DOD81: Should We Teach Our Kids Self-Defense?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Tom: Dear Old Dads, the podcast that floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. I'm Tom Curry. I've joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:38 Thomas: You say, what'd you, what'd fucking say to me, what'd Ya fucking say to me

0:00:40 Eli: Put him up, put him up. Yeah.

0:00:41 Tom: Are you talking to me? Huh? Are you talkin' to me?!

0:00:46 Eli: Wants to marry a child prostitute in that movie. It's a good time.

0:00:49 Tom: My god, holy shit, you're you're not wrong. I

0:00:51 Eli: We forget that there's a big pedophilia element to that movie, and I feel like we should talk about it. Is Is it too late to switch what the show's about?

0:00:55 Thomas: I never liked that movie. I don't, I don, never understand, I, I don get it I like, yeah, he did a bunch of stuff to fucking be a method actor or whatever, and it's, yeah, that's fine, but I don't like it.

0:01:02 Tom: Like that movie either yeah

0:01:02 Eli: Oh, Is that, you that's, think the sort of thing around it is like the people who are deeply into De Niro's performance? I've just always thought that like a lone wolf movie, because so many lone wolves think of themselves as like a wild man on the edge with a heart of gold. And that's so, so much of what that movie is about.

0:01:25 Tom: Does he have the heart of gold though? Because I feel like he's missing the heart of gold.

0:01:26 Eli: He doesn't. That's the thing is they ever see someone who has a Scarface poster in their bedroom and you're like, what? What did you get out of Scarface, sir?

0:01:28 Tom: Yeah.

0:01:31 Thomas: Jesus So weird.

0:01:37 Eli: Sir, do you think that Scarface enjoys the events of the movie Scarface?

0:01:44 Tom: I, I've never actually seen Scarface, it's on my list. Hayley

0:01:47 Eli: Oh,

0:01:47 Thomas: Never I'll never watch that again, fucking

0:01:49 Tom: And I are making a list of the Tom hasn't seen any movies uh that we keep and And we're sort of like checking them off. We actually watched Mommy Dearest the other night, which I had never seen.

0:01:57 Eli: Oh, Mommy Dearest is great. Yeah, it's really interesting.

0:01:59 Thomas: Haven't seen that either.

0:02:00 Tom: Fucking movie, actually. So weird tie in, maybe. I guess that little kid from Mommy Dearest maybe should have learned how to fight. We're

0:02:08 Eli: Yeah, exactly. But the only thing worse than wire hangers, Tom, is the auto ads, which, like so many hangers have been used to abort the podcast from your ears and fill them instead with, I don't know, Verizon ads, a paper tar... You guys getting the papertarian ones?

0:02:14 Tom: Yes.

0:02:21 Thomas: Um.

0:02:28 Tom: What? What the fuck is a papertarian?

0:02:30 Thomas: Up, I'ma patron, so I don't have to, yeah.

0:02:31 Eli: You're a patron? Okay, I'm getting a lot of these where people are like, hey, did you know they make boxes out of paper? Please, dear God. And then I, I don't even know who's behind that advertisement, but I get them every 10 seconds. But you don't have to get those ads. You can live in Thomas's beautiful, beautiful fantasy world where we just do a podcast from beginning to end by signing up over at patreon.com/dearolddads, where for as little as a dollar you get, get a commercial-free extended version of every episode, as well as cool monthly bonus stuff. So, yeah, check that out. patreon.com/dearolddads, or we'll kick your ass.

0:03:10 Thomas: Yeah, we keep how cute Remy is behind the paywall, so you want to find that out, you gotta pay. Oof.

0:03:15 Tom: Yeah, right. Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about this topic from something that happened the other day, and I don't want to talk too much about the specifics for Finn, but Finn reached out to me the other Day and asked me if I would teach him how to fight, which is shocking to me. So I, I want to quell any concern for the listeners. I was immediately concerned that he felt like he needed to fight because he felt like he was in danger. So I immediately put that to bed with him, and I feel satisfied that he doesn't feel in danger and like he needs to learn how to fight in order to take care of himself. There's something else that's driving that.

And I think that's part, that something else is driving that, is part of what really interests me here. And there's a lot of stuff here that I think really interests me along the and masculinity angle that I think would be fun to talk about. But, got next time I have him for the weekend, he and I are going to spend a little bit of time, and I'm going to talk to him.

I think more than I do anything physical with him, but I'm gonna talk to them about fighting. Um, something that my gentle giant of a son has never expressed even a moment's interest in. Like, Finn is not a, predisposed toward violent anything. Like, he really is just like sweetest person. Like, he's just a nice person, and he always has been, just a really nice person. And he's also not a good target for bullying. He's a big, strong guy. Nobody is picking on Finn that I'm aware of, and he would not make a good Target to be picked on.

0:03:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:04:37 Thomas: That bully would probably show up on Reddit if that happened, where it's like the, oh, I picked on the wrong kid.

0:04:41 Tom: Right. Yeah. Sure. It would not go swimmingly, I don't think so.

0:04:47 Thomas: It's the ones where, and I love it too, because that kid usually doesn't know how to fight. But you see in the videos, they're get tired of it enough to where they just do something that's very silly. But because they're so big and strong, it's they'll just pick them up and then put them back down hard. And then you're like oh yeah, this person is incredibly strong. And you don't those people because they'll like a cat.

0:05:01 Tom: Right. Yeah, right.

0:05:02 Eli: Yep. Yes. Pat. Oswalt has a full bit about watching a fight like that. Where he just like this guy picks a fight with a power lifter and he just like lifts him in the air and throws Throws him down again. Lifts him in the air and throws him. And that was his move. Like, he he wasn't wasn't trying to fight. He was just like, pick

0:05:09 Tom: Yeah. That's very much Finn. Yeah, oh,

0:05:14 Thomas: Oh Really? I didn't know that. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah it's not like he's gonna punch him really hard, it's like, oh no, I'll just pick up this guy and I'll put him down harder than he would be, which is surprisingly dangerous, like that

0:05:29 Eli: Put down. Yeah. No. Little Dad will do it.

0:05:34 Tom: My god yeah, so and it's funny because I've been thinking about this because I have got two sons that are now teenagers, right, so I have Donovan and Finn, and physically they are very different, like Donovan is tall and thin and Finn is about the same height but he's he's a bulkier dude. Like, I was like, oh, gonna teach Finn to fight, and then I was thinking, like, but it's not like I am trained in how to fight. Right that's the other thing that, like, I want to express is that I've never taken, like, how to flight people classes, right? So, like, I don't have, like, here's a move you can learn.

