Hitting a women in self defence?

Discussion in 'Self Defence' started by Yukimushu, Jan 30, 2004.

  1. Simon

    Simon Administrator Admin Supporter MAP 2017 Koyo Award

    I have probably posted this before and Hannibal will say congratulations to Simon's joke for getting a telegram from the Queen, but I don't care. :D

    Mick is in court for beating his wife.

    Judge says, "Mick, is it true you beat your wife?"

    Mick says, "yes it is, Sir"

    "How do you beat your wife", asks the judge.

    "Superior footwork, Sir, superior footwork", says Mick.
     
  2. Rated Red

    Rated Red ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Supporter

    My opinion is pretty straight forward regardless of gender. If someone is attacking you and your intuition / instinct is telling you that he or she may inflict serious harm towards you or your loved ones, it's fair game.

    Scratching and slapping is that shady, irritating gray area. While slapping and scratching won't usually put your life in danger you do have something to worry about if they're clawing for your eyes. This is just a guess but if I were in that shady gray area I'd probably try and remove myself from the situation first. If she were going for my eyes I'd probably feel the need to protect myself therefore try and restrain her hands and see if I could get someone's help, preferably a police officer or something. As a last resort I'd defend myself by striking back.

    As far as experiences go? I've had a few but none in which I initiated. I am by no means a physically agressive person. I have had a total of 4 physically abusive experiences with three men as an adult and one female during adolescence.

    The very first time was against another female in middle school; she was well known and feared by many girls in our school and surrounding towns for the fist fights she'd get into. After lunch I walked into my math class, put my books on the desk and was struck from behind; I turned around, she punched me again (this time in the face), all I remember is closing my eyes and swinging for the fences lol. Teacher came in, broke it up, sent us down to the principle's office and we landed ourselves a detention. I was mortified that I received a detention more so than being struck by such a brute. Absurd thing about it was, it was over a boy. She found out that the boy she had a crush on had a crush on me, I had no inkling about either so it wasn't like I directly provoked her to attack me.

    Second time was against a longtime boyfriend of mine. When he drank another side of him appeared, but this dark side of him didn't transpire until after he joined the military. Now, I'm not suggesting that joining the military contributes to domestic violence after a few drinks, I'm just speaking from my own observation and experience with this particular person I knew for quite a long time before and after he joined the military. Over time in our relationship the abuse would escalate, he'd accuse me of all kinds of things that wasn't even in my character to do and he would lose it. What made matters worse, he was a seasoned wrestler and boxer, 6 ft. 3 in. tall, 225 lbs. while I was a foot shorter and about 110 lbs. lighter than him with zero self defence / MA training. On that particular evening I was put in the hospital for 5 days and that was the long overdue wake up call for me to end our relationship. On the plus side, that life experience encouraged me to learn self defence (Muay Thai). Granted, my first experience wasn't particularly inspiring; the instructor was a fraud and I ended up needing surgery due to an injury under his supervision and training; but after a year of recovery I got back up on the horse, tried again and luckily found a legitimate instructor. I didn't stick with MT for very long (about a year and a half), not because I didn't enjoy it but because it conflicted with my full time dedication to ballet and my job where travelling was frequent.

    Third encounter I will keep to myself.

    The fourth time I tried defending myself was only a couple of years ago. I was assaulted by a male in a parking lot. I'm embarrassed to admit this but I don't recall putting any of my self defence skills into good use because I froze mentally. My lack of confidence was the main contributor. I obviously still have an issue with physical confrontation and I know that's due to the second and third experience I had with my ex and the other guy who assaulted me. Second obstacle going against me on this occasion was that I was in the very early stages of recovering from an injury I received during ballet and found myself physically struggling to keep the situation under control; technique over size and strength did not fall in my favor because of those two major factors - mental blockage and physical injury, at least I believe so anyway. If it weren't for a few guys coming out of the side entrance, acknowledged that I was in trouble and involved themselves to assure my safety, I'm certain that I would have had more than just minor injuries to my face and neck.

    Possibly TMI for someone who is still trying to find their way on a new forum but it's just the way that I am.

    While I am confident in speaking my thoughts and feelings, that huge mental blockage when it comes to to physical confrontation is a major obstacle. I also question size, does that make you an easy target if you're small and give you less of a chance to pull through? I don't know. You question alot of things, especially when you've found yourself in these situations more than once in life.
     
