Revisit: lack of reports of women fighting off assailants
The first month this site existed, I wrote a post asking why there weren’t more news stories about women fighting off their would-be rapists (or other types of assailants). It must happen occasionally; so why do you never see the headline "Woman fights off attacker?" (At the time, I Google’d and Yahoo’d many versions of the phrase "woman fights off attacker/rapist" and found nothing - now that same search brings up a few stories - all dated after my initial post.)
The responses were more interesting than the article, and I recommend reading the comments from the first article and the follow-up if you want to respond to this, because we covered a lot of basic questions, including the point that no one wants to glorify fighting assailants rather than submitting. There is no right or wrong response to being attacked. It’s just that we hear so many stories of women being unable to fight back, or choosing to submit (perfectly valid) that it couldn’t hurt to have the occasional story of a different response.
I did find this news story from Denver, from November 2005 reported as "elderly woman fights off attacker": to sum up, a man knocked on the apartment door of an elderly woman. When she opened it he tried to grab her. She screamed, and that alone was enough to scare him off.
Let’s go back over this: she screamed. He left. Yeah, sometimes that’s all it takes. But how many women are so frozen with fear from all the horror stories of assault they’ve heard that by the time it occurs to them to scream, it’s too late? How many of us would stand there thinking, "I must be misinterpreting - he can’t be intending to hurt me" until it’s too late? Does a story like this not at least plant a seed of resistance in a mind programmed to be submissive and cooperative since birth? A sense of entitlement to fight back, if you have the opportunity?
And here’s another story from December 2006 in Chicago: a man attempted to drag this woman out of her car. She locked her arm through the inside of the steering wheel and proceeded to scream and honk the horn repeatedly until he gave up and left, cautioning her to tell no one. She instead gave a really good description to police and got the man arrested within an hour.
Another story from November 2006 depicts a San Jose woman being pulled to the ground on a jogging trail by an attacker. Sketchy details, but it says she "freed herself", and he left.
These aren’t stories of women doing martial arts moves or using guns to protect themselves. These are situations in which a woman dealing with an unarmed attacker decides that she has a fighting chance and she’s going to take it.That’s what I was looking for when I wrote the original article.
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13 comments
I can remember back in 1985, when we did a college production of “Extremities,” the local rape crisis center gave a number of talk-backs to our audience. They discussed this very issue, and to my surprise, generally dissuaded women from fighting back. The gist of the argument was that many assailants will assert their power via the sexual assault, but fighting back can and often does escalate the attack to the point of murder. While a small percentage of sexual assaults will ultimately end in the taking of the woman’s life - and if that’s the intent, there’s little a woman can do to prevent this (based on their perceptions) - escalating the violence can provoke the assailant to greater demonstrations of their “power” that weren’t the original intent.
That was a long time ago, and I’m not certain if over the intervening years statistics have proven this wisdom to be incorrect, but this has always stuck with me, and I’ll admit to having this advice in the back of my mind. As a survivor of an abusive relationship, both physical and sexual, I know that I frequently took the tack of non-resistance because it tended to end the encounters more quickly. Based on that personal experience, this did ring true for me. I wonder how many women may choose not to fight back or resist because of similar advice or logic.
Fran, I know in 1990 a local university was advocating non-resistance.
Not because it could escalate to your death, though: because it could lead to vaginal trauma and other physical injury to you. They also advised that if you could fantasize about something and get yourself lubed up, that would be even safer for you!
Oh my goddamn. They really advised trying to lie back and enjoy it. Is there a rapist lobby that paid them to say that, or something?
I guess I’m of the opinion that most people can figure out all by themselves that if someone would rape you, who knows what else he’s capable of? I’m not sure this message of non-resistance could possibly do as much good as it does harm.
Who’s to say non-resistance doesn’t sometimes escalate the crime to murder? It all depends what’s in the assailant’s head, and that can be any of several different things.
Maybe because I’ve been in martial arts since the early 1980’s but I’ve never heard anyone state that you should not resist.
In fact what I’ve been told since I was a kid was to scream and fight as much as I could to raise attention and give myself a chance to run, and we are talking 1960’s here. I was given this advice by my parents, school teachers and security consultants.
Predators go for victims they perceive as weak and easy prey they don’t tend to go for the ones that will give them trouble, so the more trouble you are the more there is a chance that the predator will be surprised and worried about the attention it will garner, and just leave.
My own experience supports this twice. Once when I was a kid and was followed by someone who tried to get my into their car where I basically refused, screamed really loudly, ran back to my house and told my parents.
And another time when I was in university and was followed by someone on a deserted street at night (there had been a rash of rapes in the downtown area) and instead of running, I grabbed my book bag, turned around, prepared myself to swing it at the person and in a very loud voice said “what do you want?”. The guy stopped dead in his tracks and promptly ran down the alley he’d come from.
Never knew if the guy was actually a predator or not but I wasn’t going to take a chance. If he wasn’t then he’ll have learned that following and keeping pace with a woman at night on a deserted street may not be a good idea. If he was a predator then I hope I gave him a heart attack!
As my sensei use to say, it’s better to fight and get a chance to escape then to just sit there and let it happen.
I’ve talked to a number of other people who have also heard the non-resistance speech - some of them read here, so they may chime in.
I agree that predators generally go for people who look like easy prey, which is why I advocate teaching girls to feel absolutely entitled to err on the side of caution when they think someone might be out to hurt them.