0:05:36 Thomas: Mm Mm-hmm yeah, yeah

0:06:01 Eli: The car wash was on the job training, to be clear. Yeah.

0:06:03 Tom: Yeah.

0:06:04 Thomas: And Someone at the car wash, by the way, who bet on Tom. He's like, "I got fifty dollars on you." That guy, he's a door that says pull, but it's a push.

0:06:09 Tom: I like I keep thinking about this cause we haven't gotten together to have some extended time since he's asked me this question, but I, we will this coming weekend. And I keep Thinking like, I don't have fucking moves. Do you know what I mean? Like I don'T have moves because I'm I'm not a guy who like, even though I've been in fights, like I don't know, trained on how to fight anybody. So I've got to like teach him how to feel what he wants to feel. Which Right. Is competent and safe. And I was thinking too, that like, if I were to teach Donovan how to fight, I would teach him very differently how to find a fight. I would tell him how to fight than Finn. Cause they're built differently and they have different things to worry about. And then I was speaking to that, learning like, how to fight, like feeling like you should know how to a fight is different than learning self-defense. Like if I were to teach Aislinn how to defend herself, I'd be teaching her how to defend

0:06:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, hmm.

0:06:25 Eli: Of course. Yeah.

0:06:58 Tom: Herself against a very different experience. Yeah.

0:07:01 Thomas: It's all testicle related.

0:07:02 Tom: Yeah. But

0:07:03 Eli: Yeah.

0:07:02 Thomas: Yeah it's 100% testicle based punching and kicking and grabbing.

0:07:07 Tom: Like this if Finn gets in a fight, the person who's fighting him wants to fight Finn, right. Want to fight. If Aisling gets in the fight, Right. The person likely wants to victimize her differently. Right. They have different considerations that have to be paid attention to. And I just think it's a fascinating point of my life that scares the shit out of me, because, like, don't think the stakes are that high for Finn. I don'T think he's going to get in a fight. I really don't. He's approaching 17. If he's gotten to 17 and he's not a hotheaded person, the likelihood is he'll live out the rest of his life without getting in a fighting. Right.

0:07:17 Eli: Right.

0:07:40 Tom: That is the highest likelihood. So I don't feel like the stakes are that high. But I feel like what I'm addressing for him is this idea that men hold that we have to be physically competent in confrontation and physically able to sort of defend ourselves in order to feel manly. And I, I feel sad that he feels that way. I'm going to address it, I'm gonna make him feel the way he needs to feel because he's a 16 year old boy, we're gonna talk about it, but I'm also gonna make sure that he walks away feeling competent, but it also just like makes me feel kind of sad that he has to like worry that some of his male like competency is tied up in this sort of like bullshit which

0:07:39 Thomas: Yeah outside

0:08:21 Eli: Mm-hmm.

0:08:22 Tom: Is fantasy bullshit unless you go looking for it, like, like the fights I got into to outside the car wash, I'll raise my hand. I went looking for those fights, which

0:08:30 Thomas: The hallowed halls of the car wash where of course that sort of thing is.

0:08:31 Eli: The car was.

0:08:32 Tom: Was a fucked up weird situation. But like, I got into fights as a teenager because I went out looking for trouble, you

0:08:38 Eli: Right. Right

0:08:39 Thomas: Wash is Tom's temple. You You keep that stuff in the car wash.

0:08:42 Tom: I think if you don't look for trouble as a, you're not going to fight, you know?

0:08:45 Thomas: Oh, 100%.

0:08:46 Eli: Sure.

0:08:46 Thomas: 100%.

0:08:47 Eli: For sure, so

0:08:48 Thomas: The the same, same guys, and I know you guys are going to fucking make the obvious joke because I told you the one time I got in a quote-unquote fight at hockey, which was nothing. It was me trying to get my arm out of a guy.

0:08:58 Eli: Obviously Your fault.

0:08:59 Thomas: Yeah, but I spend.

0:09:00 Eli: You spent 97 minutes of that episode telling us the history of hockey, and then you were like, yeah, a guy grabbed my arm and I punched him.

0:09:07 Thomas: I didn't punch anybody. I did not punch him. I pulled my, shoved him because he had my arm, but rest of the 13 years of me playing hockey is the same two dudes in every locker room going, "I don't understand why that guy's fucking wrong with me," and I don't understand why it's so weird, it's the same fucking one or two dudes every team, every game, they don't understand why someone got in a fight with them, and why they're so, I don't, and the ref, I don't get what it's like, those, it's every time, I can't help it being like, but it is, you, you ever, you do see that it's you every time though, right? Like every single time. If you don't go looking for that trouble, it's very rarely going to find like you

0:09:13 Eli: Abruptly.

0:09:46 Tom: Yes.

0:09:46 Thomas: Like very rarely.

0:09:47 Tom: Yeah, and I do want to jump in real quick and also address, like, speaking I probably from a place of some amount of cultural privilege that some people grow up in neighborhoods because where fighting is more culturally just part of your life, you, like, you might grow up in a neighborhood where like you have to defend yourself more frequently, you know, a socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhood may have more force

0:09:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:08 Eli: Gets stopped on his way to school by a snake flipping a coin. Hey, sunny boy.

0:10:11 Tom: Know, but, yeah,

0:10:19 Thomas: Yeah, to be, I did get my ass kicked as a kid, and it was very traumatizing, but it was this, I didn't mean that advice as a kid. If anything, I, I'm very scared for like knowing how to manage that as a kid, is my version of hell, a, like, just thinking about my, my any of my kids, I guess, like, it is something you worry about with boys more, I guess, but, but, biggest fear, one of my biggest fears is for Arlo or Remy to be in that horrible fucking situation I was in for what felt like fucking, I don't know, four years of my life, it's probably like three, but it was those bad years between from sixth grade to like maybe, I think high school solved it because there's just more people. But in my bullshit shit town fucking crap school, there's only like, the you tiny group of dudes and you, the psychological hell of not being able to find a way to just not have to be in fucking conflict with them. It was the worst. It's the absolute worst.

0:10:33 Tom: Right.

0:11:07 Eli: And We talked about this a little on the bullying episode, but, like, I, how hard this is to explain to younger people, but sometimes when people beat you up when we were kids, all the adults would just be like, "Boys will be boys." And that was it. That was the response to the physical violence that had happened to you. And I love that that is not the case anymore. But again, carried through so singularly, that there were just times where fights happened to me, and it wasn't a big deal, right? I'm not saying fights don't happen anymore, and again, I know this depends on the area in the school, like Tom just pointed out, but, like, for the most part, when I was growing up, fighting was not a big detail, and for our dads, because I remember my dad telling me this story, if kids were fighting at school, the gym teachers used to just give them them boxing gloves and have them fight a little bit more?

