A pistol is truly the great equalizer. But I’m sure she would never go that far, which demonstrates that she is not really serious about the self-defense. Further evidence of her lack of seriousness is provided by this bizarre sentence: “Self-defence is not my responsibility; it is my choice.” And just whose “responsibility” does she think it is? Certainly not that of the police; we have numerous court decisions clearly holding that the police have no obligation to protect her, but merely to investigate the crime afterward. So precisely who, then, if not the victim herself?
Perhaps this is one tiny step in the right direction, but I’ll need a lot more evidence before I believe that.
She will get Women killed with idiot notions that they can kick ass.
This links in to the British legal nonsense that self defence as a concept is legal, but preparing to defend oneself with suitable weapons is not.
As it’s the Graun, I’d be a little concerned the self defense she’s advocating might be a tad pre-emptive. As in “Your smile, as you passed, infringed my personal space & made me feel threatened. So I crossed the road & defensively broke your leg”
Women about to be raped should tell their potential penetrators they have the clap, herpes and chlamydia.
Regional, I honestly don’t think that work with the “drag you into a back alley” rapist.
But fundamentally there are martial arts classes for women. Pretty much any gym does them. If you wanna learn turn-up and pay your fee (which is usually small). Job done already.
There is another point. Men, esp. young mean are statistically much more likely to be assaulted and I am not talking scrapping in the pub here.
But when it really comes down to it shouldn’t self-defense and getting trained in it if you want be your option and your cost regardless of gender or anything else?
Self-defense classes are a good start. The other suggestion is to “man your towers because the barbarians are at the ramparts” I.E. DON’T WAlK AROUND DANGEROUS AREAS WITH THE HEADPHONES ON. And by all means qualify for concealed carry permits. Because the state & police may not be available to help you…
Self defense for women is far more effective if it involves a gun. Assuming the average women doesn’t work out daily lifting weights and training for combat with male sparring pardners, kicking an attacker in the balls or eye gouging is much more difficult than it looks in the movies.
many years ago women used their hair pins as weapons. Plus screaming.
If it is domestic violence she is talking about – women use men – police , lawyers etc to do their cfighting.
Laird
I think the best thing a woman will get from a class is a realisation there is action you can take decisively to get away from someone.
The mindset change from “oh my goodness whats happening” and paralysis compared to much fatser “flight or fight’ is not to be sniffed at. Plus I also got to bait Valentis shithouse article on the same day with recommending defence classes without being accused of victim blaming.
The last line of defence of the incoherent feminist is to take all advice and turn it into “OMG Im being attacked” rather than admit self defence and imprisoning rapists arent mutually exclusive.
“Unintended Consequences” by John Ross deals with this and a lot of other issues.
I once had a brawl with female kick boxer and I’m no pugilist, she quickly discovered she was coming second i.e. she threw her best punch and I laughed at her, so we went to the pub.
Wouldn’t a gun, or the threat of a gun in the hands of the intended victim be a better deterrent or self defence mechanism, a 5′ woman can shoot a 6’6″ man easier than fight him off
Regional, you did better (and with no dishonourable intent presumably) than the man referred to by a link in the Grauniad piece about a female kick boxer who was attacked and with her legs throttled into unconsciousness her male assailant.
Funny how Lefties believe in self-ownership to the limited extent that it is subordinated to an ideological agenda.
Laird is, of course, correct about the handgun ban (amongst other things). Sadly, repeal is unlikely to come about any time soon.
That said, we have a saying in Texas: “Concealed is concealed”. This is shorthand for “Nobody will ever know that you are carrying a gun, unless you have to use it.” At which point, laws on possession of firearms might be expected to take second place to matters of immediate self-preservation. Just sayin’…
Good post.
And yes – even a Guardian writer can be correct sometimes.
+1 Laird, K, and Andy. Too many women who have taken what mrs llamas calls ‘LuluLemon self-defence’ classes think that sassy kicking a heavy bag and throwing that buff instructor over their pastel-clad shoulder will help them thwart a physical attack. For a women to do that, she needs to be pretty hardcore – cf the reported example this week of a female MMA fighter who put an attacker in a scissors grip and damn-near killed him. Good for her, but that’s not one in a million women. Oh, I see that Mr Ed linked the story, thank U.
