Warning: If you have no interest in feminism, stop reading. Come back when I’m less angry. Also, I’m not sure when that will be.
Jen is heading off to college in the fall.
. . .
She has all her necessary credits to graduate. She has her driver’s license. She has work experience, a kick-ass portfolio, and a plan for a course of study. We didn’t spend any time learning how to balance a checkbook because…
She does know how to file her taxes. She also has an extensive background in navigating difficult personality types. Even though there are a million other things she’d rather do than cook, she knows enough to bake a cake, and make a box of mac and cheese. Weekend nights she makes stove-top popcorn with too much butter and she often whips up smoothies. Better than that, she knows how to eat well.
She’ll be fine.
The only item left on the list before she *choke* leaves the nest is a self-defense class. It’s been many moons since I took a class in how to protect myself from a perpetrator. I figured we’d take one together. I thought I’d found one until I looked into it further and read the blurb that said, “How to defend yourself when the attack is taken to the ground.”
WTH?!
Neither of us plans on letting an attack get that far, so I searched for the class that stops the attack before it reaches the ground. It occurred to me that, in my town, anyway, all those classes are still taught by men.
Instead, I purchased Ladies* Personal Defense gadgets for both of us. Then I changed the entry on the list to: “Search for an online self-defense class taught by a female.”
When there are so many educational options available online, why are we sending our daughters to college campuses?
Jen wants the college campus experience. She knows she has the option to never leave the safety of our home and study online. After all, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last 10 years. It’s time to get out into the world.
However, it’s 2020 and our daughters still risk personal safety in pursuit of higher education.
Why are we willingly paying mountains of money to institutions that clearly cannot make the personal safety of college students a priority? And, yes, I know. That should be taught at home before young men go off to college. Will that ever happen?
Should she attend an all-female college? Is that the best way to tackle the issue? If we want to be safe, must we avoid all males?
Can we avoid all males? Asking for a friend.
And, in the terrifying unlikely event (Gods forbid) that an attack happens, she then must report to the police department, which is largely populated by men.
Do you see how independence is just beyond our grasp?
Do you see the reason for my sleep-deprived, worry-filled nights?
I tried to search online for the manufacturer of the kitty self-defense gadget. I assume it was designed by a man, because a woman wouldn’t have given it that pathetic moniker.
Do you see the irony? Men teach self-defense classes to women. Men design our self-protection gadgets. Men work to keep us safe… from men.
Are they coming at this problem from the wrong direction?
*The name – Ladies Personal Defense – tells us all we need to know.