0:11:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God.

0:12:02 Tom: What?

0:12:03 Eli: Yes. Several times as a kid, he he would got dragged into the gym and they would be like, "All right, well, if you want to fight so bad, now you guys are going to fight." And then they would just fight with boxing gloves on and the gym teachers would be like, "We did a good job." And that was it. But yeah, no, I live in that fear because I obviously I don't want Max to talk to anyone who's not nice to him, let alone fight him. Like, my advice in that situation is gonna be like, "All right, well, here's what you do, Max. You just explain that your dad is a psychopath and we'll, we'll turn the name of our city blue with the horrible revenge he will enact on anyone who

0:12:04 Thomas: I've heard that story, too. Yeah.

0:12:23 Thomas: Fuck. Come home.

0:12:40 Eli: Tries," just get a little. He has a little mini recorder and he's just like, "Hey, just so you know, this is what my dad says for for fun," and then he plays a couple of clips. And I'll just be like, like, "I don't know if you want to go there, but it's just like, he's got a lot of free time. He works from home. People order food all the time. I'm just saying, it just doesn't seem like a great idea." Sure.

0:12:41 Thomas: That's That's not the worst, you that. That could work. That's that. This is one of your crazy schemes.

0:12:58 Tom: But, you of the things, though, that I that I worry about with young men is that de-escalating or or avoiding conflict can among their peers look less manly, so to speak. Like their sort of like masculine credibility. The And real advice I would have, especially like for an adult is to like run as fast as you can away from conflict, right? A 45 year old man, the last thing in the world I want want to do is get into a fistfight and then end up going to jail or getting sued or getting fucking a brain injury or something, something like, like there's that.

No scenario where running away is not the better option. Right. But I also know that when you're 16 or 17, the social dynamics are different and the Answer is still the right answer, but it's also kind of not right because they have to live in the reality of their peers and unfortunately there be scenarios where they feel like the social pressure to live up to a certain expectation like of manliness may require or they may feel even if they're wrong like it requires them to engage physically. And I think that part of Finn's worry is that if he gets stuck in that situation, he won't be able to do it.

He won't be able to perform this thing he needs to perform. And I'm, I'm aware that that's probably what's driving this for him. And feel like, okay, well, I have to even though I strongly disagree with all the social forces that enable that kind of toxicity and I think it's dangerous and worrisome. And but like that's the world he lives in, that's that's the soup that boy is swimming in.

And like, I don't want him to feel less capable of managing that, even though the way I want him to manage that is through de-escalation, right? The way I wants him to do that is to, is getting his fucking teeth knocked in or get a fucking brain injury or, you know, end up going to jail or like any of that horrible shit that can happen when you're fucking almost six feet tall and 230 pounds and you're strong, which is what he is.

Like could be real consequences. So there's this like horrible, scary tension that I feel nervous about, like deeply nervous about. And there's just like crazy point of intersection where I'm like, fuck, as like, much as I don't want to teach Finn how to fight, but I will because I think like make him feel more confident.

I also am keenly aware that like one of the things that I have to do at some point in my life is send Aislinn specifically to a female centered self-defense course because the world is unsafe for her. And there's this like gender dynamic there where

0:13:15 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:15 Eli: Yeah. Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:38 Thomas: Zero scenario. Yeah.

0:15:32 Tom: It's like boys are sort of, we have this sort of privilege of play acting at violence in this way. Whereas like girls have to learn how to survive not getting raped and killed.

0:15:33 Eli: Yeah.

0:15:43 Eli: It's such a weird different standard for our children and we feel as though we're failing if we're not doing any of them. And you, jokes aside, you was very much in Finn's situation, right, which is I had a big strong hyper masculine dad who, whether or not people have seen you fight, I can't imagine anyone has seen You find lots.

0:16:01 Tom: No. One has seen me fight. No, no.

0:16:03 Eli: I didn't think that you were, you know, at the fucking parent parent drop-off line, you know

0:16:08 Tom: I've thought since I was a teenager. No. No.

0:16:09 Eli: Yeah.

0:16:09 Thomas: Car wash was a tough ticket, man. I tried.

0:16:09 Tom: No, yeah.

0:16:13 Eli: You know, small town is just like, wait, are you Tom from the car wash, yeah.

0:16:15 Tom: No. Cell phones in the 90s.

0:16:16 Eli: Exactly. Yeah.

0:16:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:17 Tom: No.

0:16:17 Eli: But I, I dealt with that and also people had seen my father fight and you run into tornadoes, right? Probably, probably, if I were to guess, I would guess that Finn ran into one of the many bad people that are justice system murders for us, right, and he was able to de-escalate the situation, right, was able to, hey, we're all just kidding around, right, I'm gonna go. But like there are people who just sort of walk around life looking for people to fight. And like I said, they do that to a cop and then they call themselves Skittles. They find Jesus. It's, it's all good.

They have their own pathways, but like a a lot of the times when I got beat up and these are the ones that people know the stories of, cause I've told them on air before, it's funny and I deserved it. But there were a couple of times that I got beaten up because people were just like, hey, that's Dave Bosnick's kid, I'm going to mess with him. And right, in those scenarios, right, when I wasn't able to deescalate. Yeah, it's your dad is a tough guy. There is sort of a tough guy aura, especially because he was in the school system, he was a teacher. So it was like if someone hadn't liked having my dad as a teacher particularly, or they had had a bad experience, or

0:16:17 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:17 Thomas: Yeah, for sure. Wow. Really? Yeah.

0:17:25 Eli: This, that, or the other, you, that conversation, my dad could beat up your dad. Sometimes my dad had beaten up people's dads, and that's fucking, fucking wild, right? You never had to have that conversation where you're like, hey man, I'm really sorry my dad beat up your dad, is he okay? No? Well, yikes-a-roo. Anyway, see you in math.

0:17:46 Eli: Are a naturally gentle person, or of which I was, right, I was incredibly sensitive until I sort of developed a hard outer shell of acerbic wit, but like when I was around Finn's age, I was really aiming to be kind to others and have others be kind to me, and so coming up against that was really, really difficult.

