Pine Tar Thoughts

Pine sap. East Texas folks in the Pineywoods call it Pine Tar. The interminably sticky sap oozing off pine trees is like perpetual double-sided tape. You can't seem to get it off of you (skin, clothes, whatever) and everything you come in contact with sticks back.

Every once in a while I get Pine Tar thoughts. An idea or a gut feeling refusing to let go of me. No matter how I try to ignore it away or wash it out of my thoughts, it's just too damned sticky and won't go away.

Several weeks ago I received an openly hostile email spewing hate-filled comments about something I was quoted as saying in an article. I looked back at the article and even reached out to the author about the how it was perceived. Then I wrote about the email (in part) in Scared Rabbit Syndrome.  I wondered if I was being over-sensitive and realized being attacked by some unknown person from somewhere out there in the inter webs is just an odd experience because it's an intangible confrontation. The best response may in fact be no response at all.

Then the sticky thought came back. More of a little niggling wormy thing in the back of my head. So I looked at it again - is my perception wrong? Is there an actual error in using a Predator Test to suss out whether or not a casual touch or brush of contact is truly accidental v. the beginning of Target Assessment?

Don't think so. I still believe if one's radar goes off and there isn't anything openly threatening happening yet, you can test the situation out before activating a personal version of community Tornado Sirens. Conversely, I also believe you have the right to just get up and walk away if that feels like the best option; however, the circumstances discussed in the article and subsequent vitriol attack reference confined space in an airplane. Only so much getting up and walking away available.

The sticky thought eventually pointed out a blind spot. I firmly believe everything can be weaponized. Including words. Including words typically employed for social pleasantries. Words like Please. Two-by-four upside the head moment for me: that's not a common mindset among women. Duh. Not the sharpest crayon in the box sometimes.

Pine Tar thought should be done now. Moving on. .... Nope.... it's back again. Sticky damn thing.

Last night I ran into the tree. The source of the Pine Tar worm in the back of my brain.

NOW I GET IT! Now I understand why this woman exploded in an email about the predator test process discussed in the article. I understand why her solution - the only solution that should ever be taught, standing up and screaming get your fucking hands off me you XYZ, when you get brushed by a passenger seated next to you - now I understand what that means.

Before I ran into the Tree, I kept thinking - why does someone want to live that way? How is teaching women to assume every accidental point of contact is a sexual assault a good idea? Or at least, why is it becoming a popular idea? Yeah, I get the influence of the #MeToo movement and I appreciate the depth of awareness-shift happening...but still...it bugged me.

Now I get it.

What image sparks in your mind when you  see "Women's Self-Defense Seminar"?

Pictures of women learning to hit? Women learning groin kicks? Learning to defend chokes on the ground? Women at a shooting range learning to use a firearm?

Me too (see what I did there?). This is how I was raised as a self-defense instructor. This is how I was trained as a Women's Krav Maga instructor - a specialty certification. Don't get me wrong, I think physical self-defense should be part of gym class in all middle and high school curriculum.

But this is also where we get it wrong.

I have a daughter-in-law. I have nieces. I have a handful of adopted daughters, girls I have known well through the years. The last thing I want ANY of them to EVER experience is the need for those physical skills I love teaching. There are no physical encounters without scars. Emotional or physical.   And yet those images are the expression of women's self-defense - of self-defense regardless of gender.

Prevention. This is what we should visualize when we hear Women's Self-Defense. Threat Assessment, people reading, environment management, victim assessment/grooming (as in - you're being evaluated as a potential target), escape/evasion...the short list of skills we should picture when we think of self-defense training. The fun physical stuff - and I mean that literally - should absolutely live in the curriculum. The industry standard is the mistake.  We teach the last line of defense as the primary skill set instead of as the last line of defense.

Ta-Da. This is the sticky-pine-tar brain worm. Women's Self-Defense is synonymous with physical self-defense. Now the verbally violent email makes sense. The self-defense world has held a singular focus and has effectively created one acceptable solution to assault: wait until you are attacked to respond. This is the standard.

This logic is akin to teaching architects to look for structural problems after the bridge collapses.

With the pine tar washing off, I have more thoughts.  This post; however, is already WAY too long. Putting a pin in it and maybe there will be a part 2.

on witch-hunts, fear, and terrifying compliments

I've never cared for the label "feminist". Personal glitch. I get that most people would say the shoe fits- I think I don't like it because in my mind it reflects something extreme and extremism rarely comes to a good outcome. With all the Kavanuagh drama right now - I'm noticing something eerily familiar...hang tight...this is a long ass post.

I'm hearing men I consider pretty good humans share that from here forward - they help no woman with whom they are not personally familiar or share DNA strands. It's not worth the risk of having their lives destroyed in the new men-are-pervs witch hunt.

The abused become the abuser. That was also thrown into the conversation and they are not wrong. I won't speak to the ethics of decisions to withdraw support. Such a decision is deeply personal.

Several decades ago, I was a newly minted therapist when laws were passed establishing "mandatory reporters" in child abuse cases and programs were being developed to teach children it was okay to tell someone. I was responsible for educating faculty and administrators on the procedures for reporting and how to know if an incident might be reportable. Part of that inservice was also about how administrators were forbidden from blocking reporting by their staff...because that happened. And even with the training, it still happened.

I remember vividly sitting in a principal's office mediating between a teacher and the principal while the principal dressed-down the teacher for calling in a suspected abuse case after the principal had expressly directed her to keep out of it. There was a conversation about how a school policy couldn't supersede the law ... it didn't go well.

Children who were being neglected or wounded at home were getting the intervention they deserved. It was a good thing with a dark underbelly. Parents who opted for the family bed movement were accused of sexual abuse. Women who believed in nursing their children to the age of 2 ... were reported for sexual abuse. Single parent's with latch-key kids were reported for neglect. Sometimes it was true - sometimes it wasn't. Once accused though, always accused. Parents innocent of the accusations often moved to new towns - new schools. It was the only way they could get away from the glares and whispers.

Savvy tweens learned they could cry "child-abuse" and parents terrified of the public proverbial beheadings would back off of punishments for misbehavior. Female and male teachers alike stopped comforting distraught children, refusing to hold even a 5 year-old's hand while walking to the nurse's office with a playground injury.

Out of fear, we abandoned one another.

Across eras of change, this is what we do.

When it is finally acceptable to speak up to abuses of the past, we also learn we can weaponize the power to accuse. We've been doing this long before the literal witch-hunts of the 15th century. I have no idea what the solution is - and I have no idea whether this is relevant to the Kavanaugh drama.

Humans have been doing this for hundreds of years and I suspect we will continue to swing to extremes and then eventually figure out how to find the midline of our bell curves.

In this moment, in this movement I have an idea or two. My thoughts are generated as the mother of men and as a...feminist. We start by remembering we are fucking in this together. This thing called humanity is tribal by design. Most of humanity would die in total isolation. The majority of the species no longer needs tribe to hunt in bands, nomadically move our villages with the seasons.

We need each other in different ways now that technology satisfies ancestral needs. Some of us will do heinous things to other's in the tribe. We get to acknowledge it. Speak to it. Address it. Punish it. We get to remember too, we are accountable to what we create. Humans who accept responsibility for   only our collective success and deny accountability for our failings meet the clinical benchmarks for narcissism and at minimum, a degree of sociopathology.

