And (hopefully) finally, I’m not sure that a testicle shot is really that debilitating. If I’m walking down the street, or playing a recreational game of softball or something, and take a good shot to the junior senators, sure I’m going to stop what I’m doing and take a few moments to deeply appreciate the pain in all its glory.
But I suspect if someone is trying to kill me, the pain will be a little bit less of a concern, and I’ll continue defending myself/attacking him with only slightly diminished effectiveness.
Please forgive me...but I'm curious...[Why isn't a knee to the groin a more common fighting tactic?]
Another thing not mentioned is adrenaline. If you take even a glancing blow on the boys while you arn’t expecting it,(ie. walking down the street, sitting on the couch, casual sports) it is incapacitating. But if you are in a fight hopped on on adrenaline, you can shrug off light or even medium blows. Uncomfortable, but not that destructive. No matter how much adrenaline a direct blow will put you down or at least sap your energy to zero, but that is what people are saying is hard to do.
It is absolutely male instinct to stand with your legs turned to the side for that reason. It makes the straight forward kick guided between the legs(that makers of kids movies love) impossible. You are forced to do a kick around the side, which an instinctual forward flex of the thigh will catch the brunt of. The balls themself will usually only get a secondary slap of the kind you can shrug off.
Now if the guy manages to toe-punch your junk with steel toed boots, yeah, the fight is over, but it’s just not that easy to do.
[quote=“lurking_guest, post:13, topic:508431”]
None of this answers the questions.
QUOTE]
All of this EXACTLY answers the question as written. Please reread your OP and see if you have written exactly what you wanted answered.
A knee to the groin is certainly a valid and useful fighting tactic. Several of the guys I trained with most were of a group that strongly advocated HKE - headbutts, knees, and elbows. To deliver them you have to be able to get within range. And instead of looking for one “take out” shot, you generally ought to plan on throwing the greatest number of most damaging shots that you can.
Many folk comment on the lengths most guys go to to protect their groin. For that reason, an initial shot towards that area is often useful in getting the opponent to overcommit, maybe turning his hip from you and/or dropping his hands to cover his groin. When he does that, he opens up lines for your subsequent strikes, and/or makes it easier to close from striking distance into closer range where you can use your HKE and/or grapple.
Knees are extremely powerful weapons, and any fighter who does not train them regularly is really missing something. If you are grappling while standing up, you are still free to use your knees. And whoever said “a knee to the thigh does nothing” has apparently never received one. You try to knee the guy’s groin and he covers, instead you plant one in his thigh. That kind of a shot will wear an opponent down quickly, and again, will open up other lines to exploit. Moreover, your plan ought not be to throw one knee to the thigh. Instead, you are throwing a flurry of as many knees, elbows, and headbutts as you can. IMO not too many folk can hold up for long against that kind of an assault. While you are standing up grappling you can use your knees to the legs, the body, and even the head. Of course, one reason you may not “see” too many fights like that is because to do so you kave to know what you are doing, and must want to REALLY fuck up your opponent.
Even from a striking range, take what your opponent gives you. I do not believe the urge to protect the groin is as universal as others have suggested. IME, when a guy intends to do you harm, at least some of them just wade in. If he gives you his groin, punt that mother like a football!
What, are you speaking from experience?
You are incorrect. It is hard to get a good blow on the groin. Very hard.
“Tighty Whities” keep the target area even smaller? 
I only lead with my groin when I’m pretty certain the one I’m engaging means me no harm.
This is true, and I don’t see why lurking guest won’t accept it.
Nevertheless, I think there is still a good point here: even though it’s hard to hit, why is the groin such an uncommonly targeted area? The throat is hard to hit but there are martial arts moves that target it; same goes for the eyes, and for specific pressure points on the body. Given we all know how crippling a blow to the genitals is, why is it so uncommon to see it targeted? Surely it’s not purely because they’re hard to hit?
It’s a good target, but it’s not a great target. I’ve been kicked in the groin pretty hard before. I’ve also been punched in the nose. In a fight, I’d much rather take the groin shot. The pain, IME, is quite different. You feel the impact, which is not so bad. Then there’s a slow sinking sensation as you realize what happened and what’s going to happen next. Then the nausea comes on, and is persistent.
Shot to the nose, meanwhile—instant, severe, alarming and disorienting pain. Very troubling and immediate upon contact. Groin shot is distracting, but once you get over the immediate distraction (a second or two), you have a good ten or more seconds of normal function before the nausea sets in.
Better to have ten seconds to run away/beat someone’s face in than to spend those ten seconds still reeling from your potentially broken nose.
Yup.
Certainly we have instincts telling us to withhold in fights, as we withhold in many other situations out of morality or some other internal emotion to our personal detriment. Most of us will withhold from fighting at all. Others withhold from using deadly objects. Only a few will go in and fight dirty to the win. (Like those damn Jews :P) But rationality and mutually assured destruction plays a strong component as well.
Back when I was a young’un and my daddy taught me the manly art of self-defense, he did talk about the groin option, but pointed out that it was only a last-ditch, your life is in imminent danger, desperate move that, if unsuccessful, would open you to massive retailiation.
In other words, MAD.
In that sense it’s a lot like the traditional training in firearms. Don’t show it unless you’re prepared to use it, and don’t use it unless you’re prepared to kill someone. Most street fights just don’t escalate to that level of violence.