And again, exactly what you said, Tom, like the amount that I felt like not a man when I would lose a fight or get beat up and not understand why I couldn't just connect the pieces and be a good, good fighter, right? Finn experiences this as well, like, I was so similar to my dad in so many ways, right, we walked the same, we kind of talked the same. We had similar postures, just like, and look, father my, did a great job.

None of the bad things made my dad good at fighting happened to me. I'm sure he would have turned out soft and genteel had he not had, you know, the growing up that he had had. And so I could not, and for years and in in very hilarious and embarrassing ways tried to reclaim that masculinity by learning martial arts. And you're probably thinking, oh, Eli, did you learn practical martial? No, I learned nunchucks. That's how I got through. I, this is so, like, we talk about like kill the part of you that cringes, not the cringy part, but man, the first stage combat

0:19:07 Eli: Class I ever had.

0:19:07 Thomas: No, you should kill some cringy part for sure,

0:19:11 Tom: Oh,

0:19:11 Eli: Yeah, the very first stage comeback class I never had at NYU, one of my amazing mentors, one David Brimmer, I brought nunchucks and at, after class, I was like, uh, Mr. Brimmer, can I talk to you? And he was like, of course, you lie. And I was like, I just want to show you some stuff. And then I was like, like, whatever.

0:19:30 Thomas: No.

0:19:31 Eli: Yeah.

0:19:31 Thomas: Way.

0:19:31 Eli: No, really, really live in this. Really live and that I tried to show off my nunchuck skills for a world famous fight choreographer, and he didn't go like, you should drink some bleach, have you tried drinking a little bleach? No, he was wonderful. He was, was like, that's amazing. You know, have you looked up this thing with that thing? But like, that's the level of cringy attempting. I, for a while, when I got to New York, I wanted to carry a butterfly knife and I thought that I could just like whip around a butterfly knifes and everyone would be like, okay, that guy's a badass. But I don't know if you know this butterfly.

0:19:34 Thomas: Wow.

0:19:35 Tom: My God. I love this so much.

0:20:02 Thomas: Toothpick in your mouth, yeah.

0:20:02 Tom: Much.

0:20:03 Eli: Yeah. Butter, God, a toothpick would have been so much cooler than what I was trying to do. A butterfly knife is sharp and also juggling. So all that happened is I cut the shit out of my hand in front of people multiple times, multiple times. I would be sitting around, I would pull out a knife like a psycho and everyone would be like, is that a fucking knife? And I'd be like, oh no, I just do tricks with it. Oh, god, do you have a real bandage, and I gotta be clear, I don't mean a bandaid, I mean a bandage.

0:20:28 Thomas: Call The ER, tell them it's Eli, it happened again. They'll Know

0:20:36 Eli: Tell Tell me I was awkward in a social situation again, they'll know what happened.

0:20:41 Thomas: It's the cut thing, not the rectal thing, it's

0:20:43 Tom: I can hard relate to the nerdiness of both of those things because not only did I have nunchucks, I had nunchuks that I handmade, that I made myself by like cutting in my dad's garage doll rods and then getting a length of like thin chain and pounding a nail through one of the links to the chain into the center of the dowel rod, so I made my own fucking nunchucks to practice with.

0:21:05 Eli: Amazing.

0:21:05 Tom: Like a giant Fucking do-it-yourself ninja or whatever, fucking DIY samurai or whatever fucking bullshit I was being. And then, like, I also, at one point, because I used to vandalize shit all the time with my fucking toxic buddy Dave, like we'd go and just fuck things up and break shit. We're just horrible people. But I had this, like, pair of, uh, aluminum baton nunchuks, nunchucks, so they were like six inches, then you flick your wrist and they were like 12 inch, like, nunchuck. So I'd put them in my pocket and that way I could smash things with these stupid fucking nunchuks in the middle of the night when he and I would go out and, like, just fuck shit up. And go we I call him on the phone, like, it was cool, vandalized stuff, like we were total assholes. Yeah.

0:21:05 Eli: Yeah.

0:21:42 Thomas: Jesus.

0:21:42 Tom: We're, and I also had a butterfly knife, although I don't remember ever cutting myself because it's only sharp on one side on purpose, so you just know you

0:21:49 Thomas: Yeah. Eli is very good at cutting

0:21:51 Eli: If You try

0:21:51 Tom: You just, well,

0:21:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:51 Eli: To If you try to do the cool tricks, Tom, maybe you were set, maybe you were happy just opening it, but if you trying to flip it around, fucking hurt yourself it's

0:21:58 Tom: I flip it around, but like, if you, anyway, but,

0:22:01 Eli: Possible. I don't know what to tell you, Tom. I, if I can hurt myself yeah

0:22:03 Thomas: You Applied the principle of pointy and goes other way, and Eli wasn't quite doing that here

0:22:08 Eli: Yeah and

0:22:07 Tom: But yeah, I, do absolutely like cringe right alongside you, dude. I had that whole, like when I was a kid, like that fascination with stupid fucking weapons and showing them off and like all that kind of nonsense too. So 100%,

0:22:22 Thomas: Want to tell a story related to this quickly about my dad, um, and I don't know if I've told it, and it's along the lines maybe what I mentioned last episode of, like, I'm kind of actually genuinely interested in your guys's view of, think, my dad was in terms of masculinity, because my, I've already told you, what would you think? My dad's attitude to fighting would be, maybe

0:22:39 Tom: Be too lazy to do it too

0:22:40 Thomas: What

0:22:41 Eli: You'd just be like, like anytime someone tried to fight him, he'd be like, no, I don't, I don'm not gonna do that

0:22:41 Thomas: That's okay.

0:22:44 Tom: Lazy. Yeah. Back just immediately

0:22:45 Eli: Yeah

0:22:45 Thomas: Yeah. No. Okay. So you've gotten the good indication. That means I'm a good storyteller slash. You guys are perceptive.

0:22:50 Eli: No.

0:22:50 Thomas: I think you've nailed it. That's that's one of the two. There's also a in there where I think he, like I'm trying, so he tells this story of coached Little League when, you know, mainly for my siblings. I think it kind of ran out of steam by the time it got to me. Plus I was, I was not good at sports when I was little. So I think you just got really embarrassed and tired of that. So he was just like, fuck this. Naturally Little League is like, a place where the fights happen.

