Over on the Chiron blog, Rory Miller mused:

Nothing about survival or self-protection or self-defense or whatever you want to call it is difficult or unnatural. This is exactly the problem we were evolved to solve. Not being a victim is part of our deepest wiring. Mind, body and spirit have all the tools. This is not about forging warriors, this is about rehabilitating predators.

I can corroborate that eight ways from Sunday, as my dad used to say. Talk to any cop or bouncer who has ever had to fight an untrained woman for real and ask if they want to repeat the experience. Read Strong on Defense and look at what the survivors did and the mindset they tapped into.

That’s for me. But the students have to hear it too, and further, they have to be told a really ugly truth: Almost all of society is set up to perpetually brainwash them so that they never remember their own power.

At the risk of repeating a well known cliche, “Go read the whole thing.” There’s a lot of very good and thought-provoking material that follows those brief paragraphs.

In the comments on that post, someone asked, “Are women, like men, natural predators?” He seemed to doubt it.

In response to that question, I’d like to show you a picture that I took at the Oregon Zoo some time back.

Are you designed to be a predator, or prey? (Click to embiggen and read the writing.)

Perhaps, like That Guy, you half suspect that women just aren’t wired for this stuff. Maybe you privately fear that you yourself would never be able to access the fierceness of a Cornered Cat to save yourself from danger, because it just could not be part of who you are.

If you’re in that boat, I’d like you to ask yourself one simple question: where are my eyes located, and why are they there?