Of course you are correct, as far as weapons go pepper spray is defensive. Not especially effective or reassuring, but yes, defensive and not usually deadly in the hands of someone who is untrained and/or panicking.
Stop with the veiled insults or you will be subject to a warning.
You’ve been around here long enough to know the rules.
You only have to be accused once…when it rains it pours. :mad:
Yes, see for example this poor policeman defending himself against a mob of students. It’s not like anyone would use pepper spray to soften someone up for another assault.
If someone walked up to me and pulled out a can of pepper spray I’d certainly feel threatened. Not as much as if he pulled out a gun, naturally, but still I’d reasonably fear that I could be attacked.
The people in this thread who are mischaracterizing a woman being aware of the real danger of sexual assault or violence as “being paranoid,” “living in fear,” and words to that effect, are not realizing that what we’re really talking about is situational awareness.
Women are victims of sexual assault and rape by men, far, far, FAR moreso than men from women, men from men, and women from women. Recently at a party which was winding down into the wee hours of the morning, a large group of us were sitting around a room, and the question went up - who has actually been raped, not molested, not felt up, but raped? - and every single hand in a rather large room went up. What’s scary is that this is typical. The follow-up question was how many had reported the attack, and only a couple of hands went up. Mine didn’t.
But you need not pay attention to anecdote, the stats back up my assertion pretty easily. So no we’re not “living in fear”, we’re trying to be aware of our surroundings, trying not to be around strange men alone in inopportune places, etc.
I’ll share something - three weeks ago I was dancing at my club, and after spending about an hour on the floor moving and dirty dancing with the other girls, I had to go outside to cool off. I went outside and the only other people out there were two men smoking and talking quietly to each other. No big deal. So I paced a little, letting the winter air cool me down, and suddenly I turned around and one of the men was standing there, inches from me. He and his friend each outweighed me by at least 100 pounds and each had at least half a foot on me. He accused me of being a hooker (OK, I was sorta dressed like one) and told me I was coming with him to “party.” He grabbed my wrist, hard, his giant hamfist locking around my wrist and started to pull me into a dark part of the parking lot.
I lost my situational awareness. I’ve bragged on here that I’ve had some martial arts training and am generally pretty fit. My weapons master has been training me in specific “strike-escape” moves for months. And I used them successfully once, too. If I had used one or two simple escapes I would have been away and back in the club and relative safety in seconds. But this time I didn’t do anything - I was caught off-guard and froze. I even had left my gun at home, so I couldn’t even have that as a backup. I dug in my heels and tried to pull back, but being an average-sized American male, he had the strength and I didn’t. My voice froze in my throat, figuratively, and all I could do was stand there and try to refuse to be pulled away. The only reason he let me go is his friend suddenly recognized me and told him that I was not someone he should be interested in. So he let me go, laughed at me, and they walked off.
I was left terrified and ashamed, ashamed I had let myself get into that position.
If I had lived a little more “in fear”, I wouldn’t have broken the S.O.P. of “always go outside with a girlfriend.” Or I wouldn’t have turned my back on two guys standing outside a club at near 1:00am. Or I would have been ready to fight back. Or I would have had my gun with me.
I get propositioned by people every single night that I’m out. I dance well, dance hot, and I clean up well. Four times out of five it’s other girls or t-girls propositioning me, which I don’t mind because they don’t act creepy, they just come up and ask me, and they take the “no” and leave me alone - or keep dancing and it’s no big deal. But the guys…they don’t do that. They joke, they wheedle, they beg, they negotiate, they try to buy me drinks and get pissed when I tell them I’m a non-drinker (truth), they ask me if they can give me a ride home, etc. Sometimes they walk up and put an arm around me, or try to grab a quick kiss. Sometimes they succeed and run off giggling like a 5-year old. Or just follow me around all night, watching, staring, taking video of me dancing with their phones, etc. If I tell them I’m not interested because I’m a lesbian, they then propose the “novel” idea of a threesome with Fierra and me. Finally, they will follow you out to your car in the parking lot, all the way until you start the engine and it becomes clear they’re at risk of being run over.
Generally speaking, I for one have reason to be more aware of men than women.
Of course he’s using it offensively in that example. Like many things in life, the exceptions do not make the rule. Generally speaking pepper spray is a defensive weapon. I’m on the fence w.r.t. tasers and stun guns, however.
That’s not an exception, that’s pretty much how police actually use pepper spray; to soften people up and make em easier to arrest.
Civilians may use it offensively less often, but to say that someone shouldn’t be threatened by pepper spray because ‘it’s a defensive weapon’ suggests that you don’t think it can and is used offensively.
Generally speaking, I think a lot of the guys arguing for not allowing a woman the few seconds of safety simply holding a can of pepperspray would afford would be swinging around Uzi and grenade launchers if they had to live life as a woman for a week. You keep being frosty.
I don’t recall typing that someone shouldn’t be threatened by it.
I understood it from your “of course you are correct” and quote of ladyfoxfyre in post 301. I think I was conflating ladyfoxfyre and your arguments in my mind, and she’s certainly hammering the ‘don’t be threatened by women holding pepper spray’ argument pretty hard. Yours was just the most recent ‘defensive weapon’ post when I replied.
I don’t quite get what the categorization of weapons in offensive and defensive means if it doesn’t mean something similar to ‘don’t worry about being attacked by defensive weapons’ though.
All I was saying is that it’s something primarily used for defense. In the hands of a civilian, I would assume it was going to be used for such. And I might guess wrong and suddenly have a 2,000,000 Scoville eyewash.
On behalf of well-balanced males everywhere, could I just say “Give the gender war a rest, Der Trihs.” Showing somebody you have a pepper spray, when you are (sorry but this is a biological and social fact) not the dominant person in the situation, is not remotely the same as waving a gun or knife at them.
All you are doing here is giving further weight to the assertion that men are crazy and unhinged.
Civilians normally use guns for defence, too. But if someone pulls one in the street it’s still threatening.
LadyFoxFyre was saying it should be assumed not to be offensive because it’s a woman wielding it. But women are at least as likely as men to commit theft, and pepper spray would be the perfect weapon for a mugger. The position that the innocent man in the lift is more of a threat than the woman with the unprovoked weapons deployment is just wrong-headed, and based entirely on the idea that men are villains and woman can do no wrong.
There was no “dominant person” in that situation, until she pulled a weapon. Then it was her.
And this isn’t the 1950s, claiming that men are automatically dominant in society is just silly.
And if you’d asked a room of men had they ever been the victim of a serious physical assault I’m sure you’d get a similar response. I certainly have.
Situational awareness and being careful isn’t the same as living in fear and is something both genders need to be aware of.
But almost certainly not from a female? The point I and others are making is the gender divide.
I’m growing tired of this. Pepper spray used as an offensive weapon by women, or men, is a remote occurrence. I investigated pepper spray use by men and women as a purely offensive weapon and I recall the numbers being vanishingly small in some cases.
Women are at least as likely to commit violent theft via mugging as a man? Really now; situational context just a little. I’ll need a few comprehensive cites on that please.
You’ve set up the argument to win by stating the man is “innocent” when in the situation described the woman had no knowledge of that fact.
She should assume that until she has reason to think otherwise - that is, the man threatens her. It’s that simple.
Ahem… (raises hand). Viciously assaulted in my sleep by my ex-wife on more than one occasion. Never mind the assaults that happened when I was awake, when I was driving my car, when we were simply standing there hugging, etc.
So yeah, I got a dog in this fight.
So your past experience with a violent woman led you to view the woman as an elevator as a potential threat?