  3. Kwajman

    Kwajman Penguin in paradise....

    There's no reason not to defend yourself from a woman if she's attacking you. The idea you can't hit a woman is crap.
     
  4. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    Seems like a lot of people been putting a lot of thought into when to beat women.
     
  5. Simon

    Simon Administrator Admin Supporter MAP 2017 Koyo Award

    As a martial artist I put thought into when and how to beat all sorts of aggressors.

    Their sex and age doesn't come into it other than to say obvious boundaries are obvious.
     
  6. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    I rarely ever think about beating anyone up. I always think about how to kill them ^_^.


    Threads like this always depress me a bit. While the topic here is pretty clear cut as far as defending yourself from an assailant, there are still a lot of other confrontational situations that have different perspectives when it involves a male and female. Domestic abuse certainly being one of them. Unfortunately I can use myself as an example in my past marriage with my ex. While I never struck her, there were times where I pinned her down or threw her onto the bed out of anger. I was easily three times her size, so you can imagine how it went when I decided to get physical.

    Hold your finger pointing and shaming for a second though. I'm ashamed of it enough myself and I assure anyone who just read what I wrote that I don't need them to point out how I should feel about it. The thing about it is that I never got physical until after 45 minutes to an hour of being screamed at, usually over very little or nothing at all. I don't even remember what some of those arguments were about. Any time I tried to cool off and leave the room she would follow me to continue screaming at me. She would block my path, push me when I tried to get around her, etc.. She had even followed me down five flights of stairs to my car and wouldn't let me drive off once.

    I remember us having conversations about me being physical and explaining that she wouldn't let me leave and would keep screaming at me, and it put me over the edge. She basically just said that what she did was ok, but what I was doing was domestic abuse. Then she took a class on domestic abuse for law school and for a brief period admitted what she was doing was domestic abuse as well. That only lasted for a little bit though. Somewhere down the line she decided she was still ok screaming and yelling and what she learned was wrong. :dunno:

    If a man did what she did to me, I would have tried really hard to lay him flat on his back within 10 minutes of screaming at me, never mind blocking my path and trying to push me around. There also wouldn't be many thinking twice about my decision to get physical if it were a man either, no matter his size.

    So turning back to the quoted, it's kinda' important to brainstorm and process situations like these, because the standard isn't the same across the board socially or legally.
     
  7. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    To the bolded, you should be aware that self defense is not synonymous with martial arts. Self defense is more about avoiding confrontation, dangerous situations, and violence. Martial arts is more about actively engaging in violence. Learning to fight is learning what should be the absolute last option you have in defending yourself, and not anywhere near the first option. You can learn to protect yourself in many different ways, none of them involving throwing a punch or kick!

    I'm sorry you had to go through the things you wrote about.
     
  8. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    I was going to respond to Simon's post later, I been up late and drinking and there was a fire in my house from the dude upstairs and I had to be the guy who went into all the other apartments and was like "YOOOOO FIRE GUYS" anyway, it's been a stressful night, so I was going to just like let things lie, but I wanted to talk about your post just because it reminds me of a lot of things.

    When I was a kid my Mom told me about a book called Games People Play, or something along those lines. She told me about this one game that occurs in toxic relationships in which one person is so freaking horrible to the other, while simultaneously manages to stay just on the right side of decorum, that he inspires rage in the other person without ever needing to take responsibility for it. He's pushed the other person so far over the edge that the conversation ceases to be about what caused that outburst and is entirely about the outburst itself. Anyway, I see this in a lot of relationships, and it sounds like you're describing something similar. I've heard of the phenomenon described as 'gas lighting'.
     
  9. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    Toxic relationships are indeed pretty terrible. I think at the point of physical confrontation though, it's always a heftier judgement because actual permanent physical damage can occur. We don't feel the same way about permanent emotional harm as we do physical. I will never seek to justify my actions, but there is certainly reasons for why it happened that didn't need to occur. I'll never let myself get involved again with somebody who feels it's ok to be verbally abusive, so I think I'll be ok. It just sucks that I'm marred emotionally by having crossed a line I had never thought I would cross.

