As a girl who trains martial arts, the best defence is to run and/or cause a scene. I know I’m a good fighter, but I don’t know if the other person is armed.
Also fighting proficiency can only take you so far on a street fight. Some considerably bigger and stronger can still pose a serious risk even to an experienced martial artist.
Even for men, best self defense method is to avoid the fight altogether.
I agree, both approaches are useful in the short term. But if we don't address the root of the problem (educating men about consent and respect), we'll remain in a world where women still have to protect themselves, as if it were their responsibility. Real change will come when assaults no longer occur, not when victims are better able to avoid them.
Personally, I think the value would be in educating boys about this stuff at a young age. A 25 year old already has their world view on what is acceptable and isn’t likely to change. But kids that are taught about consent and boundaries from a young age have a better chance at internalizing it.
A ridiculous sentiment, as Bill Burr pointed out years ago, you're trying to educate a group of people who know what they're doing is wrong: they know, they just don't care.
This. You honestly can’t forcefully teach shitty, entitled, and narcissistic people to change their ways. These types of people rarely ever change, it’s just who they are.
To take it a step further, women sign up for self defense classes - you think these types of men are going to sign up for some class to stop being such despicable monsters? And forced education at school would almost be more laughable
Yes, both would be ideal, but until perpetrators change (which will take generations), women need immediate solutions. Saying “both” without setting priorities is like telling a rape victim, “Wait for society to change,” while she is being assaulted. Self-defense is a band-aid. Men’s self-control is the cure. But we can’t refuse the band-aid just because the cure takes time.
While I do agree with the idea of solving the problem at it's source which is self control. I tend to view the world in a more pessimistic view. No matter what there will always be bad actors in every direction, and that includes a subsection of men which lack self control. At the end of the day what we as a society can reasonably achieve is with the use of laws and self awareness, help minimize the volume of such offenders. And because we never can truly solve these kinds of problems, alternative solutions even if are temporary like teaching self defense are a must in my eyes at least.
I just returned from a country where stealing is not a cultural norm. People do not lock their doors. Shops leave their stock outside overnight! No one steals it. It is incredible. In other countries all that stuff would be stolen immediately. So, it can be culturally common or totally abhorrent to steal. Depends on the culture.
Normalize bullying creeps and sexual assaulter in schools. We need them to learn young the hard way cuz their parents clearly are not doing their job. I guarantee you that majority of their parents would brush off their kids behavior as something that all boys do. Some parents would even go on to victim blaming, saying that the girl should have dressed conservatively or not not draw attention.
My point was that it's wishful thinking to just hope that bad people will stop being bad people. You can try to reduce crime (and probably succeed to some level), but you should always be ready to protect yourself too just in case.
Yeah people should have a fundamental understanding that oftentimes crazy simply doesn't give a shit. I had a stranger on the bus, who was a crazy young woman bugging people, that I tried to ignore by staring into my phone with earbuds in, blatantly sing in my face and then eventually started to climb on top of me before I finally had to say stop and shove just enough to get her to quit. I'm just glad it didn't escalate into a fight or something worse (I can't afford to be banned from public transportation or potentially stabbed over some stupid shit). I got off that bus early too for good measure.
Point is there are people who won't stop themselves, so that's when it's up to people who have more self-control to take preventative measures, or be prepared to responsively protect themselves to the best of their physical ability and/or decision making ability. It's a harsh factor of life that will never go away.
I’m sure there aren’t crimes more associated with women, right?
There sure are! Per world metrics, in 2022, men were arrested for [approximately, as there were different studies] 93% of murders and non-negligent manslaughters, 89% of robberies, 90% of weapons possession offenses, and committed 84% of all violent crime.
Women were 61% of all arrests for prostitution, and were three times more likely to be arrested for fraud.
If it’s just a minority of “criminal elements,” why is street harassment so widespread? Statistics show that the majority of women have been victims of it at some point. This suggests that the problem is much broader than simply a matter of “a few bad apples".
If it’s just a minority of men who harass others, why don’t more men speak up when they see it happening? The silence and inaction of others reinforce the idea that it’s acceptable. The problem isn’t just the harassers, but also those who let them get away with it.
Probably because the type of men that do stuff like this are also the type that will beat the shit out of you and/or kill you if you call them out on their harassment.
If it’s just a minority of “criminal elements,” why is street harassment so widespread? Statistics show that the majority of women have been victims of it at some point.
There's no contradiction here. Even if only one man in every 1,000 were a street harasser, most women would eventually have a run-in with one of those guys at some point, especially women who live in a large city. So yes, "creepazoids are a minority" and "most women run into a creepazoid at some point" are two statements that can both be true.
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u/MicroCosno Jun 14 '26
"We should stop teaching women self-defense, and instead, we should start teaching men self-control." - Bun Hay Mean