I'm in my mid twenties and I've been thinking about an experience I had a few years ago that was uniquely feminist and probably very rare in the world - a women-led martial arts and self-defense gym. After training judo, jiu-jitsu, and self-defense there for many months, I attended college in NYC, and realized how differently I was thinking about the spaces I took up. So I'm deciding to share this.

I was a teen when I wanted to take a course on a relatively dangerous part of town (countless videos of young boys stealing people's phones, carrying knives, etc.). I have a dad who grew up running away from these boys and he set up a condition for me to attend. I was the only woman taking the course to top things off. He'd only pay for those classes if I took self-defense classes on a gym nearby at the same time. Seemed rather okay to me, and he was also very excited that the gym was led by a woman. So I started taking self-defense.

The first thing they taught was not allowing a man to hug downwards on your waist for a group photo and to redirect their arms to over your shoulders where they have less body control. There was also a lot about keeping a safe distance and your physical balance, pushing a man away from you with your forearm and elbow, how to take your hand away if it is grabbed, and discussions about what to do if you have a feeling you are being followed. Do you look back or ignore it? How to look? A lot of the work involved keeping a good posture and learning how to look the opponent in the eyes to practice a minimal semblance of dominance that could potentially discourage an attacker.

With judo and jiu-jitsu I got to learn how to immobilize a subject's arm with techniques used by police. It was never about physical strength but about understanding where body joints are weakest and taking advantage of them. The defenses against choking were also pretty cool, sometimes just simply turning your neck around so that the attacker can't access the right spot to make you black out. This way you can buy yourself a few seconds and try out other ways to set free. We practiced dealing with physical discomfort and breathing calmly even when someone bigger is weighing down on you.

It was also nice that the gym owner was a former champion who held classes of her own and encouraged community. She had travelled the world for competitions and took a little notebook with all the little things she wished existed in an ideal gym for women. So the bathroom had extra hair ties and brush, a spray deodorant, and a poster for who to contact if you saw or experienced anything bad/suspicious (on the inner door of the bathroom stall).

What I most liked were the talks and discussions held on women's safety. It was a mixture of self-defense, research, and acting, where we would reenact situations of being stuck on an elevator with a potentially dangerous man, learn that it was better to shout "FIRE" in a case of a domestic fight in order to make neighbors come out, and that the worst thing you can do if a man wants to drag you around is let yourself be taken into a car, and that they have around 1 minute and 30 seconds to get it all done before fearing that they might get caught. Every second counts and all ways of making it harder for them can quickly add up and make them give up. There were lessons on how to respond to armed robbery (basically keep calm and safety first), how to pretend you're calling someone on the phone, using the excuse that your father or boyfriend are about to pick you up, and search for cameras (or point them out) on the areas around in order to discourage someone from doing something worse to you on an empty street. The main message was that, in order to best defend ourselves, we had to understand a little bit about the mind of the offender, and what he is considering before doing an act, and that prevention, is the safest form of self-defense. Offenders always look for opportunities. Just don't be one of those opportunities. Never put yourself in a vulnerable situation in the first place, for instance, don't put yourself in a public space completely alone, nor have a first date in a remote place. It was a very realistic approach. Men will be afraid of other men, so use that to your advantage. If you're not the easiest target for the attacker, they will simply move on and find an easier one.

Now, the gym owner isn't what you'd imagine from a feminist. She is relatively politically traditional with family. Right-winged and connected to paramilitias, and was housing her uncle who was disallowed from entering the USA for punching and severely injuring a man, even though he owned a gym there. There were seemingly NO lefties in that space.

I knew I was a lesbian and I never talked about it on the many months I trained there. Another woman who considered me like a little sister was trying to set me up with the gym owner's nephew, who was training to be a fighter, and I just kindly refused whenever the conversation came up. I generally kept quiet and listened and tried to make everybody feel comfortable.

It was a feminist space, of course, but it wasn't necessarily political. A lot of men trained there, and parents were encouraged to train together and train with their kids as well.