You know, that is like parents around Little League and just general, I say parents, mainly dads. I don't know, sometimes the fucking moms mix it up too though, you know, like it is just a, yeah, it is. Just, and the lower the stakes, probably the more the fucking fighting really. When they are at that Little League World Series, there is probably no, you know, they're not fighting, um, no, that, that's a place I'm realizing this probably doesn't resonate because you guys didn't do sports shit. I thought I was gonna get a bunch of yes-ands, but no, literally true, though, like Little League kids sports

0:23:20 Tom: Well I mean it makes sense because the stakes couldn't be lower, so

0:23:42 Thomas: They the parents yeah that's

0:23:42 Eli: Dads fight each other at

0:23:41 Tom: Oh god I'll no yeah so

0:23:44 Eli: The Little League stuff, yes not

0:23:46 Thomas: Re, that's very real, that's not a joke your

0:23:48 Eli: At the musicals my dad was safe there, he didn't really, no, it wasn't a lot of we're

0:23:51 Thomas: Dad was beating up a guy. Oh, we're not supposed to. Do Oh, shit, I was supposed to beat up the dad of the guy you were, were the understudy too, because it was your competition, Tom

0:23:54 Eli: Not okay sorry

0:23:57 Tom: God well all right so This I can, yes, and that to an embarrassing degree because when I was, uh, I don't know, 17, 8, I had to be 17 or so, me and this guy that I used to go around and just fuck shit up with, real toxic friendship, real violent, toxic friendship that I had. We used to go to roller hockey games. So roller hockey was pretty big in the suburbs where I lived, and we would go to roll her hockey games and we pick out a kid just at random by a number. And we would heckle that kid until their dad got upset. And then we would try to, and then we would fight.

0:24:28 Thomas: Was the baddie you're the worst person. Oh

0:24:31 Tom: Well, it was terrible. No, no, no. I was legitimately the worst. And then we would try to fight the dad. So like we would heckle a kid until the dad got mad and then the dad would come over and like, it worked a couple of times. Then we'd fight the debt. And like one time it worked out in our favor. And one time the dad kicked our ass. So like it was same

0:24:31 Thomas: My god what Jesus Christ this what yeah

0:24:50 Eli: I'm excited for that dad who kicked your ass, good for him

0:24:52 Tom: In retrospect. Yeah. It's a terrible story. But like, I wasn't, I was a complete asshole when I was a teenager, like a complete complete asshole.

0:24:52 Thomas: I'm actually pretty happy, yeah should we've been rooting for the snapping turtle this whole time

0:24:58 Eli: His mom, his mom fed him to a snap everyone right now is like Tom's the worst, I hate his mom, mom fed him to a snapping turtle, if your mom fed you to a snapping turtle, you would

0:25:00 Tom: Yeah. I had some, I had,

0:25:00 Thomas: Yeah yeah his Between, between orgies, his sex worker mom fed him to a snapping turtle. We got to cut him some.

0:25:08 Eli: You gotta

0:25:07 Tom: I got some anger problems. I had some anger, problems for sure.

0:25:12 Thomas: Yeah, no, that's fair. Yep, yep,

0:25:11 Eli: You all gotta relax okay they didn't have cognitive behavioral therapy When Tom and I were teens, okay, they would just send you to the guidance counselor's office. Some lady who'd been there for 35 years would be like, "You gay?" And you'd be like, "No." And she'd be like, "I got nothing for you." And that's it, that was all they had. Yeah.

0:25:14 Thomas: Yep.

0:25:14 Tom: Yeah, but the problem is I had a lot of anger problems, but I was still a smart kid. So I got in a lot. I did a lot stupid shit and I never got caught. So never one time did Did I ever get caught by schools or cause I was, I was strategic about my fuckery. So like I would do a bunch of stupid, dumb, violent shit when I was a kid and I didn't get caught doing it. So, but I'll just, yes. And it in a horrible way. Like, yeah, you can get emotions run pretty high when you, when kids are involved.

0:25:50 Thomas: Yeah, okay. As usual, Tom's yes and is actually a, oh, yes and fucking outer space. And I'm like, yeah I guess that's a yes and. I don't, okay, that sounds horrible. That sounds worse than anything I ever. But no, I remember clearly grade basketball uh there was an incident where the like some parents got in a fight with the ref like because they were really unhappy with the rep and parents of of team um got in A Fight With The Ref and it was like fuck yeah okay and that's

0:25:57 Eli: Outer space. Yeah, to completely so,

0:25:57 Tom: So it was,

0:26:13 Eli: I just always, always think of the South Park episode where Randy has to fight, so that they don't have to do Little League anymore.

0:26:17 Thomas: One I've actually seen I haven't watch any South Park, but that one was on when I was in college, I think. It was on somebody's TV in a dorm room. And I was like, well, this is actually really fucking funny. That's a good episode.

0:26:26 Eli: It's so funny, Tom, so the, the conceit of the episode is that kids hate playing Little League, and so they just, they all want to lose, but, and this is true, you automatically lose if, you're if a parent from your team gets in a fight. And so Randy is, is like the superstar of the South Park team because he's constantly getting blackout drunk and trying to fight other people. But then they play a team that's so good at being bad that they're not even going to have to play over the summer. And so they need Randy to like rise up in a Rocky montage to fight another dad who dresses as Batman.

0:26:34 Tom: I'm there.

0:26:59 Thomas: Oh, that's funny. My memory is those are two separate things. Like the kids get good at losing and they realize like, oh, what we've been doing is all wrong. The other teams have been getting really good at loosing. And then the dad fight is a separate plot point in my memory. It's just like, he feels like he has to fight every single game and the one. And so So they get to the Little League World Series and like, it's so funny because I only saw this once in college. It was on someone's TV and it was so good. I actually remember all this. And it was like some guy, some, one of the dads, you know, like makes a comment and he goes, well, I guess that's my guy. His wife is like, you could just not fight. And he's like, no.

0:27:17 Eli: Yes.

0:27:28 Eli: Batdad. Batdad! Yep. Yeah. And How he saves the day. Yeah, that's why he saves it. That's how we save the day because they're going to be stuck playing baseball all throughout the summer but then Randy gets in a fight against Bat Dad and he's like the hero and he's getting arrested on the field with his pants around his ankles it's just it's fantastic. What I'm saying is South Park used to be funny.

0:27:41 Thomas: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. So good. Yeah.

0:27:57 Eli: Everybody there was an occasional moment where South Park was funny but

0:27:58 Thomas: Yeah. So Story with my dad is, um, wasn't there for this but it's something he would tell, which is at some point some dad wanted to fight him because of sports. I don't remember what, I don't remember's my dad was the coach and maybe the dad's kid wasn't getting enough playing time, that could very easily have been it. There's always, every, that's the worst fucking thing, every parent thinks their kid should start. And my dad, you know, was good at because he was my dad.

