This has happened to me twice... I'm chatting with a girl I just met & she asks what I do for a living. Once I tell her I'm a Krav Maga instructor she gets all tickled and says she ought to train, and tells me what she does for fun: she goes down to Sixth Street on the weekend and picks fights with guys. This is to say, she says or does something so irritating or offensive to a male stranger that he tells her to shut up, go away, etc. So she punches him in the face as hard as she can.
Since a guy will get hauled off to jail if he punches a female, he feels like he can't retaliate (or, in this case, defend himself) so she "won". And these girls were pretty proud of themselves when they told me this & expected me to applaud them. It was everything I could do to restrain myself from removing their teeth.
The truth is, I was so shocked and offended by them that I really had no idea what to say. So I got very quiet and still and said that if they act like that they can't train at our school.
Really, I chickened out. I tend to say cruel things when I'm really angry and I want to avoid that, plus I was so stunned by their behavior that my brain shut down. Saying Fit and Fearless won't accept students who bully and attack others its true, but it was still a cop out on my part. Here's what I'd like to say:
*If you punch people in the face for fun you deserve to get punched back. I don't care who you are. There are people who engage in this behavior because they are with a friend who trains in martial arts & the puncher assumes they're immune from retaliation because their friend will "take care of it". If I see someone acting like this I will not help them. After they get their ass beat, I'll tell their mother on them.
*Young lady, the man who is not punching you back is not refraining because you're so tough. He is using self control because he doesn't want to go to jail and/or he's been taught not to hit a female under any circumstances. The fact that you're exploiting this makes you a bad person. I will now refer you to the previous point.
*You're making me look bad. Many people assume that women who engage in the "hard" martial arts are crazy or mean angry bitches with a chip on their shoulder. I make a point to dress very girly and be nice and friendly so that people understand that normal girls like to train, too. Your behavior is reinforcing the stereotype of the angry-nutjob fighter girl.
*You are preventing other women from training. Yes, this is a continuation of the previous point, but the last one was mostly about me. This is about every female who has been told there's something wrong with her because she wants to train. It's for every female who has hidden or downplayed the fact that she trains because she doesn't want to be judged as being damaged or warped or hating men. Getting women to walk in the door of a martial arts studio and accept that it's okay to hit and be hit on the mat is difficult enough. If other females believe that it's okay for normal women to step on the mat and go hard they're more likely to give it a try. The fact that you assault people then brag about it makes sane women want to avoid anything that even resembles you.
*I'm not quite sure how to put this, but I also believe that a person who has been subjected to an injustice, as the men you assault have been, tends to adopt a "never again" attitude. I don't blame them. What this means to me is that he is more likely to strike a woman in the future, and it will probably not be a woman who is as prepared for violence as you seem to fantasize you are. Violence against women is endemic in the human race. I suspect you may be cementing the belief batterers hold that we all have it coming.
I think that about covers it. If anyone can tell me how to say that in under one minute and without resorting to the swear words that are so dear to me, I'm taking suggestions.
Parker, I have heard my husband say on a few occasions "If you hit me like a man, be prepared to be hit BACK like a man". End of discussion. Needless to say, he's right. While I commend men for not being baited into this no - win nightmare these shrewish hags have set them up for, one of them may find someone with the same mentality as my bluntly honest husband. I can tell you right now, if I see a woman hitting my man in public, while I'm sure he'll not pummel them into pulp because he IS truly a gentleman, you can rest assured, justice will be dealt swiftly and it will be a lesson they'll only need to learn once. These imbeciles are usually easy to spot and avoid as most trolls are.
ReplyDeleteTJ
Agreed, TJ.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Parker! I wish I had a snappy retort for you to use, but I'm as stumped as you are, probably in most part because of the sheer awfulness of what that girl is doing!
ReplyDeleteI do want to add that it really boils my blood that she (and her friends) are exploiting the fact that Moms like me (and Aunties, Grandmothers, Sisters, Teachers...etc etc) spend YEARS teaching young men to be gentlemen, and not to hit women except as concerns life or death... Only potentially to be undone by some silly b*tch playing games because she thinks its funny...and to what end? Its all a power play to her, and it leaves the guy thinking (among other things) "why did my Mom/Sister/Aunt etc teach me not to hit girls when girls like this so clearly deserve to get hit?"
I'm finding that my conclusion is that what this girl is doing - given that its purely about power, and physical power even (because she is actually striking the guys, with apparent impunity) - is little better than rape. Its her, using her "power" to perform an unwanted physical act against a chosen victim who is (by reason of social construct/morality, in this case) unable to retaliate in kind. (With all respect to women who have suffered through violence, I do not mean to downplay it by drawing a correlation to this woman's acts!!)
I suppose that a statement like that could be made in response and in under one minute...e.g. "What you're doing is no better than rape" (for the reasons I enumerated above).... just a thought.
~Heather (from Westlake class)