Times when I used self-defense:

I experienced all of this before going to college in NYC. I remember my first semester where I went to a park with some friends for a night festival, and I immediately knew that place was very dangerous. Luckily it was a festival and there were some other people around. The park had really dense vegetation and was placed on a slope with many stairs, which made it hard to run away from someone, and curvy paths, which led to few visibility. The lights were few and far between and there didn't seem to be any cameras. It was also beside Harlem. My (female) friends were all having a great time but I was tense watching the area very carefully. Two months later, one of our classmates walked that exact path into the park after nightfall and was brutally killed by a thirteen year old boy with a knife who was robbing her, which went into the news. She died trying to climb the stairway to find help (there was a public safety cabin right at the top).

I went to many bars and a few nightclubs and it was easy to see how effective self-defense is. One guy was trying to hold my hand randomly as I walked on the dance floor, I yanked it away and stared at him as in, "wtf bro", and he apologized and pretended he didn't mean anything with it. It also made me realize "fun" situations that could be unsafe, like frat parties with big mosh pits where you can't even stand up on your own, and just frat parties in general. I also feel much safer as I can calculate whether I would win a fight against a guy. Obviously usually they would be stronger, but since it was a college situation, many of the boys there are very sheltered and wouldn't expect me to know self-defense, so they wouldn't be prepared for a potential reaction that would immobilize them, and knowing that can grant you a lot of confidence on your safety. It was also easy for me to say no for any advances while also being sympathetic to them. Sure, it didn't stop them from acting like stupid men, but at least there wasn't any fear factor involved and it was easy to dismiss them.

But then there were also mixed feelings about being a freshman with so much more self-defense experience than the vast majority of other girls in college. I could see others making so many mistakes and taking unnecessary risks, but I couldn't overreach. It also seemed as if the girls were crying wolf a lot in situations that were simpler than they seemed. For example, I had a non-binary friend who had a situationship with another non-binary friend. Of course nothing about labels changed the fact that her male friend acted like a dick. It was almost laughable. He decided to kiss another girl on HER bed since they were poly, and my female friend just couldn't seem to muster a way to say NO. Instead she spent the week sharing stories about having been raped, because apparently she was 'forced' to join the orgy by peer pressure. Stories like this disqualify people who actually suffer rape. They're not stories about violence, but about a woman's lack of self-esteem and difficulty to set boundaries. It's even worse when the woman doesn't even want to recognize she is a woman, and erases the own language and tools that are there to help here to defend herself. Sadly I didn't feel confident enough to express that because I feared she would take it the wrong way and victimize herself even further. All I could do was listen to her, pay attention, and be sympathetic.

We are never at fault for what happens to us, but we are completely responsible for how we handle it. The first trip I took on my own resulted on being harassed on the airplane. I was assigned the window seat beside five orthodox Jews - young men the same age as me who seemed like hermits. I was unaware that this segment of the religion completely separates the sexes, and therefore, they weren't used to having a young woman right beside them. Before the plane even moved from its parking station, I could sense from the corner of my eye that the boy beside me seemed irritable, and his hand was twitching a lot close to his crotch. I thought, that's not possible. We're in a public space... I continued using my laptop and feeling comfy in my big sweater. He kept doing it. So I decided to stare him down. I am very grateful for having taken self-defense. Because the moment I looked at his face, his eyes were already dead-set looking at me. I wasn't surprised. So there wasn't any moment of weakness. I stared him down hard, and stared at his hand, and went back and forth. Until he got the memo. I wasn't afraid of him because I knew I could take him down on a fight. What most concerned me was that contacting a crew member to leave that place wouldn't solve the problem when the guy was the problem. Eventually, when he left to go to the bathroom mid-flight, I spoke to his friend on the corridor seat, explaining calmly and loudly that his friend was masturbating to me, which may be considered harassment. The guy's head went red like a tomato, and he immediately asked me if he would prefer if he sat beside me instead. That seemed to suffice. I swear I would've acted differently if there weren't five men in the group.