When we swing to these extremes we are culturally narcissistic. Have yet to observe that producing valuable outcomes.

If women have been the target for assault, harassment and abuse then we must ALL do something about it.  Women supporting one another involves more than picketing together or marching on Washington. It includes supporting and celebrating success rather than getting vicious with envy. It means mentoring women rising up with new talent, rather than being the matriarchal pillars holding up the glass ceilings.

It also means taking responsibility for our bodies and our rights. Speak up and out? Absolutely. But if this is ALL we do?? Then we stand accused of Frederick Douglass' words from the 1850s. If we want Freedom without taking responsibility for the work and struggle required then we want the harvest without plowing the fields and we want the ocean without it's waves and storms and we want rain but keep the lightening and thunder to yourself, thank-you.

Transforming a culture doesn't work that way. The work that seems to be shunned right now is the work women might be doing for ourselves. This social shift we seek isn't going to happen solely by accusation, trial and punishment. If we don't want to be targeted for sexual violence - in addition to better punishment and more cultural support for our accusations - we need to become hard targets. We need to be generally considered a bad choice for sexual violence but not out of fear of witch-hunts...out of an expectation that I am equipped to stop you before you ever get started.

Everything in the media right now is about the consequence of sexual violence. The focus on the university campuses is to teach what giving and getting consent looks like. This isn't bad or wrong. It's just incomplete.

Recently, I met a man in his early twenties who is an accomplished martial artist and a generally lovely human being. In conversation on a break from training he remarked "you're terrifying". He meant that as a compliment and I took it as one. His remark came from respect, not fear.

If could gift one thing to our society right now, it would for women to be respected in this manner. I can't wave a wand and unilaterally make that happen (which is probably a really good thing...no one needs to give me a working wand).  I will; however, be at stake for what I can influence, what I can support, what I can mentor. I will be wrong many times along the way; of that I am certain.

And may the gods be so willing - I will not let fear choose for me.

when the ground breaks - devastatingly acceptable expectations

quiet spaces in my head - which are admittedly not super common - have been filled this past week with emotion, thought, and a sensation of gravity trying to suck me down into the earth. That's the best way to describe what it feels like when I think about the kids who lost their lives in the Florida school shooting.

I have a kid that age. He is in the last few months of his high school career. He is a defender. He teaches in our kids' self-defense program and talks all the time about how much fun it is and how much joy he gets when the littles end class with eyes shining with accomplishment.

He wants them to be strong. He gets angry when people get bullied. He's not silent about his beliefs and he struggles when there's a suicide of a classmate and scratches his head when people doubt their value because he gets everyone HAS value.

And I think about him and this shooting because...it could be his school just as easily as a school in Florida. I think about the terror and the choice he might make. As his mom, I want him to find cover and go dark. Wait for the LEO's to make the scene, subdue the shooter and clear the building.

I have mixed feelings when I think about what he might actually do because I think he'd be torn. He would know we would be devastated if he became one of the victims and he knows we are all defenders in this household. All of us in our own way, and he would stand in that gap. I am both frightened by this and proud of him at the same time.

I've seen video of the father addressing Trump. I've read the article about the 3 JROTC students who died because they stood as defenders, helping their peers get to safety. They paid for their commitment with their lives. And I can't even remotely imagine being one of those parents without feeling like the ground is coming apart under my feet.

And I don't believe the solution is to arm all teachers - some of them don't want to be armed and that's a bad metric. I don't believe the solution is to make certain weapons or ammunition or magazines illegal. Laws only control people who already believe in the behavior being regulated. I believe we are pathetic (our culture) in how we address mental and psychological health. I also know, having worked with violent individuals as a mental health professional, that better mental health will not categorically fix the problem.

I don't know the solution. Do we set guards at schools? Do we have metal detectors at all entrances? Controlled access points are already in many public schools but that's not a fail-safe. What I think (which means we are in dangerous territory) is that there are solutions to be found, they won't be one-size fits all and we won't find them until we stop being anaphylactically allergic to honest, thoughtful, investigative and progressive dialogue about violence and conflict.

In Violence Dynamics we always deliver ConCom aka Conflict Communications as a cornerstone of the seminar/conference. It's seminal because it basically says...look sports fans... emotions aren't bad but they make a really fucking horrible compass. They're fuel but so is spilled gasoline waiting for a match. Acknowledge the emotional energy and then, don't let it own you.

Get curious. Be willing to discover and discuss and engage and listen. We are ridiculously intelligent as a species. It is completely achievable for us [humans] to have an investigative conversation about violence in a manner that produces tangible, logical and reliable progress against the question - how do we keep our kids alive when they're at school?

Our wildly emotional and splatter painted gestures at the problem have become devastatingly acceptable.

Is it possible that we could take a collective stand for unreasonably high expectations? Expectations for effective, committed communication? How about if we don't stop having dialogue when the emotional deluge has past - and - what would become possible if we just stayed in it even when we got our feelings hurt, or angry or frustrated and we just kept exploring?

Seriously. We are so fucking collectively intelligent. I refuse to believe we are incapable, authentically biologically incapable, of solving this problem.

the wierd ownership rights of success

When someone becomes successful, the people who have supported the upward trajectory can have warm fuzzy feelings. The supporters were...well...supportive and they get to enjoy the byproducts of their support. It's happy-making to know someone you helped actually benefited from the help. At the end of it, humans like being useful.

Once in a while, the success becomes an object of sorts. It's an item with property rights like who gets the Villa in the divorce. I've seen this in a couple of different permutations and although I have noticed it occurring around successful men, I have seen it more often around successful women. Because I am also female, there's a strong possibility of confirmation bias on that observation-

As a martial arts and self-defense instructor, I am noticing how this plays out in our world. Male students who become good at what they do, who rise up to to leadership and take on the mantle of coaching up other people are respected for their skill, hard work, physical dedication.

Female students who follow the same path are also respected for their skill, hard work, physical dedication and are frequently asked....who trained you? In a culture with powerful alliances to lineage this isn't particularly noteworthy and the differentiation between men and women perhaps remarkably subtle. Both genders will speak of lineage, who they are trained by and whom their instructor trained up under....all the way back to someone particularly [internally] famous.

I suspect the difference lies in whether or not the question gets ASKED v volunteered. In my experience the women are more often asked "who trained you" than the men. 

There is perhaps ownership of/for the successful women, in any industry. The mentors, coaches, instructors, etc. who participated in her hard work, dedication and skill. It's challenging to give a solid example in descriptive terms because this is slippery. My experience of it shows up more in statements. Examples:
"I did that..." stated by a mentor in reference to a female who accomplished something. To be clear, this was not a statement made by the successful female - it was made by her mentor/coach.
"Her coaches did a great job with her..." remarked upon by onlookers to a successful female
"I still have more to teach you" and "Just focus on your XXX. When people ask you to consult - tell them no" as expressions of keeping her under said mentor/coach/instructor etc.s tutelage.