Suggesting self-defence classes for women while ignoring the single most-effective means ever invented for any woman to defend herself against any man, no matter how small she is or how big he is, tells me that the writer is not actually serious about women defending themselves. Self-defence classes for women may be ’empowering’, but no amount of ’empowerment’ will redress the innate physical imbalance between the upper-body strength of 99.995% of men vs that of 99.995% of women. Because ‘feminists’ believe as an article of faith that there are no differences at all between men and women, they cannot acknowledge this unarguable difference, and so they continue to promote this kind of useless and eventually harmful drivel.
llater,
llamas
Problem with advocating the carrying of guns here is that not only the person being attacked can use them – and it is a hell of a lot more difficult to defend yourself against someone with a gun than someone without one.
Never understand how so many supposed freedom lovers want to give the best tools of oppression known to man (and, in this context, woman) to those who do not care for the freedom of others. By definition someone prepared to rape someone else is going to be more likley to be prepared to use a gun on another human being than someone who would not willingly cause harm to another human. So why make things easier for the ones who want to cause harm? Especially as if guns are common, they are also the ones who are less likely to want legal sanction to carry a gun anyway.
In all honesty, I think the best response to any attack is to scream. A scumbag(just out of prison on a previous rape charge) assualted a women a floor down from where I was studying once (he clearly hadn’t figured a building with students is not going to be empty at 7pm – some of us had only just turned up). She screamed, and we found them – he got restrained (and surprisingly, not assualted himself) and subsequently arrested (he’s now locked up for life – apparently the courts can sometimes take a hint) and the victim got saved. Any attempt to fight without summoning help might not have ended well though – and you would have to be a very good fighter to be as effective as four angry and large postgraduate students in dealing with an attacker.
Given they won’t let me have a gun, in its absence kickboxing or another martial art is a good deal better than nothing. I do grant that it is PC to play down the likelihood that on average males will defeat females, and it is possible that women may be led to be imprudent as a result.
Nonetheless, there are factors operating the other way.
– Martial arts can teach the woman to make one fast blow or kick to immobilize the attacker and then run away. Having decided on your strategy in advance makes it more likely to succeed. You are less likely to freeze. And you are fitter to run away.
– The bell curves overlap; whatever the averages, an individual male attacker may be weak/unskilled/drunk enough for me to defeat.
– The physical circumstances (e.g. an attack in the back of a car) may restrict him enough to overcome his advantage of strength, and a knowledge of martial arts would make me better able to judge this.
– The woman does not have to get the attacker unconscious or dead to win, she just has to make him decide that this high a chance of hurt is not worth his while so he’s going to break off the attack and flee.
– The confident body language of a woman who has attended martial arts classes may deter an attack in the first place. She is also more likely to have cultivated an alert attitude and to be better at avoiding dangerous situations.
In real life I have not bothered to learn martial arts, although I did go to some classes in my youth and read a few books (again, not useless, so long as you don’t get unrealistic ideas).
I agree with Watchman’s comment that a scream is usually the best response (coupled where necessary, as some of us have already noted, with eye-gouging). That said, the rest of his comment is pure ignorance. It’s the typical pseudo-argument of gun opponents. We’re talking about legal carry here. A violent attacker is, by definition, predisposed to illegality, and is probably already armed (if only with a knife). The presence of legal handguns isn’t going to change that in the least. But if there is a possibility that his victim (or a bystander) is armed, that greatly raises the risks to him, and therefore reduces the chance of an attack even occurring. The statistics in the US are clear: over the last two decades many states have greatly liberalized their concealed-carry laws (some have even adopted open carry), and the incidence of violent crime in those states has dropped significantly.
Being armed isn’t riskless, but nothing is. We’re merely talking about improving the odds of deterring an attack. And the presence of concealed handguns in a society (even is a specific individual isn’t armed) greatly improves those odds.
Strategy idea: start advocating concealed or open carry for women, and only for women. We can play into the narrative of men as oppressors and make the left squirm as they try to defend denying women such defence, and we achieve 50% of our aim.
