Self Defense For Women: Yes You Can Shoot Straight!

This is from 2008. It was a follow up to this piece: Armed and Dangerous – Shoot To Kill. Forget the peanut gallery. You too can be armed and dangerous…

To update in 2009… a couple years ago I wrote a series of posts about the stigma a woman faces when she defends herself. Simply put if two rapists break into two houses on the same block and one woman is raped, the other kills the guy, it will be the woman who defended herself who people put the shadow on. I think this is wrong.

Women (above all) should be able to defend themselves against a man with no stigma attached and this video as scary as some may think it is, hopes to introduce people to this concept. I have no obligation to allow a man to rape me just because he’d like to and either do you. Further, if we do wind up defending ourselves we need not give it another thought, second guess ourselves etc. Oh jeez, the poor rapist!

Fact is you are not supposed to come into someone’s house with the intent to hurt them and if you do so, you do so at your own risk. If people understood this there would be a lot less breaking in and raping going on…

23 thoughts on “Self Defense For Women: Yes You Can Shoot Straight!”

  1. I agree and would have no problem at all defending myself and my kids. I most definitely feel a sense of responsibility to do so.

  2. It would cause me angst (12th house Mars) but I would defend myself like that (Mars touches about everything in my chart haha).

  3. my father told me that if i ever pull a gun, i better intend to shoot it, and if i ever shoot, i should aim to kill. don’t give second chances if someone’s threatening your life.

    and i know, if my survival’s actually threatened, i will fight back. because i have and i would. something kicks in in the brain… instinct, i guess. i have no problem with instinct… it’s designed to save your ass… sometimes applying it properly in this culture is a little odd, and self control is always necessary, but, at least in my experience, it’s damn useful.

    and if someone so much as threatens my child… well, that’s a decision i don’t even have to stop to think about. personal survival shouldn’t be either, but the maternal instinct is even scarier than the self preservation instinct.
    scary in a good way, usually, i think.

  4. there’s a reason why the colt revolver was called the equalizer in the “wild west”- even a tiny woman with tiny hands could shoot it to defend herself.

  5. I just remembered a book that a friend of mine had. It was all about women serial killers. Obviously the guy who told you women wouldn’t defend themselves hadn’t read much about women and the crimes some of us have committed.

  6. It was all women teaching the class. And when I told the soldier about it, he couldn’t believe it and now when I look back, I can’t believe it either.

    he points out that you don’t mess with a Mama bears cubs. You don’t mess with a mama lion or any other mama in nature so what the hell?

    How did we (women) become convinced we are incapable of pulling a trigger therefore we must submit to being raped or worse?

    I am greatly relieved to have my sanity restored on this, I’ll tell you. I have NO doubt what I will do to someone who tries to harm me or why.

    Here’s the funny thing:

    They told in the class of some women who managed to fight off a rapist and they were heroes of course. But none of them just shot the bastard. I am sure if you just shoot the bastard you will be seen as repulsive but guess what? I am ready for that too. 😉

  7. Amber, I understand because I used to feel that way. I’d just stop at the fact the man is in my house…not continue thinking about what happens next/ By some kind of magic he decided to leave?

    Not personal to you – you can’t own a gun anyway but I realized / decided I was just not willing to co-operate with someone showing up to hurt me. He wants to rape me so I have to allow it? Think again!

    And in my case there has been a real shift which is why I made the video. I feel 100% better knowing exactly what I am going to do… having thought it though. There is no right in this country to come into the houses of women and rape them so if you try to do this in mine, you are going to have trouble and if you are a woman on my block, whose house do you hope the rapist goes to? Mine, yes?

    And that right there is how you have others do your dirty work.

    Again, this is not personal to you, it is just how (all of) life works.

  8. Oh hell no! I wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone who enters my house with the intent to steal or harm me or my children. I always go over this scenario over and over. I’d rather be safe than sorry……sorry that someone killed me, thus leaving my children motherless. Or my child/children being harmed/killed thus leaving me dead inside.
    Now considering I don’t have a gun, I have to comeup with a plan….lol 🙂
    I’m afraid of my kids somehow getting a hold of it, or my clutzy ass shooting myself in the face.
    If I can find a way to get around that I sure as hell wouldn’t hesitate to pop a cap!!
    Mars in Cancer (Don’t f*ck with my family or home!) and Mars sqaure Pluto.

  9. I don’t know what I do.
    I have similar beliefs on the gun issue as Amber (and I wouldn’t be able to in my country either).
    But I suspect I would fight until it seemed like as though I would be better off not fighting.
    I’ve surprised myself in some situations. The last time I got followed home at night (this is something that has happened to me a lot) I ran into a restaurant and then was paralyzed and couldn’t even ask to use the phone and so went back out onto the street, hoping he had left.
    But in another situation I tried to stick up for someone being beat up and I got dragged to the ground and kicked straight in the face, which was to my detriment…urgh.

    I have Aries Mars, however it is trine Neptune AND opposed Pluto, so what I’d do??? Not a clue until it’s happening.