I'm turning this thing over in my thinking because as a martial arts instructor, I have the privilege of supporting some really talented and successful students.  I'm wondering, do I take MORE pride in my female students than my male students? Do I express 'ownership'?

As a good friend likes to say "a rising tide floats all boats". I know that if the people I'm around do well, my boat sails on the same waters as what carries them. We work toward mutual benefit of one another and this is true for my students. Ego, fear, and natural resistance to change live in me (as much as I regret to admit it) and those 3 at least, fuel the drift to efforts at ownership. So I'm thinking about it and wondering if it's an isolated observation, or a dynamic with a broader occurrence?

And then, if it's a 'thing' beyond my narrow slice of the world, what impact does this have? What are the sociological implications? When we mark territory - it's often because we fear losing it. What fuels this fear? And I probably should avoid tangential mental meanderings before I am adequately caffeinated in the morning.

this rose has thorns - #500

Protocol and Punishment. If you do something bad and wrong, your tribe will punish you. If the tribe wants to limit how much punishment it must meet out the tribe will create protocols to prevent the behavior altogether ...and up the punishment for maximum deterrent currency.

In the tribes I know of, it's a two-fer. A little prevention and a decent amount of punishment. Punishment itself is used as a two-fer...punish often enough and with a enough force and the punishments become prevention. Our current social structures expect this to be in total sufficient - we know it isn't. It's also where I struggle to believe the #MeToo and #Timesup campaigns will be deep game-changers. Maybe I'm wrong, and that would be cool.

And I'm sure Oprah and her colleagues didn't read my Dear Oprah post. For my little corner of the universe though, it was widely read (and widely read is absolutely a comparative to my other stuff and the idea of "widely" to me mostly means "read at all"). Confirmation that I'm on to something is that it was both agreed with and strongly disagreed with--

There's another award ceremony coming up - and a continuation of the efforts to support the #metoo and the  #timesup campaign, the artists are going to be wearing white roses. Kinda' cool in a fashion because the white rose was a symbol of women's suffrage and those women paid heavy prices for their commitment. They were jailed, starved, tortured in various was including being beaten and served food crawling with maggots.

Now the fight is about sexual harrassment and sexual violence with a strong focus on the arts and entertainment industry. #Timesup is a statement that people don't "get to do that anymore".

I'm poking around at a couple of questions - why is the time up? Why now? Why not 10 years ago? Why not 100 years ago...or a thousand years ago? Sexual violence has been protocol-ed and punished for millennia. 

Momentum probably gets a good deal of the credit. We've had more change in the 50+ years I've been alive than the last 300 years combined where women are concerned. #Metoo and #Timesup have created some momentum in the arts & entertainment industry and some momentum among the common folk as well.  It looks like a degree of this momentum is anchored in Protocol and Punishment. As in, let's do more of that. I don't know if that's good or bad - above my pay-grade, really. I am cautious about it remaining anchored in that particular trajectory.

It has the potential to invite an externalized attitude about personal authority and I've seen the damage that causes. Protocols are set by the tribe to keep us in-check and punishment is force-applied action when the protocols are violated. Protocols -rules- work for the people who agree with them. What if you don't agree with them? How many times have you driven over the speed limit? Anyone text and drive for even a second since the laws forbidding it were ratified?

Risk v. Reward drives those choices. In that moment of going over the speed limit, the reward felt worth the risk. There is no difference between rape and speeding when it comes to protocol effectiveness and behavior management. If you agree, you'll comply. If you don't, you won't.

Taking it deeper - systemic (tribal) punishment is only a factor if I get caught. And even then, I may judge the Risk:Reward ratio as worth it. Serving time is not always considered a horrible outcome. What then?

#500. I threw that out there in my letter to Oprah because I like the notion of women being able to decide for themselves. To have the skills, knowledge and ability to set their own protocols and their own ability to support the protocols with enforcement if necessary. Can that go awry? Will some women use physical force when it's not called for? Sure. But that's already happening across all gender lines for pretty much everything. That's why we still have child abuse. Yes, oversimplified comparison perhaps - but nonetheless that's the bottom line.

And at the end of it, women trained in self-defense .... includes a frontloading effort in prevention skills. Yeah, of course that includes don't all go out together and all get really shit-faced with no one to serve as the sober decision-maker.  Prevention is sooooo much more. People reading, understanding how and where and why violence happens, how to identify the difference between threat displays and pre-attack indicators, how to....

They physical stuff is the everything-else-failed option. It needs to BE an option, it also needs to be one of many options. And those of us in the industry need to be teaching All the things. All of them.


--and to prevent someone getting twitter-pated because that sounds like teaching all the prevention stuff is only a girl's game - don't hear that I mean it as such - it isn't.

Speaking of the proverbial Someone - someone...well several someone's actually - called me on my words. Give me 500 women? Pony up, sister. 

I'm in a massive project that is like a giant pacman eating all my time. It's over mid-March. But I'm moving on the #500 and I have an amazing tribe in the VioDy team who are standing with me and thinking with me and when March is past - there will be more. Boots-on-the-ground more.

....because - if we hit a tipping point of a high percentage of women who are trained in at least rudimentary self-defense the cultural expectation will shift from an assumption that women are easy targets to maybe only some women are .... but which ones? The Risk:Reward ratio will be harder to discern and I'd like to see what that looks like.

Circling back around to the white roses. Cool symbology. Let's remember too that this symbol far outreaches virtue signaling and reflects frontlines-level risk unprotected by the beauty and glamour of Hollywood Royalty. A white rose for this purpose also signals a level of anarchy required to create substantive change and a willingness to be at stake for a level of risk that carries an equal opportunity of reward and punishment. There will be both and the cost can be high.

Dear Oprah, give me 500-

Dear Oprah;

Inspiration is a fantastic emotion. When the well of emotional energy living at our core finally gathers enough energy to explode upward into conscious awareness and we feel compelled - there is something grand about watching a volcano erupt and something equally grand about feeling inspired.

And then there is the aftermath. The emptiness that is left once all the energy has been expelled. When the molten rock cools we are left with a barren landscape. Let's face the aftermath of our inspirational experience and get our hands dirty. Do the work.

Hard work. Work that plods forward outside of the eyes of social media and work largely unrewarded - which is by no means a bad thing. In your acceptance speech, you acknowledge the hard work. The years of toil under oppression whether the oppression be about race, or gender, or both.

You also applauded the #METOO women for their courage - what have they gained for giving their voice and sharing their experience? Individually- perhaps a moment of inspiration. And an experience of strength for walking past the shadows of misplaced blame and its sister shame - maybe that as well. Not small moments.

But Oprah; what has changed? Yes...I hear your argument about how change takes time and we need to dig in and be an agent of change regardless of reward. I hear you. I speak those words and I agree.
What will be your unrewarding efforts? Now that the inspiration has past, where will you work?

Here's an idea. Give me 500 women from the North American Continent. Not all at once - 20 at a time is do-able.  500 women I can train in essential elements of self-defense specifically for women. 500 women who will know how to explain prevention skills, how to read the early warning signs of escalation in behavior and pattern. 500 women who will understand the context of violence in a way that is honest, straightforward, without ego of "I know all the answers" because as women, we absolutely know we do not.

