Fear and crushing in Santa Cruz - Women learn how to stomp and hit


Not too long ago, a woman I know was met by her worst fear in a dark, empty parking lot. As she was unlocking the driver's door, a man grabbed her from behind. Many women would have frozen and screamed. She took a deep breath, raised her foot, aimed for the man's instep, that delicate curve above the arch where a dozen bones meet, and stomped with the full weight of her body. The man yelped and limped off into the shadows.

From frightened to fearless with one simple stomp.

(I smell bullshit. This sounds like a made-up for TV story, to me. It sounds like a script. Anyone who's ever been in a real scrap knows that it's not that easy.)

(And even if we give this oh-so-stereotypical story credibility, the fact is that if her assailant has even a scrap of brains, the next time he's gonna bring along a Mag-Lite with 5 'D' cells in it, and hit her from behind, and she's gonna sag to the ground, and that's gonna be that.)

(And let's get one more thing straight - the same sort of guy who's going to assault a woman from behind, is going to assault a man from behind, too. What you are describing is nothing more than your common street criminal - and they come in all genders.)

Less than a month before, she had completed a women's self-defense class, care of the city of Santa Cruz, the only city in the United States that offers free or super-cheap self-defense classes for city residents.

Of the more than 107 million women living in this country, only the nearly 25,000 of them who call Santa Cruz home can learn skills to keep themselves on the streets and at home without cutting into their budgets. Classes on a par with those offered in Santa Cruz -- where the most a woman pays for 18 hours of instruction is $12 -- generally cost about $500.

In those classes, which range from one-day workshops to six-week intensives, women learn how to break kneecaps, gouge eyes and escape choke holds. In short, they learn the moves a Marine is taught in basic training, commonly referred to as "dirty fighting."

(Right. And what happens if the man has taken the same class ... maybe five or ten years earlier, when he was in junior high school, as part of growing up?)

But it turns out that a woman's most powerful self-defense tool is her voice. Hopefully, she will never need to go for an attacker's eyes, but she will almost certainly need to be assertive, make boundaries and occasionally yell to keep herself safe. That scream many of us resort to when confronted with danger only advertises how helpless we feel, how much we hope someone else will come to our rescue; what most women actually need is practice in yelling powerfully and sounding strong.

With this in mind, half the class time is devoted to verbal self-defense. Women who have taken the class say these are the most important skills they learned, the ones they use in their everyday lives.

Sometimes the lessons are simple. Here, for instance, is a quick fact: An attacker is usually looking for a helpless target and expects his victim to crumple on approach. Often, defying those expectations can be enough to get you out of danger. Behave as though you're in charge of a situation and you may find that becomes your reality, as one woman learned this past winter.

"A few days ago, my ex-boyfriend conned me into meeting up with him on a street corner," she told her self-defense class. "He started yelling at me and grabbed me. Before I learned all the moves I know now, I would always fight back, and I would always get hurt. He's a big man, like 250 pounds." She weighs about 110 and stands 5 foot 4; initially she had trouble looking her classmates in the eye.

(I smell another lie.)

"I just started yelling at him: 'Let go of me! I'm not afraid of you anymore! It's not going to work anymore!' I kept yelling it over and over and he let go of me. He just stood there, staring at me, like he couldn't believe what had just happened. Then he threw his soda on me, but I didn't even care. Because he walked away."

Self-defense classes have been available in Santa Cruz since the 1970s, when a grassroots coalition of lesbia^H^H^H^H^Hcitizens forced the City Council to make prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault a priority. A group of women already teaching self-defense suggested that the city might meet its new mandate by paying them and offering their classes free. Santa Cruz has held classes for 8- to 12-year olds, teens, adults and seniors ever since.

(Ka-ching!)

Graduates of these courses report that they are better able to identify potentially dangerous situations and avoid them and talk, yell or, if absolutely necessary, fight their way out of situations where they would have otherwise felt trapped. The classes have given more than one woman enough support to leave abusive situations in their homes.

(Well, shit, what's keeping them from volunteering for military duty? Eh?)

The vast majority of sexual assaults and incidents of domestic violence involve men abusing women. Until our society can effectively make men stop, we have a responsibility to teach women basic skills to defend themselves against such attacks, or avoid them altogether.

(Who, this so-called 'reporter' be smokin' some of that good Santa Cruz weed.

[1], the vast majority of incidents of domestic violence do not involve men abusing women.

[2], it is disingenous, at best, to muddle rape and domestic violence together.

[3], the question of teaching potentially aggressive women how to channel their aggression so as to gouge out [mens'] eyes, and some of the inevitable consequences of turning such people loose, in unaddressed - technically, the training that is being passed out is considered the equivalent of carrying a concealed weapon, in some jurisdictions - do they require these women to subsequently register themselves with their local police departments?

[4] 'our society' ... Who is 'our'? Men's? Women's? Are we all together on this, or this this another illegitimate attempt, by a bunch of childless lesbians, to capture the moral high ground, by substituting moxie for legitimacy?

[5] 'can effectively make men stop' ... How do you plan to make them? through force, right? The force of arms, right? The implied violence implied by the men [and women] who carry guns, and badges ... as well as the violence that these people are, by their own word, teaching - gouging eyes out, behavior that smacks more of Abu Ghraib than it does of self-defensive measures, when all is said and done!

... And at what point do you look in the mirror, and realize that you have turned into that which you despise, in men ... and that you have lost your struggle, to make the world more civilized, and have, instead, made it less civilized?

Why not just let everyone - women, and men, both - wear guns, openly, and deal with the consequences of an occasional shootout, maybe down on the beach, at 20 paces ... where no one will get hurt? At least, then, we'd have the naked aggression out, where we can all see it, and deal with it, effectively. People prone to pick fights, or inclined to assault others - men, and women, both - have a shorter than average lifespan, and society, as a whole, benefits!)

While Santa Cruz skateboards, mountain bikes and skating apparel have spread around the world, this unique model for self-defense classes has stayed home. It's an effective, cheap way for communities to cut down on domestic violence and sexual assault while making the streets safer.

(It would seem to me, as the father of several girls, that it's really the father's responsibility to teach his daughters how to defend themselves. Assuming, of course, that Dear Ol' Mom didn't pick a fight with him, one day when she was suffering from hot flashes ... accuse him of threatening her, or maybe just take the wimp's way out, and say that she felt threatened ... and throw him out, and get a restraining order, and sabotage his relationship with his daughters ... that is.)