And, and like he is the opposite of Eli's dad. Basically, Eli's dad probably would have started Eli on the team, regardless of Eli skill, which is what have a lot of coaches did, like they got into coaching so that they could coach their kid and start them when they sucked. But my dad was the opposite.

He's like, not only do you need to be good, you have to be better than you should be in order for me to start you, because it's looked at like I'm just starting you because I'm the dad. So, like, that was his fucking way of doing it. And I don't know if, what, how this happened, but he tells the story of a dad wanting to fight him and, like, calling him somehow and, like, talking to him and saying, like, let's meet somewhere and do the whatever.

And my dad tells the history of, like, hey man, have, like, you'll just be out there fucking swinging at the air because I won't be there, and I, that was how he told the story, and the

0:29:10 Thomas: Attitude

0:29:10 Tom: I'm not getting off the couch for this shit.

0:29:11 Thomas: Yeah Impression is it wasn't just the laziness. There was also this like proud cowardice or something, not, not cowardice, but like he did have a sense of like, that's stupid. Like, I'm not going to fight you, you know? Like, so it's interesting. There are ways that my dad was extremely not toxic masculine at all. He was like, there's no, fighting is a dumb fucking thing for parents to be doing. And so it'S interesting, you know, it's a mixed bag, but

0:29:35 Eli: Your family crest is just like laziness above all right and it's son, it was real hard for me he takes

0:29:44 Thomas: Some, somehow, yeah, like Latin, like laziness

0:29:45 Tom: They're just I

0:29:45 Eli: Yeah yeah exactly he smashes open the basement, he's got cement, he opens up these doors. I didn't want to have to show you this, son, it's just his car keys for leaving the house. I swore I'd never do this again but damn it, they've dragged me back to the grocery store

0:29:48 Thomas: Yeah,

0:29:59 Tom: Can't picture my dad I can picture my dead fighting at all. Like, my dad is not a physically, it just can't, I can't like, I just literally can't even imagine it.

0:30:13 Thomas: I was going to ask that. Where

0:30:14 Tom: I can'T imagine my dad fighting.

0:30:15 Thomas: Did you get it? I don't get it. You didn't. I

0:30:17 Tom: I was just mad.

0:30:17 Thomas: Mean, maybe from the snapping turtle.

0:30:18 Tom: I just, I've, I was, I was an angry

0:30:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:18 Eli: He got fed to a snapping turtle he was in a fire and she didn't get him

0:30:22 Tom: Son of a bitch.

0:30:22 Thomas: The snapping turtle was the closest thing to a good role model at that time. He's like, well, that thing looks pretty aggressive. I guess I'll take on that affect.

0:30:23 Tom: Um, yeah,

0:30:23 Eli: Yeah to be fair, the snapping turtle and Tom's mom dated for like years afterwards, I do remember if you, we actually had to photoshop in that photo, that's our logo, with Tom's real dad, that it was originally the snapping hurdle teaching him how to use a bike, um, and we thought it would be confusing for people and

0:30:29 Thomas: Oh, it's his stepdad it was the snapping turtle yeah

0:30:35 Tom: No, know I, I really I did have like a lot of like chip on my shoulder, a lot of anger from, I think, just like a lot of years of feeling like I didn't grow up the way I wanted to or whatever it was, some fucking sense of entitlement bullshit, probably that I felt as a fucking angry white teenager.

0:30:47 Thomas: No man you don't need to take this attitude you've you deserve to have a bad reaction to a rough childhood. That's okay, man. Yeah.

0:31:07 Tom: But But and but I also had like a super toxic best friend, so I had this best friend at the time and like our favorite game, like, we would just, we would just compete and like in really unhealthy ways. So we had this game that we would play, which is kind of just an aside to the fighting thing, like, where we'd grab a football, I caught it, by the way, I would grab a baseball and like, we'd stand on opposite ends of this field and I'd throw him the football and he'd catch it because he was adept at that, and then we would run at each other at full speed and you couldn't juke or try to dodge, and then you would try to break through the other guy, and then he'd throw me the football and I do the same thing, I'd run and we'd just run right at each other, just whack, just smack, just, like, we're like sophomores and juniors in high school, we're like, we've got like, you know, we're like sizable humans at this point.

0:31:12 Thomas: Oh, more.

0:31:48 Thomas: Wow. Legitimately dangerous.

0:31:51 Tom: Yeah, and we would just like, this is what we did, like, we would wrestle very hard, we'd like try to like outlift each other with weights, we would, like, everything was a very aggressive toxic competition and we would and

0:31:52 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:03 Eli: And it never even occurred to you guys to kiss, because I feel like that would have really, really solved some things

0:32:09 Thomas: My reaction is how did you do all that and not get good at sports? I don't get it.

0:32:10 Eli: Yeah,

0:32:13 Tom: We it was the only, yeah, I just, I missed the ball every time, by the way, but like, yeah, we'd compete in everything, we compete in grades, we'd complete in

0:32:20 Thomas: Who could get worse grades or what? I don't know at this point. Oh, okay.

0:32:21 Tom: No better grades yeah, no, very much better grades, like, we're both, you know, both in the honors classes and AP classes and stuff. It's

0:32:28 Thomas: I like the idea that in between beating up dads at little league, he's like, all right, I'm going to do my algebra though. Cause I want to make Make

0:32:34 Eli: I, get it that's

0:32:34 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:32:35 Tom: Total fucking misnomer, though, like, the smart kids do all the same fucked up shit, they just don't get caught like, that's that's the difference

0:32:40 Thomas: Boy, I am not my experience, but

0:32:42 Eli: Not true in my, hey, Tom, buddy, you know how the snapping turtle wasn't a fun tale, you we also didn't do the the run at each other game with our with our best friend we

0:32:42 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, it's not true, man. Yeah yeah. No, that was just literally just you. Like all the smart kids did

0:32:45 Tom: Yeah well maybe maybe I don't know, I knew a lot of smart kids that party pretty hard and did a lot of fucked up stuff so that

0:32:53 Thomas: Not that.

0:32:58 Eli: Played Dungeons and Dragons, Tom. Over in my school, you could have played Dungeons and Dragons, you could've played a barbarian, you could gonna hit people with a big axe in pretend land, but we had chips, we had chips

0:33:00 Thomas: Yeah

0:33:06 Tom: Would have been that would have been much better, that would have been much much healthier, so yeah.