  10. Amber, I admire you for your compassionate stance. I do think though, that the stakes are changed when children are involved. I never thought of being attacked or killed much before I had kids (I was young and naive too, I was only 20) but I probably would have the same viewpoint as you, as the thought of myself killing someone else’s son, brother, dad, etc gives me the heebbie-geebbies. I would hate to be the person to kill somebody, but if it means that my girls will still have a mom, or I will still have my girls….that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to take.

  11. Like I’ve said before, I can kill; more importantly, I will kill. Thankfully, there hasn’t been anyone stupid enough yet to take me for a mark, so I haven’t been tested. I think that time’s probably going to come, though.

  12. Avatar
    M_of_Barcelona

    Did I hear that correctly, Elsa, when you said that the US had a repressed Mars? To an outsider, that would seem a little surprising…

  13. I’m glad you put this up Elsa, I feel people shouldn’t have to worry about another individuals life if they don’t give a damn about yours. For every action there is a re-action. There is ALWAYS a consequence, and you can be sure that your re-action to a break in or a rape would be my reaction as well. I’m pretty good with an A.K. 47. I also feel Womyn should empower themselves and not feel guilty for defending themselves.

  14. I believe that self defense is a divine right.

    Whenever I see a movie with a woman getting kidnapped I’m the one yelling, “Poke him in the eye!”

    I don’t have physical altercations in normal life. I count on people to be civilized, and if they aren’t, I’m going to fight dirty. So if anyone attacks me ever they are going to loose something important to them.

  15. “So if anyone attacks me ever they are going to loose something important to them.”

    Yes, Amethyst and if more people felt like you, and people knew it, there would be a lot less attacking.

  16. I don’t believe in guns. I’ve never been around one. However, I do have other items, like a baseball bat, certain kitchen items, that I feel I would readily use. Oh, and I found out if you undid the wingnut on the table leg you have an awesome club because it ends up having a large screw sticking out of it. Should have seen me on moving day being happy I found something else useful, that if need be could be a weapon.

    Oh, and my husband keeps swords around, although I wouldn’t think of those as they’re decorative.

    “every tool is a weapon–if you hold it right” Ani DiFranco “My IQ”

  17. I haven’t watched the video yet but Wow what an interesting thread. I don’t own a gun, but would love to learn to shoot and would have NO problem shooting an intruder. None at all. Once he chooses to threaten anything of mine? Dang– I’m even a little surprised that others don’t feel similarly. Live and learn, I guess.
    Perhaps women would be safer if they were armed. If men knew they were trained and armed — from young ages. Jeez sounds like a science fiction plot– but it’s nuts what women put up with and are forced to put with. Being attacked is not a rite of passage.

  18. Beautiful photo!
    I heard in wars it’s very hard to make soldiers shoot the enemy. There’s a psychological block. No reason why it shouldn’t be present in women too. How do you test yourself in that department? I’d go with the shotgun, just in case.

  19. Just reading through the mars posts. Adding something to this one.
    I was gang raped two times in my youth, when I was on my way home, driving with some guys I knew casually. I didn’t tell anybody, cause my mom always said, that going out dressed like I am, could cause trouble. (Catholic moms can think like that.) Well, I was in trouble… was she right? Or was my feeling right, that these guys did wrong to me?

    I worked through the effects for about 25 years. Not constantly of course, but when some experience triggered it.
    The breakthrough realisation for me, was in a workshop with my long-year mentor, who works a lot with abused and raped women, when another girl worked on her healing.
    Until that point, my idea was: I just need to learn to be able to defend myself, instead of falling into some kind of “freeze-mode” – like animals, who pretend to be dead and hope the attacker will magically disappear, – or even worse, cooperate with them to survive.

    In that piece of work of that other women, a deep realisation came to me from some place, that seem to know all, especially the truth: I don’t have to think of defending myself, that will make no difference. The only thought to be in my mind is: “If you try, to take me against my will, you are dead. I will kill you.” Thats the only protection. Point.

    I am sure there are situations, like the one I experienced, when being a 17 year old girl, at the shore of a lake, in the middle of the night, with 3 strong drunken men, it’s also instinct, that shows you the way to survive. And it was of course on my side, an under-developed asshole detector, greenness and missing common sense. (By the way… How do we learn common-sense?) But that gives no guy the right to rape me. But these kind of assholes know easy prey.

    Therefore, walking through life, with the knowing, that if it would happen again, I would kill at least one of these bastards. We are not allowed guns here too, but I carry a bucks and I would use it. To safe me and the next girl, which always is. (You know, that the number is 25 percent, of women who experience this.)

    When I said that in the selfdefense class of my daughter, I came into a discussion with the teacher, who teaches to run away, rather than use a knife. Exactly because you are fucked, when you kill somebody. I told him, that it is a psychological thing too. He understood, but he is not allowed, to teach “you should think of killing someone”.

    But I am working on teaching my daughters, that their body, is their body. And if someone ignores that birthright, and puts them in danger, they need to know, that they have to kill. They need to want to have this bastard dead.

    Not surprising, from that realisation on, I never again experienced a situation, where some random guy treated me disrespectful or stepped over my boundaries – no matter my dress.

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