Column A call to arms for Americas bullied women
By DEMETRIA MARTINEZ
Given the darkness that surrounds the path from my car to my
apartment, I have built up a small arsenal of self-defense equipment: a
canister of Mace on my key ring, a miniature flashlight and a toy cell phone.
These items are supposed to keep me safe.
Deployment, however, presents some real problems, particularly
since I have but two arms. Consider the following scenarios, all of which I
have tried.
I sometimes employ my fake cell phone as a kind of preemptive
ruse. Frustrated actress that I am, I chatter into the phone (perhaps chewing
gum to make it look like I am conversing), my liberated arm circling groceries
like a baby on my hip.
Surely a rapist would back off at the prospect of a woman
hollering call the police into a telephone as he unzips his pants.
But what if he were to call my bluff? Or, maddened with drugs, not
even see my toy phone? I considered buying a real phone, but then what? Tell
the guy to wait while I dial 911?
Enter the Mace. Groceries on my left hip, I grip the Mace like a
gun with my right hand and walk purposefully with a shoot-to-kill (or
blind-and-choke) attitude. Im ready to spray any would-be assailant.
The danger here, of course, is posed by nature. Suppose a downwind
gust pickles my eye ducts before I can run like hell? Crippling myself hardly
seems like the best possible form of self-defense.
So, Ive got that cute little flashlight I got at Home Depot
to fall back on. You must understand Tucson is dimly lit at night. Our
universitys astronomers, with their advanced telescopes, depend upon it.
Hence, sometimes I employ the flashlight plus one other weapon.
Forget evening grocery shopping. Stepping out of my car at night, I wield
flashlight and toy phone. Or flashlight and Mace. While I cant think of a
way for the flashlight to backfire, the problem is that it wont do much
to ward off an attacker unafraid of the light.
Obviously, I cant use the flashlight, phone and Mace all at
once. This is what I mean about not enough arms. I feel like evolution cheated
women, given mens predilection for violence. The way I see it, with more
arms we could fight back -- in the manner of our patroness, Kali, the
many-armed Hindu goddess of destruction.
Far too many women could use those extra arms. Every four minutes
a man rapes a woman. Every 15 seconds a man beats a woman. Four out of five
murdered women are killed by men -- between a half and a third are married to
their murderers.
Forty-two percent of all women employed by the federal
government, a group the size of Denver, Colorado, have been sexually
harassed, writes Kay Leigh Hagan in her wonderful book, Fugitive
Information: Essays From A Feminist Hothead. The statistic provides one
indication of how widespread a climate of hostility women face in America.
I confess I dream of owning a gun. I know this is not a
politically correct fantasy. And yes, I know, I should sign up for a
self-defense class. But in my fantasy I am so skilled with my little
pearl-handled Beretta that I get the perpetrator -- not the other way around.
Please dont cite all those statistics about how guns
endanger the innocents more than criminals. I know the numbers and I am no fan
of the National Rifle Association.
Instead, just take a moment to appreciate all the ways, big and
small, women circumscribe their lives. I sympathize with those who live in
high-crime neighborhoods. For women, our high-crime neighborhood is the world
-- and, according to stats on domestic violence -- our own homes.
I have become expert at eyeballing parking lots as I walk to my
car. But one can see only so much. Evolution short-changed us again: We have no
eyes in the backs of our heads.
Demetria Martinez is a novelist and poet living in Tucson,
Ariz.
National Catholic Reporter, September 12,
1997
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