0:33:09 Eli: Yeah

0:33:12 Thomas: I want to come back, Eli, to kind of what you were talking about, about the the fight. And add, like, it's also heartbreaking because that fucking skill, that emotional intelligence, that impossible navigation you have to do, comes when you're the least prepared to do it. Like, when you're older, people just, you know, you can get by mostly without having to fight. Like, I don't have to deal with that, like, ever.

Even when you get older in high school, if you want to avoid all that, it's pretty easy to, in my experience, I think. But there's a time when you're younger where you not only have to avoid the fight if you don't want to fight, you have to do it not looking like a fucking, you know, P word, not looking, not being subject to all that stuff.

You have to doing this impossible navigation of how do I not fight but not look like I'm not doing it because I'm a coward, essentially, in so many words.

And that is such a hard maze, you know, and and I just remember, I would, you know, I try everything, it's like you couldn't, there wasn't enough else going on, so would distract these assholes enough, you know, like it was such a boring shit place that like inevitably the entertainment turns to like picking on each other and maybe and like bullying each other, and I was so sensitive I didn't want to do that, so then I instantly became the target, it because I'm not wanting to like give it to anybody, and I just have such a fear that like, you know, one of my kids is going to be caught in that just hell of a situation, it just sucks.

0:34:34 Eli: Yeah, no, it was, I, I remember it and I, I worry about it even though I know it's a better world, like, intellectually, and I, that's why I loved our bullying episode so much, because me and Tom were like, no, Thomas, it's really better now, and you were like, No, I mean, he needs a single shuriken just in case, but like, yeah, no, I mean, that's okay.

0:34:46 Thomas: Yeah you're still wrong, but yeah, that's fine, no, you're definitely wrong, I don't believe you, but it's fine, I'll talk, talk to me when all my kids are 18 and they haven't gotten a single fight. And then I'll say you're right. Okay.

0:34:53 Eli: Well, when, yeah, I mean, all Remy has to do is hit him with that little lip, oh, my god, if a full-grown man did a Remy lip at me, I would apologize to him, but yeah, no, I mean, it is a, it, and gentler world, and that's also, it's a really interesting thing to, as fathers, to be like, oh, okay, our kids, kids will not be afraid of these things, they will not experience these traumas that we experienced, how do we prepare them for a world without lying and accidentally preparing them for the wrong one, right?

Because I remember very early on, dad, like, trying to teach me to fight, and then realizing that I was just not that person and was not living in that circumstance, I remember, god, what was the thing, oh gosh, this is so funny, so he was like, yeah, you know, I don't even remember how he casually said, he was, he was, yeah, you, um, if someone's ever trying to fight you, you can say, like, let's do this like men and take, to take your shirt off. And then when they go to take their shirt off, you punch them. Um, and I, I saw my father do that to great success,

0:35:01 Thomas: Oh, that's true. Yeah. Oh,

0:35:54 Eli: A couple of times, but okay.

0:35:55 Thomas: My God. That is Jesus Christ.

0:35:58 Eli: But here's, here's the amazing punchline. One of the many times I got my ass kicked, I was like, let's do this like men. And the guy was like, sure. And so I just took my shirt off and he was like great. You ready to fight now? And I I was like, I would like to put my shirt back on. I mean, sorry, that's not your line. Your line is yes. And then you, you pull a shirt over your head.

0:36:15 Tom: You take your shirt off and then Yeah.

0:36:21 Eli: You can't just, you can't just let me take my shirt off.

0:36:24 Thomas: There's glow tape. Go to where the glow tape is. You put your foot there. Yep.

0:36:26 Tom: I Much of knowing how to fight and feeling comfortable with a certain amount of violence is the same thing as like walking around with a gun. Like it's a, it's false sense of bravery and a false sense of security, like because, like, I'm not unused to this, like, but again I am, because it's been 20 fucking 8 years, right, since I've gotten into a fucking fist fight. Like, I have no idea what that would be like as a fucking grown-ass man.

0:36:51 Tom: So I don't want to pretend I do but

0:36:51 Eli: But you still see the snapping turtle on Thanksgiving and stuff. So, you know, yeah,

0:36:54 Tom: Like, but like I do wonder if that doesn't lend a false sense of like bravery and security. And sort of like build more confrontation

0:37:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:03 Eli: Everything starts to look like a nail. Yeah, people I, often say like, Will Max take karate lessons? Will Max take self-defense lessons? And the answer is absolutely not. I do not want him to practice violence.

There are ways to be prepared for violence, but a lot, and look, we are in the skeptic community, and I'm going to try and say this as nicely as possible, but there is a fascination within the skeptics community with the roll around on top of each other, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Krav Maga, everyone thinks that there's a skeptical version of martial arts, and And no matter where I make the joke, what show, I have always gotten an email that's like, just so you know, the most deadly martial art is the Filipino Escrima.

And I have been studying it for 97 years. And you're just like, yeah, man, I think maybe you like practiced harming others. And mean, I I don't know. I think if you practice that stuff and focus on that stuff, you a hammer and everything starts to look like a nail, right? I'll say this. I never met an expert martial artist, quote unquote, whatever the fuck that means, who didn't also have a story that was a barely concealed. One time I attacked a person for no reason story.

0:37:04 Tom: Yeah. Right.

0:37:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:12 Tom: Yeah. And It's so fucking, like, all of this is so fucking male privileged, right? Because, like, as I'm thinking about negotiating this with Finn, I again I can't help but think about how all of this is this fucking extensive, deep, absurd, violent, patriarchal, male privilege bullshit. Because, like, if Aislen doesn't have to deal with, on the one hand, like the fucking pressure to fight, to you avoid looking like something, instead she has to potentially learn how to defend her fucking actual life.

0:38:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:38:41 Tom: Like Is so different, so it's like, it's part of me doesn't want to give a hammer to the boys, right? Because, like, I don't want them to look for nails, and on the other hand, I'm fully aware that, like, I want to hand my daughter like a series of escalatingly powerful hammers. Right. Like, I, I want her to just be covered, bristling, like a fucking hammer porcupine, Right at all times. And even, it's this conversation itself, the framing of it is, is so fucking privileged. And I fucking feel how privileged and nonsensical it is. It's not untrue, non-untrue, but by comparative terms, it's like fucking hell. Like, at some point I'm going to have to like take Aislinn, and fairly soon, 'cause she's 13, so, right, like, it's probably prudent sooner rather than later, and teach her how to like walk through a parking garage with her keys in her hand, you know, and like teach her, how to rip the nuts off of somebody buddy and shove them in their mouth or whatever. It's so different. It is so fucking different.

