Greg Bartley/Camera Press, via Redux
Many years ago, while I was living in Beacon Hill Friends House, a Quaker community in Boston, a young member tentatively proposed that we host a Model Mugging self-defense course for women. Her hesitation could well have come from religious principles; traditionally, Quakers eschew physical violence even to save their own lives. But this woman was worried about something else altogether: “I don’t like people telling women that they should be afraid.” On that principle, she wondered whether she needed to snub this well-regarded course, as obviously it recruits and runs on fear. No matter that its goal is the management of fear and the lessening of actual danger. Certainly the instructors can’t help but authorize the feeling behind the basic questions “How can I avoid being robbed or raped, and how would I deal with such a crime in progress?” And lessons about the psychological profile of a typical rapist or the disparity between male and female upper body strength can’t have the effect of a relaxation tape.
The trouble of course is that you can’t know or plan or achieve much of anything worthwhile without fear, and decrying it seems to me—I won’t bother to be polite here—a symptom of having been raised by the TV. Wonder Woman might find herself shackled (with well-polished bands, and without any offense to her hairdo), but nobody is going to rape her. You can’t dothat to Wonder Woman. Those of us