These 500 women will understand the social, tribal training wired into the behavior of both men and women. They will know how this creates a context for violence and what it requires to step outside this context. They will be able to communicate this understanding and be able to invite other women into this wisdom.

These 500 women may be able to tag themselves with the #MeToo campaign, but it is not a requirement. I can. I didn't. Having been targeted for violence is not a prerequisite for an effective self-defense instructor. It does not automatically make me knowledgeable. It does not make me an expert in any action of violence except the specific events I have personally experienced and this may - or may not - be transferable.

These 500 women will know there is nothing glorious to be gained by experiencing violence. They will know the scars left behind are permanent. They will know too, the scars can be reinterpreted into strength. And this will be their invitation. Strength is more than a hashtag.

Strength is a choice.

Give me 500 women. In a year, each of the 500 will reach (and by reach - I mean train/teach) 100 women and in short order there will be 50,000 women with basic self-defense skills. That is the beginning of a tipping point. Add 500 more instructors in Europe and another 50,000 women. And let's keep going. Let's go to places where violence against women is far more indemic.

The potential for this to be exponential is in the math. Not in the inspiration. Change is in the work. Work we can do now - not in 50 years, not when legislation and sentencing laws change, not in safe spaces.

Maybe instead of coming forward in a band of violated sisterhood we can stand in strength. #500

The Right Room

playing with answers and thoughts to a trap my monkey brain just SO badly wanted to jump right in the middle of -

A lot of folks like to educate on topics in which they are poorly informed

Common phenomena in all industries and all areas of human interest from economics to art to violence. Social and behavioral psychology offer loads of explanations for this behavior. It's not new, nor is it a mystery.

Picking away at the layers though into more specific versions of this broad-stroke human behavior I'm struck by a subset. When someone who is actually rather informed on a subject and they not only jump out of their lane but do so with such grand unequivocal proclamations of expertise - this behavior is the trap/hook I reeaaaallllly wanted to get wrapped up in recently.

Once in a while, I throw my monkey brain a banana and let it play until it exhausts itself. I was tempted, really tempted on this last one. Wanted to rant about - not sure why I held off -

What usually happens when I don't go bananas, I end up poking a stick at it.

Here's the thing. The more a human learns about a topic or subject matter, the more the human discovers how much s/he does NOT know. The more 'expert' in an area we become, the more clear we get about what we do NOT know. When ego overwhelms what intelligence dictates, the monkey brain demonstrates it's power.

Where does this gigantic push from the monkey brain come from? The ego needs to be affirmed. It needs to be right. It needs to prove something and it needs to be dominant. If I think about the essential biological purpose for this drive, it is about structuring the tribe by enforcing protocols and squaring up unanswered questions about leadership and power. This is a super interesting function when it takes place among a group of people who are all pretty competent, i.e. powerful, in the same subject matter.

When that subject matter is violence and the competent crew in question has gained competence through experience the dominance display doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Unless it's an expression of fear.  Think about it... if I have survived a violent subculture by being the most dominant, the most frightening and the most asocial animal in the territory, then the monkey brain is going to create an intense correlation between dominance and survival even among friends (or at least friendly colleagues).

The opposite then, is also true. If I am not the most dominant, the most Right, the most expert of the crew then I am vulnerable. Dominance = Survival. Vulnerable = Death. So Dominance it is.

Recently, I watched someone who is not a woman, and by admission has not beaten a woman, raped a woman, etc. explain with great veracity (and in my judgment, great hubris) what women really need in self-defense training.  It was not a dialogue but more a diatribe. An unnecessary dominance display among colleagues - some of whom were women. No nod given to the women in group, no recognition of the intellectual and experiential collective gathered regardless of gender, and therein lies the hubris. And beneath that hubris, I suspect a great deal of unacknowledged fear.

What was cool though, no one got worked up over the dominance display. The diatribe addressed a couple of different topics in the same breath and in that breath, there was a good deal of truth spoken as well. A couple of folks in the conversation responded to that truth - gave acknowledgement etc. Maybe, in time, this will quiet the fear. There is a fantastic experience being human offers us...the conscious acknowledgment of what it's like to NOT be the smartest person in the room - when that happens - you are in the right room. When the fear that requires dominance controls us, we can never be in this room ...even when our body is in that room our monkey will never allow the reality to be acknowledged.

the unicorn tracker

I've been called a lot of things over the years. Not all of them complimentary. Sometimes it bugs me, because I have a monkey brain and it likes to be liked but for the most part, I realize that if EVERYONE liked me or supported what I stood for then I'd be doing something wrong.

Recently, someone told me I was a unicorn. He meant it. He said a female self-defense instructor who:

1) wasn't trying to be a "guy"
2) wasn't operating from a "we are victims" mindset

was a unicorn. Typically, I wouldn't take being called a fairytale creature a compliment per se, but I get it and I know this guy and I understood what he meant.

There are a number of women who are martial arts instructors. Not a plethora, but there are definitely more female martial arts instructors than there are female self-defense instructors.

And no, they're not the same thing. Martial Arts and Self-Defense are not synonymous. There is crossover and sometimes a significant amount of crossover. There are elements of martial arts training, including the combat arts, that can be applied to self-defense. These truths do not; however make martial arts and self-defense synonymous.

I have seen what the Unicorn Tracker identified. I have seen female instructors being really 'male' on the mat. Posturing, dominating, moving and walking with a more male gate....and not because they relate as a male from a gender perspective...but because somehow they must have felt it was necessary to be respected and effective.

I have also seen female instructors with a victim history making everything they teach about the victimization. A war of sorts. Us v. Them. I get this perspective too. There is a passion born of experiencing the sensation of utter powerlessness when being physically and psychologically overwhelmed by violence.

I could be either or both of the above. I'm not entirely sure why I'm not. And the only reason it matters is that I would like for the Unicorn Tracker's statement to become moot. It would be great if there were enough female self-defense instructors to meet the instructional demand. I have a deep respect for the guys who reach out and ask for help, direction and insight into the landmines they should avoid when teaching self-defense with women. They are taking on a task they have to shoulder because there isn't much of anyone else to do it.  Good on you, gentlemen.

I don't know how to do it - and I don't know if it's really actually possible. But it would be cool as shit for Unicorns to loose their designation as rare - it would be fantastic to look out across a room full of self-defense instructors and see as many women as men...more even.

Maybe in the generations to come. In the meantime, I'm noodling around on what the catalyst would be - what it would take to transform the mythic connotation from meaning rare, to meaning fantastically abundant.

What! Really? Say it isn't so-

ooookaaaayyyy. The woodwork is crawling with everyone who's coming out of it from Hollywood to The Hill. Sexual violations from lewd comments, groping, assault and under-age targeting.

And we are all appalled. Along side is the social media awareness campaign #MeToo.  That's a different but parallel universe so for now, I'll stick with the crawling woodwork.

I have two questions.

Why are we surprised?

Why are we suddenly outraged?

Question One. Why are we surprised...
Sex and sexuality have been a confused and distorted facet of human behavior for.............. well kind of for a few millennia.  Humans have been using rape as an action of war or territorial marking for deep back into recorded history. As a personal action, I think it's a safe assumption to say sexual violence has been a factor in our behavior at least as long as it has been part of our behavior at the tribal level. Sexual violence and appropriation is about power, dominance, control, territorial marking, and occasionally about lust and desire. This.Is.Not.News.

