Today I sat on the floor of the Central Bureau of the
Wichita Police Department with a group of women, listening intently to a
heartbreaking story of a childhood friend and college roommate being murdered
after going downstairs to the laundry room of her dorm. The organizer, Cindy,
passed around a framed picture of her and her friend as little girls. “Julie’s
the cute one,” Cindy declared. “I’m the one in the white shirt with the cigar.”
At 19, Julie was brutally murdered for doing nothing more than being in the
wrong place at the wrong time, and now, four decades later, Cindy is doing what
she can to teach women how to not be victims. She tells us that the objective
is to get away. To run. To survive. I’d never taken a self-defense course, but
“Fearless and Female” sounded like something I could get behind, especially
since I knew Cindy from my hiking group. I figured it would be useful, probably
entertaining (knowing Cindy), and a chance to do some female bonding in a safe
place. What I didn’t count on were the emotions that it evoked.
Sure, I knew all the things they tell you when you grow up
female: Be aware of your surroundings, be careful where you park, carry mace or
a whistle (Cindy’s air horn was seriously awesome), always keep your keys
between your fingers as weapons, don’t walk alone, especially at night. We
began with learning how to use the heel of our hand thrust upward to the nose, shouting
“NO!” and keeping our hands defensively in front of our faces. We laughed,
smiled, apologized… I commented to a woman about my age how I was taught to be
polite and not be rude- even to strangers. She had, too. But Cindy wasn’t
having it. “Don’t smile!” she admonished us. “Make a face! Don’t hold back!
Strike and yell, NO!” As the sessions progressed, we got fiercer and louder. I
imagined myself as A Force to Be Reckoned With, as I joined the others in
striking, hitting, breaking a hold, rolling, kicking, and stomping. “NO! NO!
NO!” we all shouted, and my throat began to hurt, so emphatic was my yelling.
We were given Stabby Kitties- handy little plastic doodads with sharpened
points that we could hold instead of keys (because keys might collapse on us
when we tried to use them). Cindy told us if we remembered nothing else, to
make as much noise as we could and use Stabby Kitty to do as much damage to the
face as possible, “So you can identify the attacker in a police lineup later.” I
considered the feelings that had bubbled up as I approached the rubber torso
with the mean bad guy look named Bob. At that moment, I hated Bob. I hated that
Bob thought I was easy prey. He was even smirking at me. I’ll show Bob, I
thought, as I grabbed Bob’s ears and dug my thumbs into his blank eyes. “NO!” I
spat at him with all the venom I could muster. I walked away, feeling slightly
uneasy about the rage that I felt. How unfair that I must carry Stabby Kitty or
pepper spray, or worry about where I park, or that I’m even taking a class like
this merely because I’m a woman. I wanted to cry at the injustice of it. I
wanted to cry for Julie.
At the end, we sat on the floor again, munching snacks and drinking water. Women of all ages, sizes, physical abilities, colors, races… our commonality was being female. “Because we are women, we are seen as easy targets,” Cindy said. “You don’t have to like it. But it’s a fact.” A woman raised her hand and asked, have you ever been in a situation where you had to use these techniques? All faces turned to Cindy, and she paused for the merest of moments before telling us that she had been in a situation, but it was before she knew how to handle it. She kept it to herself for 20 years, she said, and when she finally did tell her story to some friends, she learned that many of them had similar stories of their own. I looked around and saw many of the women nodding as if to say, yes. That happened to me, too. Cindy reminded us that we all know someone. A friend, a family member, a coworker- someone we know has been a victim. Don’t place blame, don’t tell them what they should or shouldn’t have done, she advised. “The best thing you can do is simply tell them, ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you, and believe them.’” The goal is survival, she repeated. “Do whatever you must to survive. And if you survived, then you did exactly the right thing.”