Laird,
If I was feeling aggressive I might call your argument pseudo and ignorant as well. I am not convinced of the arguments for guns equating freedom because they do allow coercion – that is hardly an ignorant argument. I would happily abandon that concern if there was actual evidence of the use of guns reducing violence, but it is worth nothing that in the Anglophone world the one country with legal carry is that with the highest rate of both gun-related and non-gun-related violence. I am not so ignorant or pseudo to put that down to the one factor (call it my education, but I have this reluctance to accept correlation being causation), but without further information it is the relevant statistic.
And I would point out that over the last two decades the UK has tightened its gun laws, and the incidence of violent crime has dropped significantly. I think in both the UK and US the improved chance of detection (due to scientific policing methods, and less corrupt policing (in most places)) might be the major reason for this.
I suppose the way to put this is that I do not know if I could shoot another person, even if they were attacking someone (or me) – I do know, and have experience of, the fact that I can intervene physically though. The gun is only a device for good if the good are prepared to use the gun – and that is where my concern lies, as many of those who might be willing to use a gun and claim they are good might also have very set views of good they wish to enforce on others. To equate freedom with weaponry is never a good idea (if for no other reason than your freedom becomes dependent on those who can make the weapons – remember West Africa actually had smith kings because of this…), because freedom does not need to be enforced. It may need to be defended, but the best system of defence is not necessarily to equip us all with the tools to overthrow freedom.
Rob,
Regardless of anything else, if you start advocating laws by gender you are doign the left’s work for them – it is the left who want us divided into separate sections with neat labels that they can play off against one another. If you favour freedom, fight anything that does not apply to all, regardless if it looks like it leads towards your aims.
Laird’s comment at 6:58 said it all for me and saved me a lot of writing. What’s particularly of interest is the comment he quoted, “Self-defence is not my responsibility; it is my choice”, as if choosing to not defend oneself is a rational choice and option. It also tips the hand of the left a bit. They don’t like two key, fundamental philosophical concepts, ‘responsibility’ and ‘earning’. To say that X is the individual’s responsibility is to be “mean spirited” and “cruel” because we’re supposed to be like a socialized ant colony apparently. Likewise, the concept of earning denotes both personal responsibility and the right to what one has earned (private property). After all, they’re pushing the idea that we don’t have the right to earn, rather we have the right to HAVE, and “I own what I earn” is complete anathema to their ears. There’s a double-whammy against the concept of ‘earn’ from the View Of Progs (VOP). (I just made that up that acronym and I rather like it).
Watchmen, I disagree with your post at 2:28. Whist it is true that Progs love to separate and then use sub-groups to divide and conquer, or in their case, divide and deconstruct, to use POLITICAL means of gaining advantage over others by claiming special victimhood status…we also can’t give in to their neo-Marxist notion that, after all, our “diversity” is mere insignificant window dressing, a mere curiosity, because, after all, we’re all identical under the skin and genitals; i.e. identical replaceable cogs in their Marxist social machine. The truth is, in some significant ways men and women ARE different. One cliche example is the 17yr old male student who beds his super-model algebra teacher and is thus labeled a “child abuse victim”. We are loath to admit that 99.9999% of the existence of homosapiens-sapiens, people were usually married and procreating years before that point and “18yrs old” is the modern historical anomaly. What was custom for “people in the bible” i.e. ancient Hebrews and people in that area during the advent of the common era, (girls were marriageable by 12, 13 for boys) would be classified as outright pedophilia today. The idea that one can’t really think for oneself until 18 and lips can’t touch alcohol until 21 lest it corrupt them would seem completely insane to people for most of modern man’s existence. But I digress.
Llamas at 1:29, all good points. Just note the wave of leftists response to Sam Harris’ The Riddle of the Gun.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun
He’s a card-carrying lefty, yet pro-gun. He’s rational enough to “want something a bit more than my ideology to defend myself when I hear a window break in the dead of night”. The vitriol he experienced from his fellow Progs was, well, from my perspective, hilarious.
@Watchman, who wrote:
‘And I would point out that over the last two decades the UK has tightened its gun laws, and the incidence of violent crime has dropped significantly.’
And I would point out that over the last two decades, the US has significantly relaxed its gun laws, specifically in the area of concealed-carry, and the incidence of violent crime has fallen very significantly, far more (in proportion) than the reduction in the UK. The US violent crime rate has declined by almost 50% over the last 25 years, even as the rate of firearms ownership has stayed absolutely flat at around 48-49%.
