Fighting Back

CUMBERLAND - We all had our reasons for taking the class. One woman, a teacher, didn't want to fear being assaulted by students. Another said she worked third shift, and felt uneasy arriving at work late at night. "I just assume everybody is nice," said a woman who hailed from a small town in Maine.

We came to find out how to defend ourselves. But as we practiced yelling, punching and stomping, I realized that we weren't learning to fight. We were learning to listen to our intuition, reawakening our instincts.

Last week, I was one of 14 women to complete Cumberland's first-ever rape aggression defense class. It was four nights long, and anything but easy. I felt drained after the first night.

After a lecture on assault statistics and general self-defense principles, we'd spent the evening learning how to plant our feet, look assertive, and be ready to defend ourselves. That involved yelling over and over, at top volume, "Stay back!" or "No!"

All the yelling left me feeling emotionally bruised. It was so abrasive.

But a funny thing happened on the second night. As I grew comfortable, I started to feel my voice. I was no longer afraid to be heard. I yelled louder -- so loud, in fact, that my lungs hurt the next day.

That night, we learned moves such as the shin scrape and the heel stomp, both particularly effective when wearing stiletto heels.

There were gruesome moments, such as when instructor Brian Nichols showed us how to grab an attacker's hand and pull the two pairs of fingers apart until the skin between them ripped.

"You have the option," Nichols told us. "Split the hand. It's just skin. It'll tear."

Or, when Nichols taught us the "hammer-fist," a vertical blow designed to break an attacker's nose.

"Don't be surprised when his nose blows open and there's blood all over the place," he warned.

We all cringed at first, but he was exactly right -- when I'd thought about how I would react if attacked, I'd visualized hitting someone, but never thought about the aftermath. He forced us to picture it.

We practiced punches, elbow strikes and kicks with the instructors, who wore pads to protect the vulnerable spots we were aiming for.

"C'mon, hit me!" Nichols growled as I elbowed the foam pad he held, pretending it was an attacker's face. "Get that guy away from you!"

Some self-defense classes teach compliance -- how to give in to an attacker and minimize the injury to oneself. Others, such as forms of martial arts, teach complicated techniques that require months, if not years, of learning and practice.

This class taught the easy way out. First of all, be vigilant and prepared. Notice your surroundings, and try to avoid dangerous situations. If you fear an impending attack, yell to discourage the assailant by attracting attention.

Then, if it comes to a confrontation: Poke those eyeballs, kick that groin -- whatever it takes to disable the attacker long enough for you to run away. The ultimate goal is always escape. Inflicting physical harm is not a goal, but a means to achieve escape.

Really, we were not learning anything, but were, rather, reprogramming subdued instincts. We were learning to yell rather than scream, because yelling from the diaphragm fuels adrenaline response and prepares us to take a blow without having our wind knocked out. We were learning to fight back instead of throwing up our hands and saying, "Woe is me!"

In the words of instructor Lori Raymond, who is also a sergeant in the Warwick Police Department: "You learn that you are strong, and that you can do something."

Broadly speaking, at least, it's true that women have always been the weaker sex, physically. But the world used to be a much rougher place, and women must have had to defend themselves against men as a matter of survival. I began to wonder, when did we learn not to defend ourselves?

On the fourth night, simulation night, two of the male instructors, wearing padded suits, stood in the middle of the room. We took turns donning pads of our own and venturing toward them, inviting the onslaught.

There were four scenarios: attacked while walking down the street, while waiting at a bus stop, while using a cash machine, and one that started with our eyes closed to simulate darkness.

The simulation built an incredible camaraderie. The instructors yelled suggestions like "Verbalize!" while the participants shouted "Kick some butt!" and "Hit him where it hurts!" We exchanged high fives as we finished.

In real life, of course, the attackers wouldn't be as nice. They wouldn't take care not to hurt us. They'd probably pull our hair. There wouldn't be yellow tape on our backs or knees to show injury-prone spots the attackers should avoid. And they certainly wouldn't be easily identifiable by their padded suits.

But the simulations allowed us to test our fight-or-flight response, and we learned that we did have it in us.

As we all sat down to watch the video of our performance in the simulations, I picked up my cell phone to check the time. It took me a long, confused second to figure out that I was having trouble reading the display because my hands were still shaking with adrenaline.

The class was an intensely personal experience. I don't know whether any of the participants had survived a sexual assault, but several women shared stories of close calls.

For me, it called to mind an experience I had during college. It was a Thursday night, in Boston's nightclub district. He came out of nowhere, and suddenly, though there were people all around, I felt we were invisible.

He started walking along beside me, offering suggestive questions and lewd compliments. Instantly, I was nervous. He wasn't a very big guy, and he was young and well-dressed -- visually non-threatening, but there was something in the way he acted. He wasn't just a guy out with his friends, approaching a girl to be funny.

I gave him all the usual cues that I wasn't interested -- moving farther away from him, answering his questions curtly, walking faster. Eventually, as he kept walking next to me, I took out my cell phone and began having a loud conversation with my boyfriend, who was waiting for me at a nightclub a couple of blocks away.

The guy still wasn't leaving me alone. Then, he put his arm around me.

I ducked away, and from somewhere inside me, a strong voice came. "Leave me alone!" I shouted, in a voice that seemed to me to be wholly out of proportion to the situation at hand.

The stranger's reaction surprised me. He seemed almost to melt away -- didn't say he was sorry, didn't ask why I overreacted. Just turned right around and walked in the other direction, like the last few minutes hadn't happened.

I still wonder what his intentions were, and whether he did the same thing to anyone else after leaving me.

As I reflected on my own response, I was surprised, but extremely proud. I knew then, as I learned again last week: We all have it inside us.