I also went to NYC pride and experienced a wave of terror as people thought a failed firework was a gunman on the loose, and this enormous mass of people were shouting and running. I could sense the noise wasn't exactly a gun, but still I knew where to take my friend and to take advantage of parked cars for protection, all while keeping calm. It was easy to see the difference among people who didn't have any preparation. One was having an asthma attack, another vomiting, and one girl had completely forgotten about her phone on the grass, and was freaking out about losing it. Turns out by the end of it, there was no gunman, it was all just a misunderstanding. But I could've had a much more traumatic experience if I didn't have any preparation.

On lesbian bars I also felt really puzzled as to why - just WHY - they would always let in one or two lonely boys in the bars. The only reason why the bouncers let them in are because they're frail and not strong enough to seemingly pose a threat. I don't even mean the queer flavor of males who want to be in female spaces. I mean vanilla, basic, straight boys. Boys who were 'bisexual', or who clearly were just there to smile cunningly as they stared at all the girls' asses when dancing. I even saw a boy making a move on a girl there. Until on one night, I came over to a guy and said, "what are you doing here bro", and he made this incredible blank face of confusion. He stuttered and just kind of took a few steps away from me. I'm not scary by any measure. People always think I'm younger and I'm really short. But they understand tone and body language. I often wonder why women don't group up - even just four girls could easily threaten to take him down and "escort" him out of the bar - and there's a whole freaking room of women around him. There's not much I can do on my own unfortunately. Principally when any fight will lead to both persons being kicked out. And if I don't have numbers, it's unlikely I'll be able to control him on my own. Still, I don't understand why so many empowered queer women can't seem to even think about defending their own territory and spaces. So many words and almost no actions, accepting being stepped over again and again on our own spaces.

I'm not defending all women developing masculine/territorial thinking. I understand that not everybody likes thinking about safety all the time, or taking on a protector role, or even taking the risks to step up to certain situations. Not everybody has instincts to punch people back. It's not realistic to expect all women to take months of self-defense, that's a privilege. And I have never thrown a single punch around. I can't say I know violence, because I don't. But, all of this knowledge has turned out to be incredibly powerful, if not in a physical sense, in a psychological sense of self-sufficiency.

So why. Just why. Why do feminists refuse to promote this issue in a pragmatic way?? Is there just a lack of knowledge around this topic? Actual self-defense has so little to do with being Captain Marvel. It's not sexy, it doesn't look empowering. It just is a rediscovery of primal instincts of self-preservation. Recognizing your limits as the female of a mammalian species where males are biologically driven to fight for you. Using terrain and energy for your advantage. Keeping your mental balance by disallowing manipulation. Thinking strategically.

I've noticed that American women in particular don't want to be bothered, and Americans in general, seek to avoid realities of physical bodies, space, and geography, the most that they can. It was weird to go to a place where choking wasn't talked about in terms of fights, but as a desirable kink. I don't think Harlem is a place of lesser than people, I don't see why race is relevant, but I'm also not going to be stupid about the risks of walking there alone in a place where men hang around on the sidewalks. I'm going to research the places I'm going to before going there, and get to know locals beforehand if possible. I'm not going to adopt any ideologies or wishful thinking that are going to compromise my safety and that of my friends. And I'm not going to be silly about denying the reality of violence.

But nobody, not even other gay women, want to hear this kind of story when we're young and supposedly all-powerful and desired. There are costs to this illusory thinking. Girls are afraid to assert their opinions, to take up space, to take the initiative with dates. I ended up preferring dating older women because I was so tired about hearing self-righteous young women on all social issues act completely lost when it came to their own protection, displaying anxiety, fear, and blaming everyone except themselves for this perennial state. Do they want help? No. They think nothing, no nothing, about it, is their own responsibility.

Moderate women seem better equipped to defend themselves against male violence than left-winged women, from my own experience. Queer ideology completely hinders young women from recognizing their own responsibility to self-protect. I especially hate the whole top-bottom stereotypes, the view that some women just aren't made for protecting themselves. I'm glad that I was able to experience a place which tackled this issue in a no-nonsense way. Without pretensions to turn women into men, or applaud them for being masculine, or heroes. To just be real with women and let women being themselves WHILE also being their own simple kind of badass.