Reclaiming the dark

Press, 7 May 1984, Page 8

Reclaiming the dark

I used to enjoy walking in the dark.

Sounds and smells grow more important in the shadows. Ordinary tree fems become suddenly lush and dramatic when a shaft of light from a street lamp hits them.

It’s a mysterious world of raindrops and shade. But in recent years, I’ve been too frightened to go out and see it on my own. An illogical fear? Paranoia? Maybe. But almost every edition of every newspaper issues a warning to people like me. Read enough stories about women accosted on the street, in their homes, in shopping centres and you start to get scared. Specially in the dark. You begin to think it is asking for trouble going for a walk around your neighbourhood when most of the world is safe inside watching “Dallas.”

After a while, I got annoyed. My horizons of confidence were closing in. It was as if someone had stolen my right to walk alone in a respectable neighbourhood in the dark. So I enrolled in a Y.M.C.A. self defence course for women.

I’d half-expected the class to be full of radical lesbian feminists with crew cuts,

corduroys and elastic-sided boots. But a circle of ordinarylooking women, mostly in their 20s and 30s, sat in a circle around our small, delicately-built instructor. There were nurses frightened to walk across the hospital car park at night; a solo mother fed up with being accosted by husbands of her acquaintances; a central city mother whose house had been burgled so often she thought she would soon have to board up her windows.

As we got to know each other better during the four two-hour sessions, it became obvious every one of us had

experienced threatening, sometimes amusing, situations with strange men.

Prowlers, obscene phone callers, and a gentleman who had appeared minus the lower half of his clothing when one class member was walking home from work.

It’s frightening. Unless you can turn yotir fear into anger.

Scratch a mother and you will find a lioness inside. We all agreed we would fight like beasts to save our children. But ourselves? That was another matter. Heads hung listless and confused. Fighting for ourselves was a strange idea we grew used to as weeks went by. Our teacher, poised like a scorpion, taught us kicks, blocks, and blows designed to stop different types of attack.

We learned how shows and movies repeatedly showed women reacting the wrong way to attack. The glamour girl who screams when she’s being strangled is wasting precious oxygen.

Instead of gazing panicstruck and mesmerised at the baddy’s knife, she should look him straight in the eye, talk calmly, and think of ways to disarm him. An attacker feeds off his victim’s fear. He needs it. You must yell at him in anger, not scream at him in fear.

We heard marvellous success stories about women who had defended themselves with words instead of their bodies. Like the tired

office worker who was pounced on when she was trudging home from work one night. She dropped her parcels in exasperation and bellowed at the attacker, “Look, I’ve had a hell of a day! The kids have come out in eczema. The price of eggs has just gone up. And now you come along and do this to me!”

The young man apologised and quickly crossed the street.

Or the middle-aged woman who answered the phone to a heavy breather who asked her to kiss part erf his anatomy. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m a vegetarian.” He never rang back. I began to wonder why I had been taught to jump gym horses at school, but never how to release myself if someone locked me in a bear hug from behind. Surely survival should be part of every girl’s education?

On the last day, we were divided in groups of three. Each one of us took turns at being blindfolded while the other two attacked. It was a situation none of us could have coped with in the first sessions. When it was over, every face in the room was exhilarated and beaming with confidence.

I’m not frightened of the dark any more, either. That doesn’t mean I’ll be prowling seedy parts of town at all hours. Self-defence classes have returned those magical night walks around the neighbourhood to me. And I’m grateful.