    Also, just let the building burn man.
     
  10. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Nope....like Simon said we prepare for assaults and attacks

    Happily I have had far, far fewer women attack me than men... but they do attack
     
  11. SWC Sifu Ben

    SWC Sifu Ben I am the law

    And honestly I find it incredibly sexist that people judge both the attacker and the response to that attack by how the two people are equipped between their legs.

    We had a woman come barge through at work and try to slice up one of our guys with a box cutter and honestly that never enters into my thought process. You're all the same meat.
     
  12. Rated Red

    Rated Red ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Supporter

    Thank you. While there is an obvious mental blockage, a lack of confidence and questions I ask myself, I still try to look at those experiences I have had as life lessons. I don't see myself as a victim either. There are far too many people out there that have or had it worse than me. I survived on more than one occasion and I'm still alive and well doing things I love without fear or hate and the openness to still trust. During experience 3 and 4, people restored my faith in humanity pretty much as soon as I thought I had lost it - especially after experience #3. To me, those positives by far outweigh the negatives.

    I'm not challenging your input, I feel the foundation of MAP's community have a far superior wealth of knowledge and experience on/in MA / self defence than I do and I respect that. I also feel that I'm going to broaden my knowledge by being here; however, my understanding has been that Muay Thai (and other forms of MA) is an excellent MA to learn for self defence. Back then, I swayed back and forth between JJ and MT and under my own thought process and (uneducated) logic at the time JJ probably wouldn't have worked for someone my size because I didn't have long legs and arms or the weight behind me.

    After being placed in the hospital by my ex my every intention for learning MT was to learn how to use my body as a weapon as well as a shield in order to defend myself from dangerous people like him because in that situation I didn't have an option to avoid violence. I had no where to run, I had no where to hide and you can forget having the power, strength, ability or skill set to manoeuvre him out of my way so I could walk past him and leave. He chased me into corners, I was pinned down on tile flooring with him sitting on top of me while having my arms pinned down with his knees so he had free useage of his arms and hands. I felt my life was in danger. All that was left for me to do was to kick and punch (incorrectly, may I add), whenever the opportunity presented itself.

    You cannot just assume that you can walk away from every situation peacefully, that you can talk to the person down from his or her violent rage, that you're never going to find yourself in dangerous or life threatening situations provoked by another human being - whether you know them or not. My belief is, sometimes you are left with no other option than to fight fire with fire as a first resort and it would be extremely helpful to know what you're doing IF you ever find yourself having to do so.
     
  13. Knee Rider

    Knee Rider Valued Member Supporter

    The fighting part was the ma training (mostly).

    The self defence part would have been extracting yourself from the relationship and taking non physical measures to protect yourself from your ex (mostly). I know it's easier said than done very emotionally and psychologically difficult and complex regarding domestic violence.

    There are some areas where physical skills and self defence overlap and it's generally strategic in nature or invole adrenal stress response control and flinch response drills to deal with sudden assault.

    Personally I feel fighting ability is an essential part of self defence training. Muay Thai covers that pretty well I think.


    So sorry to hear about your experiences.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2016
  14. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    Please don't think that I'm preaching at you, or even specifically addressing the past experiences you have been brave enough to share, but your post raises some good general points of discussion on the subject of self-defence.

    I think there are obvious reasons why some of the more respected self defence instructors end up broadening their scope to general life coaching and self empowerment. Once you get past the small risk from strangers, you have to start asking wider questions about self-destructive behaviour, hazardous lifestyles and unhealthy relationships.

    Calling the police is self-defence, contacting domestic abuse services and charities is self defence, gaining qualifications so that you can support yourself independently is self-defence, learning to feel good about yourself so that you feel you deserve a caring partner is self-defence...

    For me, all aspects of self-defence and fighting essentially come down to freedom of choice. You choose how a situation will play out (as far as any human can predict such things), and you are equipped mentally and physically to stand by your decisions and enact them. Sometimes, people may choose to keep contact with abusive people out of compassion, but that has to come from an objective assessment of one's motivations, and also with appropriate safeguards. Once a person feels trapped or powerless, they have become a victim to either the abusive person or their own insecurities. That is when exiting the situation is almost always the preferable course of action for all involved.
     
