So tell me ladies & gents - when you finally realized that you could hit someone hard enough to hurt them what did you feel? Excitement, power, guilt?
Copyright 2000 Pacific Press Ltd.
The Vancouver Sun
November 11, 2000 Saturday FINAL EDITION
SECTION: MIX, Pg. E1 / Front
LENGTH: 1181 words
HEADLINE: Them's fightin' words: On the subject of violence, Dorothy Woodend wants us to remember this: If women inflicted a little more of it, they might be better off
BYLINE: Dorothy Woodend
SOURCE: Special to the Sun
BODY:
Men have been keeping something from women. We knew most of their pathetic little secrets, but this one managed to slip past us. And what is this hidden truth, this carefully guarded fact? Just this: fighting is fun.
I know that's not a message the province's newspaper of record is supposed to be disseminating on the 11th of November. This is a day to rue the use of violence over reason, not celebrate a woman's right to fight. So think of this story as a cautionary tale, an early warning of what's coming down the pipe.
God knows I'm not the first to spot it. At the moment there are no fewer than five new movies themed around women who shove too much. Girl Fight, Kathryn Kusama's debut film, has grabbed the lioness' share of attention, but in fact girls are fighting everywhere. Even we demure, deferential Canadians have come up with a fighting film, The New Waterford Girl, in which the female protagonist is paid by other women to beat the crap out of cheating boyfriends and other nefarious males. Meanwhile, one-time Jackie Chan sidekick (and the word has never been more apt) Michelle Yeoh astonishes cineastes who manage to catch the festival favourite Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and for better or worse, the big-screen version of Charlie's Angels opened at the top of the weekend grosses. Even the girly girls are getting in on the action: witness Dark Angel, where Jessica Alba, with her permanently stunned stare and inner-tube lips looks like she may have gone one round too many. TV gives us Zena, Buffy and Nikita. There are
books galore, and when we're not reading or watching, we are training. High-profile fighters like Laila Ali and Girl Fight star Michelle Rodriguez have helped popularize women's boxing, catapulting this once sad little sideshow into the limelight.
Wait a minute, perhaps you're thinking, haven't women fighters been around forever? Granted, but in the past they were mostly loons, goons and cartoons. In the latter vein, think of Grace Jones, various killer Bond girls or WWF wrestlers Chyna and company. Fighting ladies like these usually had a fair smack of Sappho in their make-up and were there primarily as soft-porn eye candy for the guys. After all, if two women were fighting, they might accidentally start kissing or a booby or two might pop out. We regular women fought only when forced. We fought for life and death, in self-defence or to escape being raped. Never just for fun, and rarely with anything approaching the competence of men.
Take my own case. The only time I remembered sudden violence as a good-time activity dates back to grade four, when I accidentally punched an albino boy named Lance Freisen. He was teasing me, and without thinking I balled up my fist and let fly, connecting directly with his nose. We were equally shocked, especially when his nose began to gush. He took one look at the blood, burst into tears and took off bawling at the top of his lungs. For several weeks I reigned as queen of the playground.
After my championship round with Lance Freisen, it took another 22 years for the truth to sink in. For my 31st birthday, my husband, the least aggressive man on the planet, presented me with a handmade card that featured a hand breaking through a stack of bricks and the words "Hi-Yahhhh!" printed over top. It was a gift certificate good for 10 weeks of karate classes at the local YWCA, and from the first lesson the forgotten emotions came flooding back. The glory, the sweat, the complete and total giddy glee that comes from sitting on top of some other more frail and fragile creature yelling "Give Up?" Especially if that frail and fragile creature is a man. Then again, such moments of triumph were interspersed with many more of complete helplessness. For example, there was the moment of absolute disbelief the first time our bald-headed sensei punched me in the gut. As women we are so unaccustomed to being physically struck that it is a shock to the system, a moral indignation. "You can't hit me, I'm a girl!" was my first thought, quickly followed by the impulse to hit back. Not a wise idea when you're a lowly white belt.
After years of staunch feminist training, karate training took a while getting used to. Picking myself off the ground so that I could bow to the man who had just punched me silly just didn't sit right. Oh, for one of those Karate Kid movie montages where the heroine learns all there is to know about the new discipline in five minutes while Eye of the Tiger plays in the background. I spent most of my sessions red faced and gasping like a dying carp.
Then a strange thing began to happen. I was becoming only infinitesimally better, but suddenly the idea of hurting other people, something I have always longed to do, became a real possibility. No longer need I shrug off life's little indignities or take the feminine approach to confrontation, which relies solely on verbal prowess. If it came right down to it, I could fight.
I even began to permit myself sidewalk rage. The day I turned to someone I'd bumped into on the street and snarled "Hey, you want a piece of me! Buddy!" I realized I was hurtling out of control. All the teaching of karate -- "Respect others. Refrain from violent behaviour." -- had been pushed out of my brain by the glorious drug of violence.
One of the things that learning to fight teaches you, one of the things I had failed to learn, is respect for your opponent. The better fighter you become, the greater responsibility to not harm the person you're beating on. And if you are going to harm them, you better be doing it for the right reasons.
But that's the other side to the responsibility coin: the right reasons do exist. Recent stories like that of a young Lower Mainland woman who used her training in an obscure form of martial arts to soundly thrash some men who were intent on raping her bring a glow to my heart. In light of recent abduction attempts, it only makes sense to teach girls everything they can possibly do to protect themselves. When I was young, I worshipped the Bionic Woman, Wonder
Woman, and yes, Charlie's Angels, simply because they were the only women on TV who would beat up men. When I see little girls wandering out of the film version hi-yahhing and karate kicking their way down the street, I have to stop and wipe the damp from my eyes.
It is my opinion that men need to be beaten every once in a while, to make them humble, respectful and obedient. And now that I am just the woman to do it, I want other women to share in the joy. Every woman (and I do mean every woman) has experienced one of those moments of impotent rage or fear, when some man you've never seen before feels it's his God-given right to say whatever the hell he feels like simply because you are female. How would it feel, instead of being scared or humiliated, to simply turn and say "You talking to me?" then drop him like a ton bricks.
So swing out sister! Just run away before he can press assault charges.
Dorothy Woodend last wrote for Mix in praise of indolence.
