nordmann

OK. I accept your point that some men can, under certain conditions, tolerate severe trauma to their testes. There are some very weird, drugged, or just stone-cold-crazy people out there doing things to themselves and to others that the rest of us couldn't imagine ever wanting to do. Are you saying that men hang themselves up by their testicles to induce a trance state?? Oh my god! Some trance state that would be. Neurogenic shock from pain is probably more likely the case. Anyway, these are exceptional cases, and I'm guessing they have little actual relevance to women's self defense against average guys on the street in the real world.

If you set aside a few rare cases, I'm guessing that the most likely real-world scenario where a male attacker would be able to withstand any reasonably well executed rising kick to the groin would be that he's wearing a high-quality, properly-fitted cup. You can buy those at any Modell's, and it's not hard to imagine a street-fighter getting the bright idea to do this. Also, you generally can't just tell by looking whether he's protected. So that's about the only really good argument I can think of for not dropping a groin shot if your opponent leaves himself open.

Of course, if he's trained, he's very unlikely to leave himself open in the first place. I think that's a statement of the obvious. The reason that protecting the groin is such a key objective of MA training is precisely that the groin is such a devastating target on men.

So then, how many people who accost women on the subway are all that highly trained? Based on what I hear in the news here in New York City, it sounds like the majority of cases involve a hopelessly untrained, often drunk, and usually rather dim-witted stumble-bum attacker whose only real advantage is that his intended victim has been conditioned by our society to believe that she has no chance against a male attacker unless she has years of MA training. What a tragedy this is. The result is that she no idea that she could probably (not certainly, but probably) kick the crap out of him if she were willing--no, make that EAGER--to go crazy on him: in rapid succession and with no hesitation, rip his face or throat with a fistful of keys while smacking the side of his neck or his temple with her purse, kick his testicles up to his chin while his hands are protecting his face and neck, and then punt his head as if she were doing an NFL football kickoff with it when he bends over in agony from the groin kick.

If all women--even untrained ones--were willing to fight this way against their attackers, the rape statistics would drop by half overnight. Instead, most women live in fear of defending themselves because of all the misinformation that's floating around out there. Yes, men are stronger than women--usually much stronger. This only makes the strategic advantage presented by the testicles all the more important to them. Telling women that groin strikes are not worth the effort because they only work some of the time and even then they are only slightly effective (when the real-world crime reporting evidence shows that they are debilitating more often than not) is not a step toward empowering women to defend themselves.

Do you read the news much? Do you hear about cases where women have fought off wannabe attackers? I haven't taken a tally over the years, but I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the single most frequently used strike that is included as part of a successful defense is some type of blow to the groin. Often--though certainly not always--this single strike is all that was necessary to allow the intended victim to escape. This high rate of successful real-world groin attacks occurs in spite of the fact that every man knows he had damn well better not get hit there. Going by why I hear about in these real-life defense situations, it would seem that the groin is not only a very effective place if you succesfully land the blow, but it's even a difficult part of the body for an untrained man to defend, too, since they seem to have a rather poor track record of keeping it protected against even small girls and little old ladies with no MA training.

Sure, you hear about the odd case where the woman landed a groin kick and, for whatever reason, he was able to keep coming in some capacity. In those cases, I'm guessing that she didn't have much of a chance against him anyway because of a large disparity in fighting ability. Had she tried any other untrained attack, it probably would also have failed, don't you suppose? There is always a possibility of any strike failing to achieve its intended effect. Groin shots are not unique in that regard. But I still say that, as soon as avoidance is no longer an option, you should give your opponent all your best shots--groin included--the very first chance you get. If that doesn't stop him enough for you to escape the situation, then you're probably just SOL no matter what you do, but at least you went down fighting.

And to date, I still have never heard of an actual, real-world case of the much-touted and widely-feared phenomenon where you kick your attacker's balls and he suddenly blows up into the Incredible Hulk, twice as strong and twice as fast as before. I don't know who came up with that fairytale, but it has done a lot to damage women's ability to defend themselves when they hear it and believe it.

I don't mean to beat a dead horse on this matter. I have a personal reason why I think it is extremely important to empower women with accurate information about how to neutralize a man. My wife was sexually assaulted and badly beaten more than a decade ago in Tampa, FL. (The irony of the situation is that she travels all the way from big, bad, New York City at the height of the crack wars when violent crime here was out of control, just to end up in the ICU in some freakin' little no-name, piss-ant, third-rate cow town.) Sorry. I still have to vent about that.

Anyway, she started out by trying to talk her way out of it, and continued to try to reason with him even after he had thrown her to the ground and made his intent to rape her obvious. It was only when he started beating the daylights out of her despite her lack of aggression to him that she realized that she had no choice but to fight back. And so when she was lying on her back and he bent over her to pull her panties down, she dug her fingernails in under his chin and urinated up into his face, and that got him off of her immediately. Unfortunately, this was not before she had sustained a concussion, a broken nose, damage to a cornea, and was left with a face that was almost unrecognizable.

Goddammit. Even today, I can't talk or write about that without trembling from anger.

When my wife thinks about why she didn't act sooner to defend herself, she realizes that her fear of escalating the situation was the only thing that stopped her. She knows she probably could have prevented injury to herself if she had vigorously taken any of several early opportunities to fight back. The clearest opportunity, I believe (I wasn't there, obviously) was that, after he had thrown her down on the ground and was standing over her with his legs on either side of her hips, she remembers being perfectly aware that she had an easy, clear shot to stomp upward into his groin. She didn't do it only because she was afraid to try it. This fear was instilled in her by all those horror stories about how hitting a man in the groin doesn't really work and only makes him mad and more dangerous. I couldn't believe when I found out that she actually believed that load of crap. That fairytale is partly responsible for my wife's injuries, which took months to recover from. And that's not mentioning mental injuries that will probably never completely go away.

I don't want any more women being brutalized, traumatized, and hospitalized because they are afraid to kick a man's testicles. Don't be afraid! Bash those beans to a paste and get yourself out of there!