  15. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    You're not wrong. There are in fact situations in which the only legitimate response is to fight back. In that situation, having learned to fight very much coincides with the term self defense.

    Self defense however operates by a much broader definition that branches out into many different aspects of our lives. The term generally means protecting yourself from harm, which can include emotional and mental well being as well as physical well being. Self defense is more of an awareness of what's going on around you and how best to move forward in a situation in order to avoid conflict or personal harm, or manipulate your way out of it. It can also be pretty ambiguous at times in how we apply it.

    I won't use your life experiences that you shared as an example to emphasize and clarify my point, I will use myself however.

    Back in 2012 I exited the military and moved to DC with my now ex wife. I didn't know at the time that I was having symptoms from a traumatic brain injury due to an IED blast that occurred while I was deployed. In DC, I started boxing. That was a complete failure at self defense. I ignored panic attacks, deafening tinnitus, disorientation, and bouts of dizziness and difficulty thinking in order to participate in a sport that isn't exactly good for your brain.

    During this time as I revealed in a prior post, I was involved in an emotionally abusive relationship with the woman I was married to. Everything worked out for about a year until I had my first boxing match. It was my first fight ever, and I ended up allowing myself to be put into a situation where I was fighting a man that outweighed me by 40+ lbs, was nearly a foot taller than me, looked like an NFL linebacker, and had prior fights. I ended up getting knocked out and receiving another brain injury. The very fact that I stepped into the ring with this guy while unknowingly already suffering from a prior brain injury was another complete failure at self defense. I could have easily made the choice to get myself checked out at the Veteran Affairs hospital to see what was going on with the strange symptoms I had been experiencing prior to taking up boxing, and I certainly could have opted out of fighting somebody twice my size with prior experience. Those decisions would have preserved my well being and helped to avoid the situations I found myself in.

    When I was injured in the boxing match, it was catastrophic. I was bed ridden for around a month. I got up once a day in the morning to defecate and I urinated in bottles because of the pain involved with trying to move around. I took one shower by way of baby wipes. Needless to say, it was pretty bad.

    As time went on, I got very little to no assistance to the woman I was married to. My brain injury healed up within a few months, but my PTSD symptoms from experiences in service manifested themselves as the same symptoms from my brain injury. I wouldn't know this for over a year and a half because my ex wouldn't take me to the hospital due to being "too busy."

    Unlike you, my experiences in life have made me very untrusting of other people and extremely cynical towards nearly everything. That said, I am unconditionally trusting and fiercely loyal to the people I love and care about. I had multiple opportunities to go from DC to Florida for medical help and assistance by my family during the year and a half I suffered, but I stayed because my ex said she needed me there for emotional support. She didn't think she would be able to do well in law school without me being there, so I stayed regardless of the lack of help she gave me and the emotional abuse she put me through that worsened my symptoms. This was another catastrophic failure in self defense. Due to my love and loyalty towards her, I failed to see the abusive relationship I was in and I failed to make a correct decision to get the help I needed. It resulted in a loss of over a year of my life (in which I mean I couldn't even walk outside due to severe panic attacks, I lived in a 1 bdrm apartment for over a year, it was terrible).

    In retrospect, all of these situations occurred because of my lack of ability or complete refusal to look out for myself. It occurred either because of my ignorance, or refusal to admit that the situation I was in was harmful to me. Although my recounting of these events may seem like they apply ambiguously to self defense, if we look at the harm that occurred to me and took my definition of protecting one's physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing from earlier in the post . . . . it's pretty clear cut that my self defense skills when applied to relationships and life decisions was pretty terrible.

    So now I don't involve myself with other people who are extremely selfish, emotionally unavailable, and irrationally insecure. I also avoid people who are narcissistic or show traits of borderline personality disorder. There are very clear cut signs of these personalities, although I'll admit I've benefited from seeing a psychiatrist the last two years and have had plenty of practice reviewing information pertaining to them. I also don't push myself so much physically that I break myself, I don't work through sickness, and I don't engage in activities where there is a good chance of me getting cracked real hard in the head on the regular. These are all decisions that help in the defense of myself, hence being self defense.

