I personally try not to watch the news, soo much negativity out there that I get way to depressed. However from personal experience as the one on the bad end of hate crimes and otherwise. I can not agree more with the ladies here saying get some training in defense. I am a black belt in a couple styles and have been training for three decades. And you know what, the one hate crime that went physical…. Hold on here is the story.
Long ago before Covid, yeah that long, I was at a nice friendly dance club in Harrisburg. Me and my friend were out for a girls night out. I of course had a few drinks but was far from drunk, plus I had been dancing all night and an hour or two of dancing and just about any drink gets used up. The club was not busy, just so so in the middle, like one person per five sqft or so. It was around 1:30am and time to head back home. I was parked across and down the street. Plus I was dressed for a night out meaning a tight short skirt and 5 inch heels, so not in the best for running or defending. My friend went to get me some water as I was hot and I sat down on the blue vinyl couch near the door, probably not smart as club couches are dirty, but before covid peeps and my feet hurt. Any way this young guy came over and sat down, clearly drunk. Next thing I knew he was yelling things I wont repeat, took me a few seconds to realize his yelling was at me. I got up and started to back away and he jumped up and popped me in the side of the head. I had used the cover up defense with out thinking so not much of anything. I was continuing backing off, and trying to relax him with words. Also trying to get the attention of the bouncer near the door. Lucky for me the bouncer noticed quickly and stepped in, arm bared and booted the guy out the door. When me and my friend did finally leave, we waited 30 mins or so, his girl friend was still across the street yelling at us. We went the other way and got in the car quickly. Nothing else happened. Sure it was not a horrible experience but not fun either.
Take aways: be in a public place with a friend, my martial arts cover saved me from getting KO’ed, notice I did not get all ninja on him but was trying to tactically exit and flee the scene, pay attention to your surroundings, have a big burly bouncer handy, there was nothing to trigger the guy but me being me so impossible to predict.
I have also been on the end of random people randomly going out of their way to use hate speech and stuff at me, sure it is far and in-between but does happen. My motto is to ignore them and get away ASAP as noting good can come out of such people no matter what I do.
So take care ladies and I hope you never experience this type of stuff.
Miriya