And, as noted, it’s not easy to get a clear shot at the testicles.
Like Valgard, Dinsdale, and a couple of others (forgive me, it’s a long thread) have said, the groin is a commonly targeted area in many self defense arts. The self defense art I first trained in has dozens of drills involving groin strikes, and we practiced them over and over and over until we were kicking and striking each other full strength in the cup several dozen times each class period - a strike that landed satisfactorily on the groin protector was said to be “popping the cup.” Typically they’re drills where the target presents itself, like a defense against a lapel grab: the attacker grabs the lapels of the defender, the defender claws and lifts the elbows to make the attacker think about pain up top and get the attacker on his toes, and snap kicks to the groin. You’re not going to make it dead on every time, but high ranking guys who have been practicing this drill for twenty years can be astonishingly accurate with it.
That’s a drill that some would criticize as a “dead” drill, which is a valid point to argue, but the poster who posted that the groin is a valid target in some combat sports was also correct - it’s a target area in point karate. It’s a difficult area to hit, but not impossible. I once suffered a groin injury in a point karate tournament where a heel drag caught me underneath my cup, sending me to the minor emergency clinic with what doctors would call a straddle injury to the perineum; in layman’s terms, he kicked the bejeezus out of me right in the taint. I hit the mat and he got two points: the groin was a legitimate target, so sucks for me. I was given five minutes to return to the ring and finished the fight, but I sort of had the fight kicked out of me by that point. I once did the same to one of my kickboxing trainers without intending to; we were sparring international rules kickboxing, and I threw an inside leg kick to his lead leg and caught him right where the cup he forget to tell me he wasn’t wearing should have been. This guy is a former IKF national heavyweight kickboxing champion, but accidental contact to the groin sent him to the mat for several minutes of deep breathing exercises.
What little I’ve dabbled in Krav Maga seems to have lots of groin strikes as well, and thinking about being in a Thai fighter’s clinch with no groin protector taking knees makes me sick to my stomach. So, the groin can be a target. It’s not always an easily hit target or the only target by any means, but it’s a target. If they react instictively to block, fine - feint to the groin and punch them in the jaw! 
We do.
Sure it does. The groin is one of the primary targets - “knees, nuts, neck, and nose”.
I’ve trained folks in H2H for years. The groin is a good target for an attack, and particularly so for a feint. Men often attack the groin, and instinctively defend it.
So I don’t know where you get your ideas, but they are, IME, pretty far off base.
Regards,
Shodan
A friend of mine who is big and scary looking was having an argument (the final one) with his wife. She was furious. She wound up and kicked as hard as she could, at his balls. She missed, but didn’t realize it. He ended up with a horribly bruised inner thigh.
But…the idea that he took a foot in the groin and just stood there glaring at her totally freaked her out. She ran. And is possibly running still, a decade or so later.
Similar story courtesy of someone I know…years and years ago, he got surprised by a cop doing certain illegal things…panicked and kicked the cop squarely in the junk (although realistically I’m thinking he may have missed as in the quoted post)…in his own words “When the cop didn’t flinch, THAT was when I was suddenly scared shitless” 
Does Batman wear a cup?
If he’s prepared.
In any of the “real” fights I’ve seen, meaning those not for sport or in a movie, kicking in the balls is one of many recognized, and advised, dirty tactics (along with ear twisting, biting, stomping, throwing elbows and grabbing a pool cue). Most people I’ve seen in a serious scrap stand slightly sideways, so a kick to the ‘gonadanal region’ is hard to pull off without opening yourself up to same.
I once saw a cat in a bar fight bite off a substantial chunck of another guy’s nose. Now that’s something you don’t see in too many movies.
Similar to one of the above posters, I also took Krav Maga for a while. It seemed like every other defensive move included a kick, knee or slap to the groin, so it is definitely taught. They also teach to attack the eyes, throat and knees among other vulnerable targets.
If I found myself in a fight in which I actually feared for my safety, I guarantee you I would not hesitate to include an attack to the groin in my arsenal. However, the few brawls I’ve actually engaged in were mostly about stupid bravado, and I wouldn’t escalate the fight unnecessarily.
Anecdotally, I’ve been kicked many times in the groin during training while wearing a cup. When the kick is “pulled” it’s not bad at all. When it’s not, it hurts. Sometimes it hurts really bad if the cup is jammed into your testicles hard enough. It’s never hurt bad enough to keep me from continuing the drill.
A couple thoughts:
A lot of the things you listed are sport fighting. Many martial arts are not self-defense courses per se, and teach structured fighting that may not help anyone in a self-defense situation. These structured fights have rules, such as not kicking the groin, scraping the eyes, hitting with a chair, using a knife, using brass knuckles, etc that a street fighter would do.
Hitting a groin is actually difficult as others say. In a self-defense situation, once you get close enough to the other guy then hes close enough to grapple you to the ground. Its a real risk to get that close as being grappled usually means losing the fight, getting bit, etc. Unless its surprise attack, then you’re probably not hitting a groin.
Lastly, Ive been hit in the groin while fighting when I was younger. It hurts but in the heat of the moment with all the adrenaline pumping it doesnt hurt enough to end the fight. You may just enrage your opponent more so than usual, unless its an especially solid hit. You never know the pain tolerances of your opponent either. Once drugs or drinking are involved, all bets are off.
“Cat” as in hep cat? Or “cat” as in actual feline?