What you describe is not uncommon, nor particularly genfer specific.

When someone commits a crime, be it assault, theft, or similar, in a public place, they rely on 'social blinkers' - the innate instinct of the crowd to defer responsibility for intervention to those around them. If everyone does this, then the incident becomes 'invisible', and the victim stranded and as alone as in a wilderness. It is this phenomena that inspires self defence trainers to tell women under attack to yell 'fire' instead of 'rape!' or 'Help!' - fire is a threat to everyone in the area on a personal level, so it encourages intervention in the name of self preservation.

Man or woman, the very act of standing up and saying 'oi! what the fvck are you playing at!!??' to someone climbing through a house window, sawing through a padlock on a bike, or pushing a girlfriend around, is enough to break the spell of unaccountability; and in a great many cases, is enough to stop the acts completely and trigger escape in the perpetrators.

gojuman, ah, so there's one I hadn't thought of. Presenting your opponent with a way out and keeping that way open. That's smart and perhaps easier for a woman because a male opponent is not going to feel as cornered in the first place as he would with a man intervening. Maybe? Perhaps? So one advantage a woman could have if she knew to use it. (I wasn't thinking like that; I just wanted him to leave.) Thank you.

Another advantage a woman may have is what a contributor on the forums (I think it was Kathryn) talked about before. Jurisdictions (heck, society) may view reasonable force for men and women differently.

A woman may be less likely to be viewed as using excessive force if she is seen to be defending herself. I'm not too sure on the exact statistics to prove if there is this sort of gender bias in the law, but I would guess it's plausible.

A woman from Belfast confronted a person trying to steal her car in 2009. She confronted the thief, who threw a rock at her. She came prepared though and had a claw hammer with her. Rock missed her, she attacked the thief and broke his jaw and knocked him the ground. Police arrived and took what was left of the car thief away.

No charges were ever pressed against the women. Indeed the male judge commended her during the trial of the car thief.

If a 6'5" male bodybuilder attacked that same car thief with a hammer in that same situation, would he have had charges pressed against him? Who knows?

What if it were true that women could get away with more in terms of excessive force? And what if a woman knew it!? She could wreak all sorts of havoc ha ha!

Cord, yes, I've seen this diffusion of responsibility play out a few times.

A fellow writer relayed a story about being at the beach and seeing an old man fall off a ferry. Everyone on the beach was upset and watching this guy drown and no one doing anything, including my friend, who was a buff, young man at the time. A woman pointed at him and said something like, "You. Go." He did and saved the guy. He said the funny thing was that until the woman pointed at him, he'd just assumed someone who was better qualified would do the job. We talked about how this woman must have surveyed the gawkers on the beach, spotted the most likely hero and told him to be one.

I love the story because it reminds me that there are many ways to be heroic. That unknown woman played as much of a part in rescuing the old man as did my friend because she put a stop to this diffusion of responsibility and she picked the right guy for the job.

You, like Mark, also mentioned triggering an escape instinct in the bad guy. I'm cogitating on that. Are female interveners (I know, not a word), less likely to trigger a fight responses and more likely to trigger a flight response?

Prizewriter, I just put a hammer in my purse.

I suspect you are right. Even if size/sex differences aren't written into law, I'm guessing law enforcement, prosecutors, juries would be more lenient simply on an emotional level.

So perhaps a woman intervening in a confrontation would feel more free to use tire irons and hammers and pool balls and would not feel an onus of acting with restraint or appropriate force. That makes sense.

I never suggest that a woman should "intervene" in a confrontation.

The best use if defense, is mentality

Not by the virtue of their gender alone, and it would be dangerous for a woman in such a situation to act with an underlying 'men wont hit women' mentality. Many guys wont hit a woman if the accepted western social conditioning is ingrained in them, but, using your own experience as an example, if you had played that situation harder, tried to 'teach him a lesson' or threatened him, then he had already displayed violence to a woman (the very reason you were there), and would have lost no sleep giving you a beating.

A classic example of female intervention causing escalation can be seen pretty regularly on the streets of Britain at pub/club closing time, friday and saturday nights.

It plays out like this:
2 guys are drunkenly rowing in the street. 1 guy's girlfriend joins in, screeching at guy 2. Guy 2 insults her, causing the boyfriend to take a swing. They get into it, and the girlfriend tries to pull the guy of her boyfriend. The guy shoves/punches her away. Bystanders see this, and more guys wade in to hit the guy who hit the girl. Friends of the guy who hit the girl wade in to protect their friend from a gang-beating.
In the space of 6 minutes, police are splitting up a fight involving 10+ people, where without female involvement, it would have been 2 guys exchanging words and posturing, most likely leading to nothing.

I have seen personaly variations on the above well over a hundred times.

Cord, yes I understand. You don't want to become a liability when trying to help someone. I suppose no one can be certain they won't become a liability, but looking for ways to diminish the possibility is smart and staying out of it if you can't even smarter.

Here's what I'm wondering.

Let's just keep with my example. I'm rushing across the parking lot toward this guy. He's going to either react with a fight instinct or a flight instinct. I'd like to encourage the flight instinct, which seems interwoven with what you all said about leaving a door open for your opponent to escape.

I think my husband would be focused more on the bad guy and taking care of him (as you said, "teach him a lesson"). He would have more likely come right up on the guy. He would have inadvertently diminished this guy's ability to go with the flight instinct and increased the odds of eliciting a fight instinct. Whereas I was more focused on the girl and taking care of her. So for me, the girl was the target and the bad guy just an obstacle I wanted removed. But for my husband, the bad guy would be the target.

Also I doubt this guy felt physically threatened by me; the threat was more that I was going to make a stink and eventually someone in the motel would hear and call the police. Whereas if my husband came at him, the guy would have been more likely to feel physically threatened and more likely to fight.

Perhaps there's a difference in motivation/purpose and approach with some of these situations that can lead to very different responses.

You all are are great. I've already collected some ideas for shifting focus and adding detail to my confrontation/fight scenes that I think will help with believability.

There's your answer.

In this situation, your reaction is simply better than your husbands from a perspective of the )(*& really hitting the fan.

Alot of men cannot escape the dominance game, they will go there even when it's the worse, stupidest, most dangerous option, I know i've done it before. I remember times when I was much younger I pretty much escalated someone in to wanting to fight me..even if my rational mind knew it was a stupid thing to do.

Most of the women i've met in martial arts etc. that really impressed me did so because (by virtue of gender or something else) they understood the complete uselessness of "teaching someone a lesson", you could say they were goal-oriented in a way that many men with many years of martial arts training never manage to be.

Teaching someone a lesson in a dangerous situation is exactly the opposite mentality of what keeps you safe and unmaimed, if you are looking for something heroic in physical situations with the female psyche i'd start with the fact that women can be less likely to get caught up in those games, and maybe (as in your example) just see the "bad guy" as an obstacle between them and their safety, the safety of others, etc.

A couple of things that are essential to de-escalation/avoidance of violence are communication and empathy. If you are going to reason with someone, then you have to be able to get to the heart of their problem immediately, and act in a way that they will respond positively to. That is not always easy, and to be good at it under pressure is as hard as to be able to fight well.

Women, as a rule, tend to have a more developed empathic ability, and are also good emotional communicators. Nature or nurture can be argued, but is largely moot, as the overall gender attribute exists.

If focused and harnessed to deal with agressive situations, this natural ability could well put women at an advantage in prevention of physical violence