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Women, Feminism, and Self Defense

    by Janis Cortese

    One of the issues that most divides the second and third waves of feminism is the issue of personal safety. The second wave's brand of social activism is sometimes accused of being "victim feminism," and the third wave's desire for more practical solutions is sometimes called giving in to the patriarchy. The truth, of course, is somewhere in between.

    The Forest And The Trees

    Suppose you have a constantly recurring infection in your hand. It's dangerous, painful, and needs to be taken care of, so you go to the doctor.

    The first doctor tells you that you need to take antibiotics to save your hand. You do so -- but the infection keeps coming back. And this time, it comes back bad. Your hand is swollen up like a balloon, purple and sore. The first doctor just tells you to take another course of antibiotics to get rid of the infection, but says nothing about finding out what's causing these infections to reoccur. So, annoyed, you go to a second doctor.

    And this doctor wants to open you up and do a battery of tests on you to find out what is causing the infections to come back constantly. You ask for antibiotics to save your hand in the meantime, and you're told that that's just coddling the infection, and that you need to pay attention to the big picture. Frustrated beyond belief, you scream at how neither doctor seems to want to do what needs to be done:

    Cure the infection in your hand to keep from losing it in the short term, and test your body to see why the infections keep coming back in the long term.

    The first doctor sees only the short term problem -- the infected hand -- and doesn't see the larger problem in your body that's causing this to crop up time and again. The second doctor wants to pay attention to the larger picture at the expense of the short-term solutions that you need now, to keep from losing your hand.

    Both are right, and neither is right. You need a solution quickly to keep your hand, and you also need a longer term solution to prevent the infection from threatening you again.

    The Feminist Self-Defense Debate

    The feminist debate on women's safety is much the same way. Just like the above example, we have a problem that has more than one facet. We're living in a society that's turns out violent criminals in terribly high numbers, and we need to find out how to stop this process. But we also need to know what to do in the short term to keep the criminals from victimizing us.

    The second wave is like the second doctor -- paying attention to the large picture, but ignoring the very acute short-term problems. They are more than open to the optimistic and ambitious project of transforming society such that the "infection" of violent crime doesn't reoccur, but for the woman who has to walk to her car after coming off of swing shift tonight, it's not much help. She needs a solution now. The woman who hears someone crawling around downstairs is in similar straights. She needs a practical solution within the next twelve seconds, not only the next twenty years.

    A large portion of the gun lobby is like the first doctor. They will save you from the immediate threat of the "infection" of violence, but are disinterested or cynical about changing society such that the infection doesn't reoccur. For a woman who confronts the dangers of society all her life, she doesn't want to have to worry about defending herself constantly, as if things will never get better. She doesn't want to live her life with a serious of endless twelve-second short-term solutions. She wants the world to improve over twenty years as well. She needs it.

    One side sees only the forest, the other only the trees.

    And neither side seems to realize that you can do both.

    Change The World And Still Stay Safe

    This inability to see the forest and the trees, on both sides, means that when someone talks about "improving women's safety," they could mean either:

    * Changing society so we aren't so endangered, or

    * Making each individual woman better able to protect herself.

    Somehow, though, they got placed in opposite corners. The person who wants to transform society to make it better is must automatically be against the use of self defense options, especially firearms. The person who will use these options automatically doesn't care about the social effects that cause people to become violent criminals.

    This is just plain wrong. And it's third wave feminists who are proving it.

    The Third Wave's Unique Perspective:

    The New Feminist Outlook On Self-Defense And Firearms

    We know how social pressures can make a person act a certain way, how expectations can change the way you behave, or make you do dumb things that you wouldn't otherwise do (sleep with a rotten boyfriend, act dumb around guys, not ask for a raise if you're too nervous, or even do dangerous things like overdieting). So we know better than to say that social pressures have nothing to do with violent crime and that criminals are just morally bankrupt. We know that there must be a reason why so many of them come from abusive, depraved environments, and we can understand how that sort of upbringing can twist someone who would otherwise be a productive citizen.

    But we confront the effects of this violence more than anyone thinks, even us. And we're getting fed up with it.

    The numbers of women who have survived violence, some of us as kids, is astronomical, absolutely crazy. Naomi Wolf, in her latest book Promiscuities talks about how stunned she was when she began working at a rape crisis center and suddenly had her social life change dramatically. She would go to parties and, when the subject of her volunteer work came up, stories would come out of the woodwork all the time. "I was 16 when it happened to me." "I think I was about 5 or so. It was a friend of my father's." "I was in high school. It was behind the lockers after gym class." Stories came pouring out from women she'd walk past on the street without even considering that they'd been assaulted or raped.

    And, just like a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, I'm sick of a society that turns out so many depraved people in the first place. I'm sick of hearing statistics about how easy it is for someone in the inner city to grow up a criminal instead of going to college. And I can't kid myself that it's moral weakness or inferiority on their part that causes it. I'm not so arrogant as to believe that I might not be in the same condition if I grew up endangered, abused, or poverty-wracked. To believe that that sort of upbringing can't affect a human being is the rankest sort of naivete. I want to solve these problems.

