Women – the weaker sex?

Idon’t know who ever came up with the bright idea to refer to women as the “weaker sex.” I do know, with certainty, it was not anyone who has ever spent any time in a protective suit helping teach a ladies’ selfdefense class.

Maybe calling them the weaker sex makes us fellas feel better about not getting out of bed all weekend when we catch a common cold, otherwise known as a man-flu. I’m not sure. I don’t care what we call them, I know I am going to continue to milk a low-grade fever for as long as I possibly can.

I can be certain of this inaccurate nickname women have been given because I have spent time in a protective suit, helping teach a ladies’ self-defense class.

The agency I work for offers a ladies’ self-defense class several times a year. It’s a 3-4 hour course that includes a couple of hours in the classroom, culminating in a chance for the participants to put what they have just learned into practice.

We have a sucker, I mean volunteer — which, for the purposes of this story is me — don a full body protective suit and “attack” the ladies, one at a time. The ladies, in turn, get their chance to take everything they have just learned and beat the tar out of the sucker… I mean volunteer.

Now I am no martial arts master by any stretch.

I wrestled in high school. I have trained with professional mixed martial artists, both in boxing and Brazilian jiu jitsu. And as is the norm in my profession, I am trained in various hand-to-hand combat situations throughout the given year.

Until I volunteered to help with this class, all of my experience in any type of training had been with other guys. So it TOBY NIX is here that I will dispute the “fairer sex” nickname is as inaccurate as the “weaker sex” moniker.

In my experience, if you are wearing protective headgear and the person you are grappling with rips that headgear off your head while they are delivering knee strikes to your face, they are usually going to stop, let you reset your helmet and then continue with the beat down they were giving you.

That seems “fair” to me. But that was not the case in this particular ladies’ self-defense class.

Not only did this lady not stop pulling the helmet off my head, but I think she started kneeing me faster.

It was like the scene in “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie is beating up the bully, except this lady wasn’t crying. I think she was laughing.

I couldn’t actually hear her laughing because, by this point, my ears had become handles she could use to help get my face to her knee faster. Which is exactly what she had just been taught.

Based on my experience as a “volunteer” for this ladies’ self-defense class, I can assure you ladies are not the weaker sex.

And I can argue with you that they are not the fairer sex.

The next time you see a lady out in public and think you want to bother her, ask yourself how certain you can be that she hasn’t taken one of the selfdefense classes.

Trust me, your ears are better used for hearing than they are for handles.

As for me, I think I caught a sniffle typing this column. I better go lay back in bed and whine until I get some chicken noodle soup.

*Please feel free to contact my agency to sign up for the next ladies’ selfdefense class. Unless you’re still mad at me for the time I wrote about loud mufflers.