There are just a few nascent buds of blossom on the cherry trees, and the hyacinths are slowly unwrapping in the window boxes. In the dank afternoon air, all that interrupts the chirping of birdsong outside my apartment window is the familiar pop-popping of gunfire, the shattering of car windscreens, and a swoop of sirens. Two guys running down my block apparently opened fire, taking in a few parked cars. Could be worse, I suppose. No-one was killed. And the cops actually caught the guy using the gun. This latter event, previously unknown in Washington, may signal some kind of increasing role for our police force in combating something they have recently begun to identify as “crime.” But don’t count on it.
MALE-FREE ZONE: A reader sends in a fascinating email about self-defense classes from which men are barred. It’s the kind of email I would really like to include in a letters page – which, thanks to your donations, will be up and running within a month. Anyway, here it is: “I took one of those self-defense classes in college. The real reason they don’t want men attending is that it is half therapy session. You have to get very aggressive to be effective. They have you scream very loud, visualize male attackers, fight the instructor, etc. It can do weird things to you psychologically – hit areas you never knew existed. “Hey, you know it occurs to me that I’m pretty pissed off that I have to deal with this at all – and that I’ve lived my whole life under this threat. F— men.” A lot of women seize up anyway because it literally goes against every fiber of their being to do anything that aggressive or to hurt someone. It would presumably be worse with guys there. It’s not just the p.c. faction and reverse discrimination. It’s amazing how well this feminist warrior mentality fits in with the views of the police who teach these courses. “Everyone is a potential criminal.” After the course, I walked around paranoid for months and then it wore off.” Good point, I think. But I’m not entirely convinced. For example, it’s not necessary to fear that every man will rape you to get your head wrapped around self-defense. A couple of sympathetic men – maybe gay men! – might help defuse the androphobia. And imagine for a minute if they had such classes in inner cities and encouraged the participants, black and white, to assume that every black man was a potential mugger or rapist – and excluded black men from the course. I doubt that would pass the sniff test – rightly so. So why is it ok to generalize about one group and not another?
The Dish 