And I’d thought they’d looked blank before.
“You’ve probably all seen the way children imitate things to understand them. They’ll pretend to roll out a pie crust right along with you, they make noises and pretend to change gears as you drive. This happens in your brain, too. When we see someone pick up a bottle, a whole set of nerve fibers, called mirror neurons, pretend to be picking up the bottle, too. Whether you’re actually picking up the bottle or just watching someone do it, those neurons fire in the same pattern. Your body understands intimately how it feels. So when I shift grip, your brain shifts grip, too. And these mirror neurons are hooked into your limbic system, to the part of your brain that handles emotions. So your brain knows what it means when I’m turning the bottle like that. You know, deep down, in that intuitive part of you, what’s going on, in a way that your conscious mind probably doesn’t.”
Katherine looked thoroughly confused.
“You can look it up when you go home. For now, think of the mirror neurons as re-creating the experience of others inside ourselves. We feel others’ actions and sensations in our own cortex, in our own body, as though we ourselves are having those sensations, doing those things. In a very real way, we are doing those things. Think of your mirror neurons, your hunches, your intuition as a powerful adviser, an interpreter.”
“So,” Nina said slowly, “when you said the first week that no one is a mind-reader, you lied.”
Next time I taught this kind of class, I was going to do things differently. Completely differently.
“Well?”
Next time. I set that aside to consider later. “Think of the two concepts as complementary. The body knows, the body doesn’t lie. But our conscious mind doesn’t always want to believe what it knows. It’s not convenient. This is true for an attacker, too. They will tell themselves a story about how the attack will go. They’ll ignore what they know—they’ll ignore the mirror neurons telling them that you don’t want to talk to them, that you don’t want to be their friend—and believe what’s convenient. Because they don’t want to hear what you have to say they’ll pretend you’re not saying it, so it’s good to state your wishes and intentions clearly.”
“Loud and often,” Kim said with the half smile that meant she was thinking of her children.
“If you say something clearly and specifically to a potential attacker, two things will result: One, he won’t be able to pretend to himself that he doesn’t know you don’t want his attentions. Two, you yourself won’t be able to pretend that everything’s fine. Your conscious and subconscious mind will be aligned. That’s a very powerful feeling.”
“The power of the righteous,” Sandra said.
Silence.
“It could be described that way, yes: knowing you’re doing the right thing, even if others don’t understand. Sometimes self-defense or the defense of others requires actions that no one understands. Sometimes you have to do them anyway.”
Everyone pondered that.
“Now, let’s go back a little, to the importance of knowing what your attacker intends. Any ideas about why that’s important?”
They all shook their heads.
“It’s important to know what they intend so that you can judge whether the situation will get more or less dangerous, more or less opportune for you to act. For example, Suze, what do you want?”
She blinked.
“You’re threatening Christie with an ice pick. Why? What do you want?”
“Okay, yes. Her money.”
I looked at her polystyrene. She raised it menacingly. “All right. Christie, what did I say about ice picks?”
“Good for stabbing, not cutting or throwing or bludgeoning.”
I smiled. I hadn’t said anything about throwing; she’d come up with that one all on her own. “All of which means your attacker has to be very close indeed to do you any terrible damage. So what would you do?”
“Throw my purse on the ground and run.”
“Good. Why?”
“Because.”
“Think about it.”
“Just because.” I waited. “Because he’s mentioned money?” I nodded. “So throwing the purse would be a distraction?”
“Yes. Excellent. Because even if he wants more than money, you know money is on his mind because he’s mentioned it. If you judge it’s time to act immediately—and this sounds like a situation in which it might be—a distraction is often a good first step. Then you remove yourself from danger. Nine times out of ten that will mean what?”
“Run,” Katherine said.
“It depends,” Tonya said.
“Yes,” I said.
“But which?” Jennifer said. “It can’t be both.”
“It is both. Everything always depends. In the absence of other data, in this imaginary mugger scenario, leaving if you can is a good option. This is an example of a situation where it appears to be a good idea to act immediately, whether by running or engaging. Other examples of times to do that are when you think your attacker plans to put you in an even more dangerous situation, where your options will be narrowed. For example, if he traps you by your car and instead of saying, Give me your keys, he says, Get in the car and drive me.”
“What about, what about if…” Jennifer couldn’t bring herself to say it. She was very pale. The make-believe KA-BAR hung loosely in the hand at her side.
“What if he wants to rape or torture you?”
I think she nodded but her neck was so stiff with tension it was difficult to tell. I’d never had this problem with rookies. I thought for a moment.
“Jennifer, I want you to relax, if you can, and breathe. I’m going to ask you to imagine some bad things, but they’re not real.” I looked at the others.
“We’re all right here,” Nina said, and stood close enough for Jennifer to feel her body heat. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
Suze stepped up, too. “We’d kill the fucker.”
Jennifer smiled tremulously.
“So. Jennifer, you’re planning to rape Therese.” I raised my eyebrows at Therese: Are you all right with this? She nodded and, too late, I remembered that Therese was probably one of those who had answered yes on the have-you-been-assaulted exercise. There again she was confident and contained, she had trained with guns, she had what-iffed. With luck she wouldn’t have a meltdown. “You have a KA-BAR. It’s big, it’s frightening. You have it at Therese’s throat. You want to rape her. She knows that”— again I checked with Therese, who nodded minutely—“and she’s too frightened to do anything but what she’s told. What do you do now?”
“I don’t, I don’t…”
“Rape. What does it involve?”
“Sex.”
“How can you have sex if you’re both fully clothed?”
“Oh. Well. Okay.” She jabbed her polystyrene in Therese’s general direction. “Take your clothes off!”
Therese, also pale now, put her hands to the buttons of her polo shirt.
“See how we’re all staring at that, waiting to see if she’ll actually take off her shirt? Someone who is contemplating rape will be staring, too. His focus will be split now between the weapon he’s holding and the delicious-ness of getting a grown woman to be his puppet. This would be an excellent moment for Therese to act. But let’s say she understands that there will be an even better moment soon. So let’s imagine that she’s taken off all her clothes. Now what?”
“Now I guess I rape her.”
“So will you push her against the wall? Onto the ground? Let’s try the wall.” The class parted like the Red Sea and Therese walked to the wall.