I would also point out that, while the rates of violent crime in the UK may be falling, the UK rate of violent crime (at 2034 per 100K) is far-and-away the highest in the EU, and more than 5x the comparable rate in the US (at 387/100K.)
I would further point out that, while rates of violent crime in the UK may be falling, the rate of rapes in 2014 (last reporting year) was up 20% from 2013, and the highest for more than a decade. Since this crime overwhelmingly has female victims, this is the exact type of crime under discussion here.
llater,
llamas
It’s not Watchman’s fault, the notion of armed self defence, which was once a bedrock of the British constitution, has been progressively (in both senses of the word) throttled since 1920, such that now it seems an alien and frightening concept.
Imagine if the British state had banned cars in 1920. Generations would have grown up who had only seen cars in American movies, and it would amaze and frighten them that Americans could own and drive cars. A horse drawn tram is good enough for us British, thanks very much. I mean, look at all those car accidents they have in America. We wouldn’t want those here would we?
To Llamas’ comment I would also add that I’ve been seeing recurrent reports of widespread book-cooking on the part of U.K. law enforcement who need a decline in crime to justify an increase in budgets. The same thing is becoming more common here as well. Until recently there seemed to be very few rapes in Rotherham, right?
To Watchman, yes, widespread permitting of guns says that potential victims may go armed but the perp all too often is already armed whether he falls into one of the prohibited persons categories or not. The thing to keep in mind is that the perp, however well armed, is not there to shoot someone, he’s there for the money or the sex and would rather not add murder to the armed robbery or assault charges.
Watchman, Kitty Genovese screamed plenty.
The US has continually been liberalizing (in the traditional sense of the word) its gun laws and violent crime has also been falling over the same period of time. I am inclined to side with those who relate this to external factors, most notably, perhaps, the removal of lead from petrol.
Both my daughters have been harrassed on public transport by men sitting or standing next to them, when it’s taken a while for them to realise that the problem is not crowding but a frotteur. Elbowing or kneeing them would count as assault and Londoners tend to ignore loud complaints and verbal shaming with the additional problem of what to do if the wanker follows them when they alight, there isn’t always a coffeee shop to wait in. Suggestions?
Ljh: pepper spray.
Ljh, I am amazed. Are there no men around? I mean real men willing to put a fist in the face of some scumbag harassing a woman?
Watchman: the tactical advantage goes to whoever decides to shoot first. Not whoever draws their weapon first, whoever decides to actually pull the trigger and shoot first.
If you have a concealed weapon, and someone has pointed a gun at you but not actually shot you, it means shooting you is at best a very secondary objective in their mind. They want something else and the gun is just a way to get it (typically money and/or sex is the actual objective). So draw your weapon as quickly as possible with the intention of shooting them dead, and do precisely that. For extra added combat mindset points, say something first (almost anything) prior to drawing and then do so and shoot them dead the moment they start to reply (it is worth at least an extra second).
That is the reality of gunfights. Never been in a (short range) gun fight myself, but I know a couple people who have, and that is an accurate description of what happened.
Pepperspray illega and definitely unsuitable on bus or train.
PdH: haven’t you noticed yr fellow Londoners reluctance to acknowledge each other let alone interact? This is probably the most endangering aspect.
Ljh, what can I say, I tend to get in people’s faces when they annoy me. Sometimes it is a failing but sometimes it is a virtue.
Yes, and I’m sure Massad Ayoob would agree with every word of that! That’s why well trained cops pointing weapons are taught to bark short phrases (“Drop it!” or “Hands up!” or “Freeze!” & nothing more than that) until a perp is cuffed. The moment a cop gets into a conversation, an actual complex use of language beyond the barest minimum, he might as well not be holding his handgun for exactly the reason stated. A guy with a gun who wants more than the simplest thing (i.e. have his partner cuff you) is very vulnerable to anyone who knows what they’re doing. But most people don’t know what they’re doing, because unlike cops, they’re not trained and haven’t thought about it deeply. Rapists in particular make for great backstops for this reason as they actually don’t want their victim dead (at least not up front).