What's more, I'm pretty sure most adults are not actually authentically surprised by the recently disclosed licentious behavior. Our need to be surprised by a decently documented historically time-lined behavior serves a purpose. Are we collectively surprised because it gives us the right to plausible deniability? Letting ourselves off the proverbial hook of social responsibility?

Question Two. Why are we suddenly outraged...
Perhaps our collective gasp is an acceptable expression of virtue signaling. Generally, no one I know or have ever come into contact with supports sexual violence as a socially acceptable human behavior.  There is a dark and twisty debate about what actually constitutes sexual violence - but there doesn't seem to be debate about whether or not it's something we should all gather around to say "yay US! Let's legalize rape!"

Let's get honest. In industries and social systems like Hollywood and politics, the fight for and ownership of power is a primary objective. And if there is a human behavior through which power is frequently expressed then there should be a pretty high correlation between the power-hungry industries and this behavior.

We should not be surprised. You should not be surprised. By any of this. Drop the drama.

It's common. If we have decided that common no longer equals acceptable, okay - good on you. Fix it. Get off the drama and get to work.

hmmmm - considering an uncomfortable probability

"Women have a tendency to look more to an authority/leadership for confirmation on decisions than men." By experience in training environments - a discovery made in specifically a force professional environment during training phases by a colleague. Is this statistically accurate? Does it apply in other professions? Don't know. Someday I may research all that but for now, don't need to because I can confirm - as uncomfortable as this may be to acknowledge - that in force-related industries I know this to be personally true.

Is this because it is a traditionally male paradigm? Do women, unconsciously perhaps, notice and wonder:

because there are so few women, and the majority of the leadership are men - maybe as a female - I better check with a guy to see if I'm thinking about XX in the right way. Maybe, the lack of women indicates the guys get this more than women do and so I shouldn't rely as much on my own judgment or intuition here...maybe...

I don't know. I haven't had those thoughts at a conscious level. When I worked in violence-prone environments I didn't look to the men for direction when someone was escalating because - in those environments -

a) I trusted my skill set
b) the roles in the environment had me in more of an "authority" position then most of the men I worked with. In other words, it was my job to make the call, not theirs.

But...personally on the mat - I know there were plenty of times I would question my ability to figure out what I was doing wrong when something wasn't working. I asked more questions than the guys.

The questions themselves aren't a solid metric of this though because as a whole, women are more discovery oriented and because of how our brains are wired, we see more connections between the points and we have a stronger drive to understand the "why".  What the questions were about though, that's where the comment that kicked off this post is something I can relate to (ick, so much don't like the reality there).

For a long time, I didn't trust my ability to figure out a solution on my own. I know of at least one situation where I followed a male training partner over the cliff in a martial-art mistake because we were the same rank and he was certain...and I wasn't.

I don't know how universally true the "Women have a tendency to look more to an authority/leadership for confirmation on decisions than men" reality is. It does seem to show up in force/violence related paradigms. And from a teaching/coaching in self-defense mindset it makes a particularly coaching approach even more relevant:

Good coaching often involves responding to a student's question "how do I fix this?" with "What do YOU think?" or some other form of encouragement that is basically designed to say hey...you can probably figure out a solution on your own. If there IS a gender metric and it does circle more around the force/violence industry and we want women to believe they can be their own bodyguards (to paraphrase a common marketing ploy) - then we need to coach the mindset early...and often.

As instructors we need to support her to look to herself to solve the problem. If we are preparing someone for a martial arts testing - all students need the coaching that will help them pass their test. This is different coaching. This is about performance and about looking "uniform" in how they move. Everyone's foot needs to HERE and everyone needs to move diagonally at a 45 degree angle. Everyone needs to.... because in a Martial Art we are training to the measure of the Art. In Self-Defense? Not so much. She needs to know she has -or can develop - the ability to think on the fly. She needs to trust she is as capable as the guys. Maybe even, that when it comes to high-speed problem solving, she might be naturally better at it because she adrenalizes more slowly.

hmmm.

The Code - who gets to ask what, and why?

 let's see how many questions I can ask in a single post -

When teaching in a group of women if the training is long enough someone inevitably asks me if I have any personal experience with violence.

Mixed gender or all male groups - the question doesn't come up.


This wants to ask a question, doesn't it? Like....why is that? Why do the women ask and not the men? Do women ask only women? Do women ask male instructors? Why don't the men ask? And, do the men ask other men just not women?

This is probably just a rabbit hole but the questions have me super curious. So I asked a friend of the male type - I shared the observation based on my experience and asked...why don't the guys ask?

His response was it's kinda' like a guy-code. You don't do it. You don't ask another guy if he's killed somebody or how many fights he's gotten into, or if he's ever stabbed someone or gotten shot. In this conversation, he reminded me of a situation we both happened to observe. One of those moments when a guy broke the code. There was a visceral reaction from a number of folks when the code was broken. The guy who was asked made it clear the ask-ee had crossed a line. What if it had been a woman who had presented the question?

Hmmm. I think the general response would have been the same - not cool, sister, not cool.

BUT...what if it had been a female instructor and the question had come from a female participant? When I've gotten this question from other women it's generally come from one of two places, that I can tell anyway. One: credibility. Do I have the experience to back up my confidence in what I'm teaching? Women doubt. They (we) have seen enough bullshit in self-defense instruction that we doubt.  Two: safety v. risk. A lot of the time the question comes from a place of fear. If I have the been-there shirt then she can let her guard down...doesn't risk as much potential judgment.  And, if the answer from a female instructor is NO, I don't have the been-there shirt, a little explanation and personal sharing cinches the credibility factor pretty well too. Women are all...well, women.

If you haven't been physically attacked, you have worried about it at some point. You have been cautious going out to your car at night or have been the focus of spurious catcalls or some other unwanted attention. The girls get it.  Maybe. Hmmm. Then there's the whole neurological multi-connectivity factor in the female brain which tends to create more investigative questioning just by the nature of her wiring. Is that it? Probably contributes but I think this is more a socially driven construct than a biologically driven construct.

What happens though if a guy asks the violence question to a female instructor? I have no idea. I have never seen this happen. Would the violation of the guy-code be bigger or less? Would the women be happy someone asked on their behalf or incensed at the intrusive curiosity?

What about credibility? If the female instructor says yeah, I have the t-shirt, what are the guys thinking about that? Does it add to her credibility? Or, do the men in the crowd feel all offended on her behalf - or - maybe it detracts from her credibility, she's a damsel in distress and should have known better ...or... What if her answer is no - loss of credibility? Are the men relieved but somehow drifting towards being dismissive? No idea. Not a guy and again, have never seen this dynamic go down.

I don't know if the answers inform anything or really matter. I'm just curious more than anything else because it is a trend and, not knowing the rules is one of the things that can up the propensity for violence and conflict. So I am curious about what the underlying rules are here, and even more curious why the rules exist. I have seen it happen, had it happen on more than one occasion. The women ask. The men don't.

recognize the bait - recognize the hook

A friend in the martial arts/self-defense world posted something recently from an online group. She copied a post from another female practitioner and then made a sympathetically face-palm sort of rant  about the post.

