My school has a requirement every year for freshman making us go through an online counseling program about sexual assault.
Some of the girls in my school carry around hard-plastic shanks in the form of a cat’s face.
Really a plastic shank? That is a lawsuit just waiting to happen. It would be smarter to carry a portable breathalizer and make sure they don’t end up drunk and in an uncontrollable situation than get drunk and think they can stab their way out.
The imagery here is really quite remarkable.
Would “stabbing their way out” of an uncontrollable situation with a cat’s face shank be much different from clawing someone’s eyes out with your own nails?
@JustOneDad: Yes. The law treats using a weapon quite differently. The real danger isn’t a lawsuit, it’s prison. Assault with a deadly weapon will get you several years.
Absolutely…not a good idea at all.
If a girl gets raped she’s not allowed to use a cat shank to defend herself? Sheesh…
I was kind of afraid to google but in this case I was pleasantly surprised. Those are cute! I kind of want one. Women are instructed to use their keys in that way, why not have a cute plastic key chain instead? I didn’t read the attachment yet so don’t know about drunk cat stabbing but in a regular situation of walking to one’s car in a parking garage or something it wouldn’t be a bad idea. At least it might get young women talking and thinking about the idea that it would be prudent to have a self-defense plan or at least see themselves as somewhat powerful and able to take action. They look kind of like something Cat Woman would have. (now I’m visualizing myself as Michelle Pfeiffer)
Before you go buying one, you should know that they are illegal in some states. Interestingly enough, they aren’t universally classified as a “deadly weapon” for assault purposes.
Keys work just as well.
I suspect a gun would be even more effective.
We have a mini capsule of mace attached to our key chains --it has the capacity for 6 to 8 shots. I think it makes more sense. Mace or pepper spray can incapacitate a perpetrator at best and if that fails it at least can obscure their vision. Stabbing someone with one of those shanks will likely enrage the person but not necessarily make them immobile. i am not looking to do combat, just looking for an opportunity to get away. I think the mace makes that more likely.
@stugace: Of course women may defend themselves, but adding a weapon to the mix means they had better be damn sure. Weapons are an escalation, and unless a person has a very good basis for using one they run the significant risk not just of legal trouble, but also of increasing the amount of violence in the situation.
@JusOneDad: I don’t know of any state that has an exclusive list for what constitutes a deadly weapon, though I suppose it’s possible. That means it would usually be up to prosecutor discretion (subject to judicial oversight). I have a hard time seeing why a prosecutor couldn’t call these things knives. Knives are certainly deadly weapons.
Probably makes a difference to the prosecution, whether keys or a plastic shank, if you’re using it on someone who jumps you between your home and car or office and car or crossing a large urban campus between library and dorm or if you use it on an someone you know in a private setting. Plus rarely is the person who has their keychain in their hand unless they are going from office to car or car to home of mall to car, etc. I, too, learned the keychain “trick” back in the seventies but with cars now they you don’t always need a key and some place are keycard entry, I can understand why some enterprising person invented this cutsie little thing. Personally I never figured even a key stab fighting back wasn’t probably going to save me from an attack from the bushes or from behind a dark car…so better to avoid those kinds of situations all together.
As far as colleges go, the incidence of being attacked from a bush or a dark corner is lesser than in the general public and will vary from college neighborhood to college neighborhood. And while college websites tend to be very dense with pages they are more about recruiting than they are as a “user” tool for existing students…the most important info is probably in the student portals behind user names and passwords.
I’m really not quite sure why colleges should be expected to include specific information about rape on their websites if they don’t do this for other, more common crimes such as assault. In a case where a crime is committed, surely the thing to do is just call the police. Why would a college need to, or be expected to, have such crime-specific info on its website? Young women who are not college students are raped at a greater level of incidence than college women. The idea that rape is primarily a “college problem” is extremely misleading. Giving cute plastic shanks to college women seems really stupid to me and an evasion of the threat most associated with the commission of campus rape: alcohol consumption to the point of impairment.
I remember watching some show on Oprah while I was on the elliptical about women’s safety and the most important element was the mantra, “Deny privacy” (i.e. don’t leave the street, the bar, the public area; don’t get in a car at gunpoint, etc.) Second was, “Make noise.” Direct attack is often ineffective because it enrages the assailant and prompts him to hurt you more. So you’d better be sure you will win.
@Demosthenes49 Blade length.
You can usually access the Clery Report on any college through it’s central website using the search function. That report has to list all sexual assaults and other crimes occurring on campus during the last 12 months. If it is not directly accessible through the central site then you just google the name of the college and Clery Report.
@momofthreeboys: You are undoubtedly correct. Of course, in one of those scenarios the self-defense option is much more available anyways.
@JustOneDad: Not sure what that has to do with anything. In California, at least, these things could certainly be considered deadly weapons regardless of blade length. See In re Conrad, 176 Cal.App.3d 775 (1986) (short knife designed to protrude from between the fingers while held in a fist could be deadly weapon).