Cunt (20 page)

1. to render no longer opposed; bring to acquiescence or acceptance (usually fol.
by to):
to reconcile someone to his
[sic]
fate.
2. to win over to friendliness; cause to become amicable:
to reconcile hostile persons.
3. to compose or settle (a quarrel, dispute, etc.). 4. to bring into agreement or
harmony; make compatible or consistent:
to reconcile differing statements.
5. to reconsecrate (a desecrated church, cemetery, etc.). 6. to restore (an excommunicate
or penitent) to communion in a church.

The first thing you need in order to protect yourself is a womanifesto. My friend
Panacea turned me on to the importance of womanifestoes when she said:

“I like them because they tell me what I think.”

Defining and articulating your beliefs serves you in any context. By taking that a
step further and causing those beliefs to exist in the material world, you contribute
to a social climate of cuntlovin’ evolution.

I offer my womanifesto on self-protection to perhaps give you some ideas about how
you might write yours. A womanifesto does not have to be written. It can be a song,
dance, painting or whatever medium stirs passion in your heart. I strongly suggest
creating your own womanifesto before moving on to the next section, “Kickin’ Ass Like
There Ain’t No Tomorrow.”

I wrote that when I was twenty-eight. I went through a lot of reconditioning on my
own terms before I had the knowledge to sit down and compose those thoughts off the
top of my head.

I grew up in a relatively small town in the Central Coast region of California. The
president of the Elks
spoke at the high school graduation ceremony I boycotted. Cruising up and down the
main street in a car, going to the mall and attending drunken date-rape festivals
called “parties” were the culminations of social interaction.

I was never entirely comfortable in this setting.

Until I was eighteen and left “home,” I was constantly at odds with this culture I
grew up in. The older I got, the more clearly I saw what was supposed to be looming
ahead for me as a woman.

I wanted nothing to do with any of it.

This conflict became increasingly unsettling with each passing year. I did not want
to keep my mouth shut and act ladylike, stop having sex with my girlfriends or respect
the idea that all of my teachers were smarter than me. Dealing with such opposition
on a day-to-day basis disrupted the momentum of womanpower I was born with. I struggled
to keep my power somewhat apace with my life. This proved difficult, as I expended
a large amount of energy defending my own concept of the woman I wanted to be. Furthermore,
deprived of the experience I needed in order to
know
exactly what “the woman I wanted to be”
meant,
things were not only difficult, but mind-bogglingly complex as well.

At one point in my life, I detested the adage, “What does not kill me will only make
me stronger.”

But it is true.

When I was a kid, I was on the swim team, played tackle football and moto-mud bicycled.
My friends and I endlessly plotted live-action
Charlie’s Angels
episodes, including our edited-in couplings between ’Bri and Jill. Underwater Tea
’n Smash Party in the ocean always ruled. I loved the “Heidi” look and wore dresses
with my waffle stompers. I was a late bloomer in terms of clearly established gender
roles.

Largely through the teachings of my philandering, sexist father, who did not want
me to grow up prey to men like himself, I became a premature and great advocate of
vigilante-type behavior. I heartily beat the shit out of any mean boy who made the
sorry mistake of pulling my pigtails or pushing any girl’s face into the water fountain
at school.

My mother, for obvious reasons we’ve already discussed, had no qualms about this sort
of behavior. Fighting with girls was not cool (and seldom occurred), but she didn’t
give a rat’s ass if I beat the shit out of a boy.

My older brother was not only bigger than all the boys at my school, but acted in
the role of sparring partner in our perpetual sibling battle for turf, rights and
privileges. Childhood with my brother provided an ongoing study in the velocity of
a strategically placed kick, the rhythm of a punch in the gut and the mother lode
of reactions illicited from a well-timed, earsplitting scream.

Between the (albeit dubiously inspired) sense of entitlement fostered by my parents’
philosophies and the practical, tactical skills I derived from life with my brother-not
to mention the wolf-pack mother mentality I found in such sister bad-asses as Deanna
Alvarado and Hannah Class—the mean boys at my school were resoundingly pummelled whenever
a girl reported untoward behavior to one of us.

A most satisfactory arrangement, as far as I was concerned.

Then I grew up.

The mean little boys who taunted and teased and harassed little girls also grew up.

We all grew up.

The taunting, teasing and harassing evolved into rape, passive-aggressive control
lurking behind proclamations of “egalitarianism,” sexual harassment and collective
beliefs of male superiority.

I experienced damnable levels of confusion going from a little girl who accepted highly
suspect gender roles to a young lady suddenly in possession of a very specific set
of restrictions and scriptures.

One of the many, many, many scriptures imposed upon me once I got big, was: “It is
your duty to ignore mean boys and their games.”

And see, given the latitude I enjoyed throughout my early years, I just had a very
difficult time ignoring this kind of stuff. But now that I was big, even if I tattled
(a wimpy manipulation I rarely resorted to as a child), no one listened or cared.
If I retaliated, I got in trouble, lost jobs, made enemies.

Oh, how I sometimes longed for those days on the playground when kicking a mean boy’s
ass was a mundane occurrence in any given school week.

It became my reality to let mean boys slide. Though I did not like it, I also didn’t
see much in the way of options. The operative words here are
I didn’t see.
Before any option-seeing went down, I had to
really see
my own fears.

It was a
struggle
to see options.

I looked very, very painstakingly.