I read the repost. At the moment I am all out of rants and something needs to be said - again.

"You probably aren't going to hurt/injure a family member or colleague. So, be careful about biting on the show me what you learned hook." This is a common cautionary statement delivered mostly (in my experience) from female instructors to female students.

Here's why we say it:

Jane starts training in martial arts or self-defense. Jane's brother, husband, boyfriend, male colleague (fill in the blank) will eventually make this request show me what you learned. This is a hook. The majority of the time, this request is an invitation to a monkey display of strength, dominance and ultimately - putting her back in her place in the tribal hierarchy. What happens next is predictable.

Jane: we learned how to defend a headlock (or whatever you want to put in there...)
Him: show me -
        He puts her in said headlock or choke or grab or whatever and sinks in like he's fighting for his life. Jayne begins to demonstrate the defense....and it fails. She can't get out or get away because she is being respectful of the relationship. She isn't running at full speed or full power. She isn't causing pain or injury. If the defense is technically valid, it will work in most situations but she will need to execute with the full force of my life depends on it level of energy and commitment. If Jane does this, her boyfriend, husband, son, brother, etc. is getting hurt. So she doesn't.

Him: see? you can't fight someone like me, it won't ever work against someone like me
        his point? I dominate you. I always have and I always will. You are defenseless against me.

If this is a family member who actually gives two-cents worth about Jane's safety and security, why would he want her to feel helpless? He will argue that he's just trying to make it realistic for her, only he isn't. He is counting on her unwillingness to cause him pain and injury.

If Jane says fuck it to the social boundaries and executes an effective response to his attack there is retribution. Punishment. Sometimes it's physical - he hurts her back. If the relationship is personal or familial, the punishment may not be physical, it may be more like withdrawing affection or help around the house or cutting remarks.

Sometimes, sometimes this happens on the mat. A male training colleague will feel it's his duty to make sure his attacks are realistic so the girl gets a real experience .... or that's the story he tells himself to justify an opportunity for physical expressions of power and control over women. If Jane is effective here, the punishment is usually physical and is occasionally backed-up with cutting remarks to her and fellow to students about her. This is what happened to the woman in the forum. She posted her experience to the other women in the group and I don't like my reaction.

I just nodded and moved on. Kind of like I nod and move on when someone tells me we are out of milk at home because, well, so what else is new?  Happens all the time.

A couple of key points:

• yes, this happens once in a while between men
• it may happen between women, I don't have any accounts of it
• no, this is not a Down with Patriarchy flag flying moment - because -
• it's not about patriarchy
• it's about a distorted and toxic relationship with power

The guy on this script doubts. He doubts his own capacity for power so he adds to his power-bank account by dominating other people. He does this by playing on the specific social scripts of expected behavior among martial artists and/or connected relationship (the script being don't hurt or injure family/friends/colleagues in a polite demonstration) and leverages the script to gain power and control. The social script is the bait. It's a fantastic piece of bait because it blends right in to the environment. Like the fisherman's perfect lure or the hunter's deftly disguised trap, the bait distracts the prey from the hook hiding behind the natural environmental cues (social scripts).

This behavior matches two specific profiles. The process predator and the resource predator. Both use the standard social scripts in any given culture or tribe to their advantage for the purposes of power and control.

It doesn't meant that the boyfriend, brother, husband, colleague is categorically a process predator. We are all capable of this orientation. It means that in our current sociocultural milieu, there is still a hard glitch in a significant number of men when women express physical fierceness. Their human brain says of course I think women should be able to defend themselves their monkey brain snarls against everyone except me.

I don't know the woman who posted her experience in my friend's Facebook group. Don't have to. I have had any number of female students come to me and tell identical stories. So much so, that now when I teach women's only classes there is a specific script I use during the wrap-up. I explain that this hook will most likely get thrown at their feet by someone they know. And then we talk about how to handle it.

I won't wrap this up by saying it's sad we have to do this because saying it's sad decries the common nature of the experience and denies reality. This happens all the time. Women who train need to know  it for what it is - it's a hook. Bite down on the hook and he has permission now to justify his display of physical power and efforts at domination.

Don't bite.

caveat: there are plenty of situations where this does NOT happen. When the male person asks to be shown what she's learning and he doesn't try to prove anything to her. Writing about how frequently the request is used as a hook is about like anything we write about; highlighting things that need to be highlighted so we can become part of the solution v. perpetuating the problem.

pushing at perspectives in self-defense and other questionable Hills To Die On

I'm circling a hill. You know, the hills we die on. Wondering if it's a hill I really want to go charging up.

Most of the time, those are easy decisions for me. Not based on whether or not I will win the battle - based on instead, how important I feel the fight is. Feel being a key point of clarification because Hills to Die On are emotional/passion based battles and that means deep into monkey brain territory. That doesn't make it good or bad, it just clarifies the choice-point.

Anyway, there's this hill I have been circling around the base of off and on for the past several months. Every once in a while I charge up the hillside, don't get very far, and then hit a wall of not-worth-the-effort and head back down into the peaceful little valley below. Back to a neutral space that just acknowledges different mindsets and goes on about it's merry way.

The question really, is does it matter? 

Does it matter that there are a good chunk of people who teach martial/combat arts for the purpose of self-defense but don't really get what teaching self-defense means? There are layers and layers to the quandary but I'm only looking at one for the moment: women's self-defense instruction.

It took me a long time to figure out this was a real problem. I thought everybody knew there was a difference between fighting and self-defense. I believed the difference was obvious and intuitively understood. Naiveté and a well-crafted set of blinders I willingly strapped to my awareness kept me complacently agreeable for a long time because it never occurred to me the difference wasn't intuitive. When people I respected and people far more skilled than I am talked about the need to teach women to be better fighters, I thought...well okay, they know better than I do, maybe I'm missing something.

It took a couple of years before the incongruence of our perspectives (theirs and mine) became obvious enough I couldn't justify them any more.  I started asking questions.

The people who use the word "fighter" when they talk about training women in self-defense. What do they mean with that word? Here's some of what I am finding out about how the SD/Fighter folks define what they mean:

train her through determination drills
train her to develop good technical skills
train her to develop a higher level of athleticism/fitness
train her to look convincing

Typing those first four, I could unpack each of them in a post of their own. Maybe I will. Later.

At first blush none of these are overtly bad ideas for self-defense. Mindset, physical skill, endurance, being able to move her body so she no longer looks like a good target... they all fall into a broader category of Fighter, which at the end of it, always includes that she must first and foremost have fantastic "fighting" skills. Hitting, kicking, sparring, managing multiple opponents effectively in two-minute drills, etc.

These are great skills. They just aren't about self-defense. These are combat art training goals.

I had a crystallizing moment about a year ago at an international training camp. One of the instructors at the camp was running through key distinctions in a session wrap up. "This is a fighting and self-defense system, in that order".  Yes. Yes it is. He reduced to a sentence something I couldn't articulate without a full paragraph.

It means that some systems, like Krav Maga for example, have applications to self-defense but are not, in and of themselves a self-defense training system. It's a fighting system first.