    Most people think the term involves fighting or avoiding conflict. For example, prior to moving to DC I studied crime maps to pick the best location to live and not be assaulted. When I landscaped for a bit I would always walk around with a large knife or tool in my hand. We would work in some of the ghettos (our work truck had bullet holes in it) and I was white, and I'm positive walking around like that helped me avoid being a target. I tend to dress grungy and walk around like I'm mad all the time which keeps people from bothering me. It also keeps me from being a target for people looking to mug or rob somebody. I also don't put myself into dangerous situations where I'm likely to get in fights or experience crime. It's good to be anti-social ^_^

    Self defense isn't as clear cut as being able to fight your way out of a situation. It applies more to life decisions that keep yourself protected and out of harms way, and it can be applied in a plethora of situations we find ourselves in every day.




    ..



    I also notice you mention a lack of confidence in your ability to fight a lot. As you are a ballerina I can tell you that you're not lacking in strength or physical prowess in order to successfully fight another person regardless of their gender. Usually the lack of confidence that you're having is more involved with a lack of experience rather than a lack of ability. There's a solution to it. Spar, spar, and spar some more. Get involved with a martial art like Brazilian Jui Jitsu, Boxing, Muay Thai again, Judo, MMA, etc.. All of these should have sparring involved as a part of a regular class. You can't learn to fight without fighting, no matter how many times you hit a bag!
     
  16. Knee Rider

    Knee Rider Valued Member Supporter

    Much respect for your comprehensive, personal and well written post, Ero.
     
  17. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    God damn brother. Absolute truth. I read your post and it brought a tear to my eye but the bit I've quoted is a damn home run of a point and should be on t-shirts and put up in every martial arts school/gym or dojo.
     
  18. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    QFT. Ero, you said it better than I ever said it in the past.
     
  19. Rated Red

    Rated Red ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Supporter


    I cannot reiterate how very sorry I am for the things you've endured emotionally, mentally and physically. My heart goes out to you. It really does. Your story is touching and I would like to thank you for having the courage and the willingness to open up and share your private struggles and tribulations in your reply and of course, your advice, everything was well put and sound. I'd also like to add that I think you're incredibly strong for pulling yourself through all of the obstacles and hardships you faced and most importantly, finding the willingness and learning how to make your own well being a priority in your life and also taking the steps to remove yourself from a seemingly very one-sided, selfish and toxic relationship as hard as it may have been to do so.

    Not sure if you intend on getting involved with another person someday, but if / when you do I hope that she's the kind of person who enters your life that has a natural ability (natural being the key word) to help restore your trust in mankind, 'Chewy' ;) Too soon??? :D

    Yep you're correct, I don't have the fighting experience but I strongly believe that I don't have the mental capacity to inflict physical harm. I don't even have it in me to kill a fly and I loathe them. I love to eat lobster but as soon as we make eye contact I can't throw him in a pot of boiling water because I don't want to hurt it. I'm pathetic. I know dipteras and crustaceans are not even remotely close to this subject, but I'm guessing you'll grasp my point haha.

    On a serious note, I've placed a great deal of thought into this and I think the only time I would feel aggressive enough to get physical is if I felt or witnessed my loved ones, a child or animal in danger.

    In regards to getting back into a MA, I am actually doing Tai Chi (Chen style) and absolutely love it but again it's not something that I am able to dedicate myself to more than 1 to 2x's a week due to long-standing commitments I have. There are a few people in my life who are experienced BJJ practitioners who have encouraged me to take BJJ up; I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask them to teach me on an occasional Saturday or Sunday to roll. I don't necessarily want to burn myself out though, I use the weekends as rest days.
     
  20. philosoraptor

    philosoraptor carnivore in a top hat Supporter

    For whatever it's worth, BJJ is a really great art for dealing with one person whom you don't want to hurt. You have a lot of options open to you that don't necessarily involve striking them, up to and including just restraining them until assistance arrives. It's also one in which the disparity between even slightly trained practitioners and untrained beginners is so large that it can be used to effectively neutralize stronger practitioners. The training however is very physical - I'm from Texas and in general if you're less than a meter away you're invading my personal space. It took me a while to get comfortable to the degree of contact. I'd also say that dealing with striking from a grappling position is rarely covered or practiced in the BJJ I've done, such that, although it gives you the tools to deal with such situations, supplementary training is a pretty damn good idea.
     

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