I came to terms with the reality that in the eyes of an overwhelming percentage of
the population, my sole purpose on the planet is to make dicks ejaculate, either for
procreation or recreation. Being reduced to this identity every time I venture out
in public is an affront I chose to ignore for a long time. It is still a drag to see
men looking at me in terms of their dicks, and to know that no matter what I accomplish
as a person, or how I live my life, this will probably not change significantly in
my lifetime.

If I had not avidly, passionately, relentlessly sought options, I am sure I would
have gone insane. Regardless of whether or not I ever recognized the existence of
options, they were always there. Like a faithful old family dog, my options waited
for me to recover the survival skills I relinquished in adolescence.

It got to a point when I reasoned, if I take my survival into consideration every
time I leave the sanctity of my home—if indeed, my home sometimes seems to be a fortress
that deters enemy forces—then aren’t I kind of like a soldier, and isn’t my life kind
of like a war?

It plain and simple dawned on me: Somebody here was seriously out of the loop. There
was no circumventing the fact that I had allowed my nice wolf-pack mama girlhood survival
skills to languish.

A sad—but certainly not irrevocable—mistake I made in order to survive into adulthood.

So let’s see.

The first thing a soldier does is train. In boot camp she learns physical tactics
and the psychology of her enemy. She meditates upon all the nuances that come into
play in the battle of how a life lived in fear is a life half lived.

In the Army of Me, self-protection class was appointment number one, dee-dee-dun.

After I published an article about rape, a cartoonist named Ellen Forney wrote a letter
to my editor. Ms. Forney eloquently pointed out my responsibility to urge women to
learn how to protect ourselves, rather than merely publish essays about all the things
we had to fear in this world. In the letter, Ellen described her pivotal experiences,
learning and then teaching self-protection. Her letter fully inspired me. I asked
if she’d be interested in teaching a class if I organized it, and she graciously agreed.

Ms. Forney taught us about using our voices and deflecting verbal assaults before
venturing into physical maneuvers. I was all geared up to kick me some ass; it was
surprising to discover such a fount of strength and release simply by listening to
women talk about how we deal with everyday situations that rankle the psyche in a
slow and eroding process.

I learned a lot of physical tactics in this first self-protection class. More importantly,
it became clear that these skills exist as part of a larger philosophy of self-protection
that is explored and practiced by each individual woman, on our terms, at our pace.

Ellen’s class ruled, and my second self-protection class kept the ol’ synapse pulsations
spurring along.

The next course I took was Model Mugging. It’s a form of self-protection developed
by a group of martial arts experts. A woman in this group had been raped. This, in
itself, is not terribly unique. However, she was an eighth-degree karate black belt.
She knew a martial art very, very well, but she did not know how to protect herself
in the specific context of sexual assault. The group decided to pool their expertise
and design a way to teach any woman, regardless of agility, prowess or strength, to
protect herself.

They did an awesome, good job.

Model Mugging was intensive and expensive, and all my ass-kickin’ dreams came true
because there were
actual, live human men
in padded outfits that 1 got to pound on. My job in this class was to use my power
to change the physical course of another human being who, for all intents and purposes,
meant me harm. Even though I was in a room with nineteen other women and rubber mats
were spread out all over the floor, the reality was daunting.
These men were present to attack and react.
Us twenty women were present to react and attack.

Attack, attack, react, react over and over and over.

Certainly on par with the joy of actually downing the big, burly, padded dudes was
watching other women negotiate power against them. This was when I
really understood
there are as many different definitions for self-protection as there are cerebral
filing systems. No one reacted to the exact same situation in the exact same way,
even though we were all being taught the exact same tactics.

A womanifesto and self-protection classes (note the plural form of “class”) are fantastic
starting points for powerful reconditioning. Define what you believe. Train your mind
and body to react to detrimental situations in a powerful, assertive way. These two
survival tactics are, however, just that:
tactics.
They
help
your brain to think differently.

Remember back yonder when I induced an abortion without going to the vacuum cleaner?
Remember how the herbs I took aided me in directing
my own focus?
The same concept holds true here (and at many other outposts in a cuntlovin’ lady’s
life). Training requirements aren’t fulfilled by attending a course every Wednesday
night for eight weeks. Self-protection is a
way of thinking, constantly,
each and every moment of your life. Classes help. Entertaining pro-active dialogues
with the women you love helps. Womanifestoes help. Lotsa stuff helps.
Nothing
is as valuable as implementing new learning tools and committing to your focus for
the rest of your life.

I advocate self-protection as a lifestyle philosophy-modus operandi. I don’t believe
that wielding a can of pepper spray, a switchblade or a gun is on par with existing
on the planet with a self-protection lifestyle at the forefront of one’s being.

Neither do I in any way oppose the use of weapons as self protection. When one chooses
weapons to protect oneself in this world, it is of
utmost importance
to learn
formal, rigorous safety. and precision in the specific context of protection from
physical and/ or sexual assault.
Deer hunting and gang banging are probably not gonna prepare your spirit, mind or
body for a potential sexual assault.

The most reliable weapon is your mind. When women relinquish the power of our minds
to objects that can inflict debilitating pain or death, we weaken our position. A
quick, resourceful, well-trained thinker is a
much deadlier opponent
than someone who projects power into a deadly instrument.

A quick, resourceful, well-trained thinker with a deadly instrument in hand is then
Warrior Goddess incarnate.

Hee fucken hawww.

Cross that bridge when you get to it.

In the meantime, the most wonderful way I have found to train my mind for assessing
situations and reacting with the resources I have available to me is on a checkered
playing board that has two sets of sixteen figurines carved to represent different
qualities and nuances of power.