And fighting is different than self-defense. If I am developing a female fighter, those 2 minute sparring drills are great tools.

If I am working with women for self-defense, why would I ever want to introduce her to the idea she should a) let it get physical and b) purpose to stay in the fight for 2 minutes?

The goals are different. The goals can cross-pollinate and they can serve as supporting elements to one another, just not categorically. They are not fully interchangeable.

And we are back at the base of the Hill to Die On.  I have a significant number of martial colleagues who do not see this distinction. They believe if you are going to teach a woman self-defense, you must first teach her solid fighting skills. Teach her to be solid in her pad work, strong kicks, effective hitting, good fight strategy in sparring.

And when I hear this, I am flooded by all the faces of all the female violence targets I have  worked with and the stories of the encounters. Good, solid sparring skills would have served them poorly...or would have made the situation much, much worse. Violence where women are concerned is rarely fueled by the social constructs of a fight.

I want to say - 'don't focus on teaching her to be a good fighter, teach her to END it'. And my colleagues who have this differing perspective ardently believe that is exactly what they are doing.

As of this moment, I suspect the muddling up of things is because of this marked level of crossover. Although the goals of self-defense and the goals of fighting are distinct, some of the training approaches can be applied to both goal sets.

None of these goals, these fighter goals, are bad. I enjoy training in this orientation - a lot. Writing this in part because I woke up this morning super aware that my 52 year old body spend 3 hours rolling with a group of guys who are upwards to 20 years younger than I am. It was a blast. I was happy all day after we wrapped up. Three hours of sweaty, smelly, slimy ground work. Finding locks and holds and control positions. Flow drills and cheats and compression work and submissions...so much stinking fun.

And. My 5'3" frame would be maimed or dead if I took yesterday's mindset and applied it to a self-defense situation with Threats who were any one of the men I rolled with yesterday. Will yesterday's training session improve my skills? Absolutely. Rolling the 190 pound guy into an armbar was fantastic for my competitive side. And I know the difference between chess match drills for skills development and self-defense realities.

But what about the people who choose not to see this distinction.

Is this a hill to die on?

One of my monkeys jumps up and down "yes, yes!". The rest of me looks at this and can see how deeply held the Fighting & Self-Defense Are The Same mindset is held and it doesn't look like it's worth the effort. Which goes to the reality that, at a point, standing on this hill waiving my sword around may just be a variant of arrogance.

The conundrum has created a metaphoric base camp at the bottom of the hill. I'm pretty sure this is not the most efficient use of my time and energy, but my monkeys really like to camp.

sigh - what you see sometimes is not actually what you're gonna' get

Another round of assumption-making and the problems it creates.

context: long term, chronic, injury? finally getting aggressive about treating it, specialists involved this time and maybe -dare I hope? a measure of success.

Primary specialist says, let's do some PT in the meantime but not the strength building normal PT - you don't need that. I want you to get xyz - and would prefer you use our people because they'll do what I want. Translation: they work with our patients primarily and know me as a doc so they won't run off on a rail.

Now. I have my own guys. Close to home, close to our gym. As a Krav instructor over 50, I'm a frequent flyer. But here's me thinking...well, you're already going one step further with this whole thing, go all the way and use her people instead.

Fail.

Problem 1: PT is deciding the doc's orders aren't correct for the problem. Hmm.
Problem 2: Oh you definitely need the strength work - of course you do
Problem 3: and this is the big one. Making an assumption about who I am because of my age instead of who I actually am.

Addressing Problem 1. ME: okay - you have to make the decisions that you feel medically, ethically are correct. I get it. Before I come back for the second appointment, talk to the doc and explain to her why you're not following her script. Because I'm going to an unhappy camper if when I do my follow up with her in January - she says "no, no, no - you were supposed to do xyz, I need you to go for another round and do what was prescribed". So you talk to her before I come back, cool?

PT: silence (eventually she capitulated to the orders of she was going to NOT follow).

Addressing Problem 2: now this was interesting. We did the strength work. And I am definitely not anywhere I should be having paused all strength work over 6 months ago due to said chronic condition just getting aggravated by everything. Immediately maxed everything out and when I asked "how far" I was supposed to compress a round resistance circle thingy and she says "just as far as you can" and I collapse the thing on all 40 reps and she says..."oh".  And then, "well, next time we'll had some weights, I guess -if you want you can add weights at home"

Addressing Problem 3: on a stretch she asked for, I commented -"no stretching really but it's wanting to cramp and tighten the hip flexors and that's a problem...I've been working diligently to get that flexibility back and I can't afford to start over again" PT says..."well that's okay, sometimes you have to compromise for what needs to be done"
ME: not going to happen - this is not a viable option - I need all the flexibility I can get (at this point I have already explained what I do for living most days)

PT finally says after Problem 2 elements walk themselves out...tell me again what you do? ME: again brief explanation PT: what does that mean? ME: more explanation  PT: oh, so it's a little intense sometimes? ME: sigh.

Yes. I am over 50.
Yes. I am female over 50.
Your job is to see the patient in front of you regardless of the automatic assumptions and preconceived notions about what age and gender prescribe your reality to be. Maybe this autoscripted response is why so many woman remain physically weaker than necessary, more easily injured than necessary and more dynamically a workable viable target to a predatory Threat.

See each woman for who she is - where she is. That's a good start.

I got nothin'

Too many things I want to write about results in me staring blindly at the screen with a resounding...yup, I got nothing- and then suddenly...paragraphs spiraling down into what may be one of the dusty secrets in the martial arts world...may be

Got started with this one: do I pick up on the last post and stir deeper into the conversation about sexual assault, rape culture? Murky waters charged with deep emotionally charged contexts - got a whole lot of words on this one but I don't know if there's any point to it sometimes.

Or do I venture into the twisting threads about our judicial system and duty and self-defense? On the back side of a court appearance as a judicially approved "expert" in the field of violence dynamics - again I have a whole lot of words and at the same time...none. Questions mostly too, the difference between duty and justice and if they stand in opposition to one another, what weighs most heavily? Is there a "should" in there somewhere?

And then there's this. The most annoying little bouncy ball hitting its way around inside my skull at the moment. Annoying because it doesn't seem to be losing inertia and annoying because my monkey brain feels the topic is both moot (it applies to so few people perhaps) and incendiary (because where it does apply, half the band will be really unhappy with the dialogue).

Here's the This. A question really, one with an assertion behind it. Asked by a colleague -yes, a female colleague in the martial profession.

The question: I wonder how many women who have made it as professionals and moved out from under the wings of their male instructors got punished for it?
The assertion: a lot of them, maybe even the majority.

The observation: when the guys leave from out underneath and go on to create their own business, work, etc. in the martial field - their male instructors feel betrayed, angry, pissed, stabbed in the back...to a degree. Before too long though, they're back to talking, even training together and collaborating. But when the women do the same thing the punishment runs deep.

The women's businesses are openly maligned. Rumors generate about how their ranks weren't legitimately earned, how they really aren't all that 'good' as instructors, practitioners, or whatever the context may be. People beyond the original instructor relationship get on board and shunning happens. And the punishment goes on much, much longer than what seems common when the same dynamic goes down between male instructor - and his male student-turned-instructor.

