In the last few days we have seen a lot of press about the woman who fought back against her assailant and held him captive until the police arrived.   It’s a great story with a great ending.  The woman was out jogging when a man who, according to the news media, first identified himself as “Johnson” (we laughed out loud at that one), grabbed her ass and pulled her shorts down.  She yelled at him to stop, identifying herself as a marshal, yelled to those nearby to call 911, and took off after him.    She apparently then cornered him, and when he charged her, she kicked him in…well, in his Johnson.  (Probably actually under and behind his Johnson, but either way.)

It’s a great story.  A great, great, story, and we are delighted the media has reported it as widely as it has.  One important point is missing, though, and we want to bring it up.

You don’t have to be a U.S. Marshal to fight back.

We love that she’s a U.S. Marshal for all kinds of reasons, but that title and job training are not required to kick someone in the groin, or fight back in all the other ways we know women and girls fight back all the time.  Sometimes we get to hear those stories when they make the news – the 10-year-old girl who fought off a sex offender,  the teenager who fought off two assailants on her way to band practice, the woman in her 30s who fought off an attacker in the laundry room of her building, the self-described “little old lady” who fought off an attacker in a parking lot.   Most of the time, we don’t.  But they happen all the time.  And we want to know all the stories.

Perhaps if more of women’s self-defense success stories were shared, women would have more confidence about their abilities in these situations — and men would have less.