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That's why survivors especially become so viscerally angry at the suggestion that we'd like to see more women armed. If being armed would prevent other crimes similar to the ones the survivors went through, then maybe their own criminal encounter was preventable too. That's an unacceptable, unbearable thought, because it means that they themselves did not have to be as powerless, as helpless to control the flow of events, as they perceived themselves to be -- which in turn leads to the unacceptable but almost inescapable feeling of, "If I could have been in control, but wasn't, I was in part to blame for what happened." That's utterly unacceptable, so the entire train of thought gets viscerally rejected at the outset -- often with white-hot anger.
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I've taught a few women who've been victimized, and this is absolutely true. The last thing I need to do is project an attitude that says, "darlin' you screwed up, and I'm a gonna teach you so's it doesn't happen again."
What I've heard are variations on, "I wish I could have done something." It's important to stress that,
in the past, they could not have.
They did not fail; they simply lacked the tools do do stop an attack at the time. The important fact is that they're alive
today to make preparations to keep it from happening again.
That was then, and this is now. The past and present are two very different things.
The worst was a woman who'd been raped on her way home one night. She was trembling like a leaf, and her husband was (almost literally) dragging her in for lessons. He was doing all the talking, and she wouldn't even make eye contact.
He was very aggressive and he acted as if he was affronted somehow by the whole situation.
According to him, she didn't need therapy, she needed to learn to "fight back." I ended up declining.
I've had women come in who seemed fine on the surface, then broke into tears on the range. Each time, it sends a chill up my spine. The worst part is that they almost always articulate some sense of shame that they "can't handle it," or that they'll be seen as weak. The last thing they need is someone who bullies them through it.
I'm not saying we need mandated sensitivity training, but we need to be aware when someone's not well, and we need to be willing to say, "hey, it's okay. We'll do this on your time, when you're ready."