Important - the initial reactions of "thou shall not ever leave one's instructor-ever -ever - ad infinitum" are equal to both the women and the men who violate this deep martial arts control driven protocol. What's interesting, is my colleague's observation that it eventually dies down between the male students-turned-instructors and not so much with the women.

This observation sat and cooked and careened around like a Superball perpetually rebounding off the walls. And now there are three more questions, at least...
1) how isolated v. how prevalent is this dynamic?
2) why do martial arts instructors (male as this is still the majority) who help launch female instructors take on this intense level of possession over the women and their freedom to pursue what may be possible?
3) and to what degree does she, the instructor-to-be unconsciously assist in accepting the collar and it's invisible leash?

can women really defend themselves?

This morning over coffee my spouse is on Drudge and shares this story with me. The link is here so you can follow it yourself if you like. Article Link.

In Colorado a mom hears screams from the front yard where her kids are playing. Races out of the house to find a mountain lion:

"she found the cougar on top of her son, the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office said. The woman "was able to physically remove her son from the mountain lion" and the boy's father called 911 as he drove his son to hospital, the sheriff added."...quoted from the article

Later in the article " Sheriff's deputies and a law enforcement officer from the U.S. Forest Service found the mountain lion in the front yard of the residence and put it down, the sheriff said."

Let's look at what is NOT said. She physically removed her son (who lives by the way). Authorities find the animal still in their front yard after they leave for the hospital and put it down (i.e., they shoot it). It's always a sad moment for me when a beautiful creature like this is doing what it is designed to do and it's nature crosses paths with a human. Like the Gorilla and the little boy at the zoo....neither creature is vicious or evil, anyway that's a different rabbit trail.

So, "physically removed her son" and then the mountain lion is still hanging around in the front yard...doing the math? This mamma fucked up that mountain lion. As a mom, I'm pretty sure she didn't pause at those screams...hmmm, I wonder what could be happening? I will look out the window first...oh dear...let's make a plan. Honey? Where's the shotgun?

Nope. Not what happened. I have heard hurt and panicked sounds from my kids when they were little. It hits a deep, lizard brain place and you just move. 

This lizard brain is, in it's own way, a tactical genius. It doesn't use higher level thought process, in fact, it's mostly a pre-verbal thing. If this mamma had been a lion tamer, an exotic animal veterinarian, or any other profession in which she was well-studied in Mountain Lion, we might say oh, there you have it, she knew the animal's weakness. I'm pretty sure Rueters would have shared that tidbit as it's just a wee bit important.

Think about it. This average adult human female took on a mountain lion to save her tiny human and.she.won.

The next time I hear any female tell me she's "too...(anything)" to be able to learn physical self-defense, I am showing her this story. Because here's the thing girls, we are hard-wired for it. Just imagine what you can do with all that instinctual tactical capability if we put a little training behind it?

And the next time a guy asks me "do you really think a woman can defend herself against a man?" He's getting this article as my answer. If she can fuck up a mountain lion, with the right motivation the human male is child's play.

agency v. apples: wanna' bite?

Noticing something. Seen it before and hits close this time so now I'm processing it (again). It bugs me. Which also means the level of logical investigation I can take to it is limited. I am also taking a gender bias on this. If there is no gender influence - I am open to the evidence to the contrary. I fully expect this to come off as a bit of a rant. And a caveat: few things are "all people all the time". It's a pain in the ass to write with perpetual acknowledgement of this, so consider this once and done - acknowledged.

When a woman in a leadership role makes a strong decision and some folks don't care for it there seems to be a tendency to assign deepest level of blame for the decision to someone else. Then, to counsel her as if she isn't intellectually capable of having weighed the pros and cons and the risks and to make a decision based on her own ballast with all factors in mind.

Let's even submit the decision is a mistake. They don't want to assign the mistake to her - they want to assign it to an outside influence. This of course, happens when the peeps somewhat approve of her or like her, even. If this regard isn't there the alternative default is that she is just a bitch and they move on (and that has it's own implications but not my hill to die on at the moment).

What is this? If it was a male in the organizational leadership position would the peeps be as quick to assign the decisions to the influences of other people or, would they hold him directly accountable? I know men who have gone to conferences/trainings returning home and institute changes. I have seen the staff grumble (been one of those staff). I have not heard the grumbling peeps say "why do you think he listened to the people at the conference?" I have yet to observe them shaking their heads at how he seemed to be unduly influenced by the information and presenters. Nor have I heard the implication he is incapable of discerning for himself as part of the upset.

When the man-in-charge goes off to his conference his local peeps don't blame the conference for the decisions or changes he brings back. They blame him. His female counterpart? She may get some of the blame but it is rarely the full measure. Her local peeps also wonder who was so good at swaying her that she couldn't help herself and just drank the Kool-aid. They might even intimate this is respect - they respect her too much to believe she could think of X without an overbearing outside influence being nefariously afoot. This is snow white, the apple and the witch - the allegory is less than subtle.

Guess what. She is just as accountable as her male counterparts. Blaming her directly is an act of respect by comparison. It acknowledges her agency. Blaming others for their capacity to influence her, or tsk-tsking her decisions because she has been influenced is a straight up way of saying "you can't make a valid decision by your own merit". This presumption of influence by its nature is also communicating she is weaker, less intelligent, less worldly, less street smart, less savvy, too naive, and otherwise incapable of being at the helm of anything. I know, I know...maybe this judgment is just about her competency at work or -where-ever. But that's not how it works. If the assumption is she lacks capacity to make her own decisions then the assumption is also a general implication of decreased capacity, period.

And a valid decision is different than a good decision, because maybe it isn't "good" or "right". Valid is tied to competency. Let's say the valid decision isn't a good one. Okay, cool. For gods sake - let her stand accountable for her decisions - anything less makes her less. It may look like her supporters or colleagues or employees are saving her but all they are doing is communicating how shallow her capacity runs.

And I am wondering if this is even more pronounced in organizations or industries that are predominantly male. Wondering if the handful of women in the organization are subtly indoctrinated into this mindset and so will unconsciously make the same assumptions. And wondering how long it will take and/or what it will take before the agency of women is a given instead of something that must be proven.

Relevant Confirmation Bias Rabbit Trail: people in any industry will gravitate toward ideologies that overtly or subtly align with their own bias. When someone chooses a conference, a training program, or break-out sessions there is a high probability the material will support those biases. A few will challenge their thinking and go to sessions that they are hesitant about but very very few drop good money on something they already know they don't abide. If you are going to travel, spend money on meals, hotels and the cost of the conference...you are generally positively inclined toward the material in the first place. If a therapist goes to a conference on applying clinical hypnosis to client process it's a good bet the therapist already thinks there is value in the modality. If the therapist thinks hypnosis is bullshit s/he is not going to pay conference fees to learn more about it. Hence if a supervisor, boss, business owner, goes off to learn something chances are they have already decided it is going to have value and will align with his/her bias. So perhaps it's not about how much the "experts influenced" and more about how people seek out confirmation for concepts and paradigms they have already chosen. Not saying this is good or bad -