I got that sense of entitlement when I was a child. Is it THE reason I’ve never been raped? No, it’s one reason. The other is that I haven’t encountered a smart man who was determined to rape me. That’s something that needs to be mentioned in this discussion: many predators will avoid a woman who doesn’t look like easy prey and move on to another that does. But some target specific victims - in fact, given that most women are raped by men they know, it’s not a stretch to guesstimate that maybe most predators target specific individuals. And like any good security expert will tell you, security systems make you home look like tough prey, but if someone wants to break into your home rather than just a home, there’s always a way. And it is never the homeowner’s fault.
Don’t get me wrong I do believe that non-resistance has been taught, I’m just horrified that it’s been taught at all, anywhere! It’s basically teaching women to surrender control to someone else, it’s just incredible that they would say that.
And yes there is always the fear that it’s someone you know but again the same thing applies. If you don’t fight then it will happen, if you do fight then it may not happen.
Again maybe I have a skewed view of things since I’ve been doing martial arts for over 20 years by now and I’ve always been fairly aggressive due to doing a lot of sports including hockey from a very young age and learning to stand my ground against the boys.
I just can’t believe that they would actually teach non-resistance. Everything I’ve seen and been taught says that would should fight, scream, do something to attract attention.
Just to add in case I’m not being clear, I’m not saying that it’s the victims fault at all, no one knows how they will react in a situation like that and any human reaction is valid and every situation is unique. You don’t resist when there is a gun in play unless you happen to be Superman
However if they are teaching that non-resistance is the way to go, then they are removing a possible defense from a woman’s arsenal and that is incredibly horrifying to me.
I didn’t put my remarks in context there, so: I didn’t think you were doubting us about the non-resistance - I was just adding more to earlier points. Nor did I think you were saying a submissive response is wrong or shameful - I just feel that’s a point that ought to be mentioned at least once in every discussion, just in case someone who’s new to these concepts is forming that impression from reading them.
I almost mentioned in the initial post that I would not advise screaming at someone who has a gun. Now, personally, I might go right ahead and do it - I don’t know, but so far every time I’ve been confronted with a bully who’s threatening me with bodily harm, I’ve gotten in their faces and mouthed off in a way I would not advise anyone else to do.
But that’s kind of my point here. If a person prefers to fight, then even if she gets killed, I’m not going to say she was dumb - she did what seemed right to her. And if someone prefers to submit - ditto. What I’d love to see happen is for women to realize they have a variety of options, and won’t be judged no matter which one they choose. That’s what we’re so painfully far away from.
Everyone keeps telling women what to do: there’s a lot less reporting of the things women actually do, and it threatens our perception of our own agency.
I think you guys have already seen this, but I posted my personal account of fighting off an attacker here.
I’m not surprised people didn’t want to get involved in your crime. In the 80’s, they advised yelling “fire” not “rape” if you were attacked somewhere that people might hear you scream. Fire is contagious and could affect the selfish assholes, so they will usually at least come out to investigate which might scare the attacker off. Rape is contained and something people routinely think they need not worry about.
True. By posting that experience, I learned a lot of strategies from various people that might have helped. In another episode of being accosted in a public place, people suggested singling out an individual bystander to ask for help instead of yelling a general call for help.
That’s not a bad idea.
I do think the more strategies you hear about when you’re calm and receptive, the more ideas you’ll have when you’re scared and panicking. I need to go back and read the comments on your entry there.
I also wish the law didn’t require folks to press charges against these people. No one has to press a homicide charge. Why are things like stalking, kidnapping and assault different? It implies, “Okay, the DA really doesn’t give a shit about this crime, but you know, if you want to make extra paperwork for us, you shit, I guess we’ll go through the motions. Is that what you want, asshole?” And it sends criminals the message that this crime is just between them and their victim - the law is only reluctantly becoming involved.
Because when someone asks if you want to press charges, I think my first though would be, “Oh, shit, that’ll REALLY piss the criminal off and I know the cops aren’t going to bodyguard me. Crap, should I do this?”
It should not be my choice. It should be the local law enforcement’s job.
Oh, word. I never thought about it that way.
The thing that stuck with me about doing that play (”Extremities”) was the talk-back with the playwright, a man, who explained what inspired him to write the piece. He worked in a liquor store, he said, and became friends with a regular customer who had been the victim of a rape. She went through the humiliating physical exam, pressed charges, got her character ripped apart on the stand, and lost most of her friends in the process, only to have her assailant get off on a technicality.
Her rapist walked up to her on the courthouse steps after the trial, and in full view of her lawyers, said, “If you think it was bad the last time, bitch, wait until next time.”
According to the playwright, she packed her bags, bought a one-way ticket across the country, and left that week. Stopping to say good-bye to him before she left, the last thing she said was, “I just wish that I’d had fifteen minutes alone with the guy.”
The playwright went home, and in one night, wrote “Extremities.” It was, he says, that woman’s fifteen minutes. He also said that he will never judge a woman who can’t bring herself to report this crime, after understanding that we’re a society that does everything but outright condone the act.
That’s always a good idea no matter what the emergency because while sometimes people are just selfish assholes who can’t be bothered unless they are shamed into it, a lot of times people freeze up (that would be me) and giving a specific person a specific task helps them shake off the shock start moving again.
Just another reason why having good strategies* for dealing with this stuff is helpful. It’s just like the idea of drilling “stop, drop, and roll” or walking calmly when you hear the fire alarm into kids - practice makes perfect. But since we can’t always practice for emergencies, having some clear ideas of what we can do when they arise helps us focus and makes it less likely we will end up running around fanning the flames on our clothes - so to speak.
And while it’s always best to assess the situation as best you can, and there is no right or wrong action, and certainly no perfect solution on how potential victims “prevent” rape, it does seem to me that all the evidence points to fighting backearly usually being the best bet.
*as opposed to bad ones like “don’t wear revealing clothes!”
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