Solo Travel Articles:

• Solo Travel Gets An Unfair Rap
• Make Room For The Solo Travelers
• The Myth Of The Defenseless Woman
• No Terrorist Is Going To Stop My Travel Plans
• Getting in and out of the Wilds of West Hartford

Home :: Solo Travel Articles :: The Myth Of The Defenseless Woman

Three female surgeons, one of whom is six weeks pregnant, take off for a weekend at a cabin in the woods. Since the cabin belongs to a friend of a friend, the trio discovers too late its leaky roof, faulty bathroom plumbing and bum stove. The electricity fizzles. A local resident, whom the women met when they stopped in town for directions, appears at the cabin door offering help.

With relief, the pregnant surgeon welcomes him in. He restores the power. She asks him to try the plumbing and escorts him to the bathroom.

One of the other surgeons in the living room gets a feeling - odd how this man just appeared. Her friend says that she's imagining things. Not convinced, the suspicious surgeon heads to the bathroom. The door is locked. An attempted rape at knifepoint is in progress.

This old episode from the television drama "Chicago Hope" escalates. The investigating surgeon, trained in self-defense, kills the predator she only intended to stop. The story's provocative conclusion: The friends whose lives she may have saved ostracize her in horror.

Some women have recoiled from me, too, when they learn that my personal safety strategies include a willingness to use self-defense against violent attack. "Oh, I could never do that," they've said.

That's precisely what an attacker is counting on.

Law enforcement agencies, security experts, violence prevention organizations and convicted rapists tell us that attackers seek out the easiest target. They do not want a fight or a scene.

Thirty years of research on violent assault have shown that between 60 percent and 75 percent of women who engage in self-protective behaviors thwart their attackers.

If women choose not to resist, they should never be blamed for the assault. Only they can decide what feels right to them in the circumstances. Compliance is a survival option, but it should be one of many, not a singular default.

In the opening to his book "The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence," Gavin de Becker writes: "Men of all ages and in all parts of the world are more violent than women ..." Violence is anathema to most women. Though we have survival instincts, we are socialized toward compassion and beneficence and are not fluent in defensive physical force in our lifesaving lexicon. But with practice, we can be.

Pound for muscle-bound pound, most women are no match for even the most lithesome of attackers. Yet the notion that women are physically powerless against men is myth.

"What is a man?" asked my Rape Aggression Defense System instructor. The three women in class stared at him. "A man," he said, "is a human being. And a human being has vulnerabilities."

A national self-defense training organization, RAD includes a reference manual and a free lifetime return and practice policy with all of its programs. The techniques I learned during RAD's Basic Physical Defense Program could result in serious injury or death if effectively delivered. But not every situation requires such extreme measures.

RAD designs its simulated attack scenarios so that class participants - women only - have the opportunity to engage in a range of defense options - risk awareness, reduction, recognition and avoidance - before progressing to hands-on countermeasures when the attacker does not back off. For many women, this option is their fork in the road to survival - the willingness to inflict serious bodily harm, if necessary, in their efforts to escape.

There is no one way or sure way to prevent physical assault. But law enforcement experts agree that a woman's confident, alert and undistracted demeanor can go a long way toward discouraging would-be attackers from engagement.

The carriage of a woman trained in physical self-defense defines her boundaries while sending a potent message she may never need to act upon: "I'm not looking for trouble, but I'm willing and able to take care of business if it comes looking for me."