    But, just like a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, I want to be safe. Unlike many of the second wave, the third wave lives alone, without a husband or even a friend or roommate in the apartment with us. We work at jobs that are demanding and can require that we stay late or work overtime. We need solutions that we can use now without waiting for society to catch up with us in thirty years. In thirty years, I'll be close to retirement. What do I do in the meantime?

    So I want to change society. I want to help somehow. I want to support shelters that will allow women to get out of abusive situations, rape counseling centers that will help us recover from sexual assault. I want to see schools improve so that kids in disadvantaged areas can look forward to more in life than an early death while seeing their friends die around them.

    And if I'm killed in the meantime, I can't do that, can I? I want all of that, but I also want to stay alive.

    I want the twenty-year solution of improving the world. But I need the twelve-second solution that will keep me around to do it should I wake up one early morning at 2am and see someone crawling in through my bedroom window.

    The third wave are the people who can understand how the desire to change the world isn't opposite from the desire to survive in it in the meantime. We're the ones who can heal the rift between the generations when it comes to self-defense.

    Firearms and Abortion -- Similar Debates

    We're also the ones who can see the parallels between two traditionally polarized and controversial topics -- firearms and abortion.

    Women have had that right to govern our reproductive life for some time, and judging from the way that the Supreme Court upheld Roe v. Wade, it's not going anywhere soon. We know what it means to have to make a tough decision with regrets waiting for us on either side. And we can see how much the debate over firearms is similar to the one over abortion, only with the camps completely switched.

    Conservatives Liberals

    "Women are naturally nurturing and nonviolent and so shouldn't have abortions!" "Women are naturally nurturing and nonviolent and so shouldn't have guns!"

    "Abortions are destroying the fabric of our society!" "Guns are destroying the fabric of our society!"

    "My sister's friend's gardener's dentist's second cousin had a bad experience with abortion, so no one should have one!" "My sister's friend's gardener's dentist's second cousin had a bad experience with guns, so no one should have one!"

    "Any women who would have an abortion must be that much closer to a murderer." "Any women who would have gun must be that much closer to a murderer."

    "Abortion kills in all instances! I'm against killing!" "Guns kill in all instances! I'm against killing!"

    "Those abortionist women don't understand the sanctity of life. I wish someone would just shoot them all." "Those gun crazies don't understand the sanctity of life. I wish someone would just shoot them all."

    "Those liberals say that sex education prevents abortions, but I think it just encourages kids to have sex." "Those conservatives say that gun education prevents accidents, but I think it just encourages kids to use guns."

    "What a pity you're pro-abortion. I'll pray for you, though." "What a pity you're a gun nut. You're just misguided."

    "Those women who have abortions must like the idea of killing babies." "Those women who have guns must like the idea of shooting people."

    "I don't care what your personal situation is, how frightened or afraid you are, or how backed into a corner you feel, abortion is wrong!" "I don't care what your personal situation is, how frightened or afraid you are, or how backed into a corner you feel, guns are wrong!"

    "Oh, come on -- it's not that bad." "Oh, come on -- it's not that bad."

    "I could never have an abortion. I'm just too nonviolent." "I could never have a gun. I'm just too nonviolent."

    And the real truth behind both opinions --

    "Women are too dumb to be trusted with a life or death decision." "Women are too dumb to be trusted with a life or death decision."

    See? This makes it a lot clearer. When you see it this way, it makes a lot more sense that the third wave would be more amenable to firearms and other less deadly means of self-protection (Model Mugging/Impact, pepper spray, martial arts, tasers, etc.) than the second. We grew up with Roe v. Wade guaranteeing our right to make that terrible decision, tough though it may be, so the rhetoric about how delicate or nurturing or nonviolent we are doesn't sit right with us. It's not a matter of delicacy or pacifism. It's a matter of staying alive.

    In truth, the cases where women have used abortion and firearms can be treated similarly, but in a different way. In both cases:

    * The woman who used it isn't a naturally violent person, but only someone confronted with an unpleasant choice who made the best choice she could under the circumstances.

    * The woman who used it understands that it wasn't wonderful to do so, but that she had little choice.

    * The women who hasn't used it but who wants the right to do so will sensibly do everything reasonable to avoid having to use it (using birth control, not walking around outside late at night and locking her doors).

    * The woman who used it regrets having to do it.

    * All women need to have that option there for them!

    In this vein, I fail to understand how second wave feminism can be so categorically opposed to firearms ownership for women! It's an ugly, terrible, unpleasant choice to have to make, one that any sensible woman would avoid, but . . . sometimes life hands you tough choices, and you have to make do.

    The conservatives like to say that pro-choice women are actually pro-abortion, that we enjoy the idea of pregnant women aborting, that we like it somehow. Liberal feminists say the same thing about people who have firearms for self-defense -- that we must, deep down, somewhere, enjoy the idea of shooting someone in order to protect ourselves.

    Nothing could be further from the truth.

    And, more than any other generation of feminists, the third waves knows that.

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