0:38:41 Eli: Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yep. And another great example of the like Brazilian jujitsu stuff. Right. Right. Because as much as I make fun of that, right, because a lot of it is just like weird male posturing, like that is the thing that is incredibly useful for women to learn because it's all physics based. And so if someone is much stronger than you, but you can generally get them into an I know that's not universally true. Give your baby a bottle of Tylenol. But like if you can get someone into an arm bar, even if they are bigger than you. A lot of the time you can be safe in ways that you wouldn't if you're just like trying to punch at them. That like that dynamic is very odd in the ways that like I would have no interest in Max learning any of that. And if Max was a girl, I would be like, yeah, honestly, like I would consider giving Max a weapon if he was female identifying because of how just how blatantly dangerous it is to be a girl. So,

0:40:27 Thomas: I have the complete opposite view and I'm not, I just haven't thought of it. So I'm trying to figure out what's the difference and if I'm wrong, but if we live in a world where women need to like literally fight someone off in order to get by, like, I just don't know that that's, I that it's like how they say, if you own a gun, you're more likely to have someone in your house commit suicide with it than it is to whatever. Like, I don't, I know that learning self-defense is a reliable way for women to protect themselves, honestly. Like it's, it's already such a dangerous situation. I I've never heard of, and I dont know of anyone ever, any, Any any I've ever met in my life I've never heard of doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Them doing self-defense in a successful way. So I just don't I know. I've Never thought of that being like, oh, this is something I have to teach Phoebe because I just think that it's like so unreliable that. Yeah, go ahead.

0:41:17 Eli: Without Making a truth claim about the effectiveness or non-effectiveness of self-defense, I think self-defense for women does a couple of things. So first of all, a lot of self-defense, and not all of it, but a lot, self-defense, um, is in the fantasy of like stranger attack, right? Which Is like you're walking along the street and someone's like, "Hello, I will have" "One your" "Face please," Right? Um, there are things that you can learn and teach that are good for the scenarios that generally prepare people, and I have actually quite a few friends who have been in those scenarios where the things they've learned have helped them. Now, to be clear, I'm not talking about keys between your knuckles, I'm not talking about pepper spray, right? Those are all largely part of the fantasy of stranger attack.

But there are ways in which you learn to move and use your body in in self-defense that are useful. At the very least, one of the things, because again, culture sort of teaches women to be meek and mild and genteel, one of the most important lessons of self-defence that you have to teach young women is you should hurt someone really badly right away, which is something that's sort of counterintuitive to think of.

But like one of the reasons why attacks happen in the way that they do, because of course we're mostly attacked by people we know, um, that, um, is still unsure of the danger they are in, and then it is too late.

And so one of the very useful things that self, good self-defense instructors do, and and again, I'm not making any truth claims about the universe, I'm sure there's a guy at your local Y who will be like, "I will be teach you kata and you will learn to snatch the eye of the Vulcan" or whatever, but like one of the thing that self-defence instructors teach you to do is like, like how to do a lot of damage very quickly and then run,

0:41:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Yeah.

0:43:08 Tom: Right.

0:43:09 Eli: Away. Whereas, right? I think we picture sort of the cartoon thing of like a guy in a big foam suit getting kicked in the nuts.

0:43:16 Tom: So, like, most of this self-defense, it, that, that, as interesting. I was talking to Haley when we were first dating, and she mentioned something about a self-defence class. And as soon as she said that she was taking a self defense class or had taken one, I immediately knew that it was all women in the class. And I said as much. And she's like, "Yeah." And I realize in that moment that that's because we live in a culture where violence against women is ubiquitous and normalized. And so I think it's absolutely the case that, unfortunately, that's the truth of the world that we live in, is that women are preyed upon by men who are predators. And that's just a straight up fucking numerical truth. Like, there's a huge epidemic of gender based violence. And so I think women need to learn situational awareness, escape.

0:43:56 Eli: Right.

0:44:00 Thomas: Well, but that's so often intimate partner violence.

0:44:04 Eli: Right. So

0:44:04 Tom: And is, But being situationally aware of that escalation, knowing how to escape the situation, knowing how to deescalate those things, is it going to fix every problem? No. Is it going to fix even most of the problems? Maybe not. But I think for women, there's no harm. They're not learning how to walk around with a hammer the same way a testosterone fueled boy is where they're going to start shit or look for shit. And there's only good to be gained from it. I don't think there's any downside.

0:44:31 Thomas: Is that true?

0:44:31 Eli: Yeah. And yeah, I just want to clarify. So again, like I said, we have the stereotype of the like guy in the foam suit where you're learning to like kick in the knots and blow the whistle, but like modern self-defense, much like bullying, right, modern self-defense is much more aware of where attacks come from and de-escalating things, like intimate partner violence and getting resources and figuring out how to deal with violence in the home, that kind of stuff. It's a lot less hold your keys between your fingers these days and a lot more like how to actually stay safe according to the like science and knowledge that we have about how women are attacked, does

0:45:10 Thomas: And I just wonder, this is a question I don't know the answer to, but I, my intuition is different than Tom, which, and yours might be based on actual knowledge. So I just want to see here, like, is it true that there's no downside? Cause if we looked at the stats, are there times when trying to meet some sort of attack with violence makes it worse?

0:45:29 Tom: That that may be a misnomer to how and Eli kind of touched on it to how self-defense classes are mostly taught. So self-defense classes nowadays are not taught to meet violence with violence. They're taught to meet violence with evasion first. So yeah, if you're taught and you're trained to sort of meet a moment of violence with escape at all costs first, and then if you can't escape, then here's what you can do, then I don't think that there can be a downside, right? Right. Because you're not teaching somebody how to meet violence with violence. That's how we train boys. Right. We train boys to meet a fight with a fight. We train boys to meet violents with violents. It is. It's terrible. It terrible.

0:46:04 Thomas: Is also bad advice yeah yeah gotcha

0:46:07 Tom: I don't I don't want to say it's good. Like I'm not saying it's bad, objectively bad. So I think we touched on that a fair bit in the earlier parts of the episode. Right? So we teach we teach but we teach girls how to run away first and how to use violence only as a last resort. So if it's your last resort, you should know how to. Right, I don'T know what what the downside to that could be if you're teaching them all the ways to escape first.

0:46:06 Eli: Advice terrible advice yeah right

0:46:10 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:46:29 Eli: And, but the, but I'll say the the picture that that you're picturing, Thomas, of like kick him in the nuts or that, what's that stupid fictional thing where they tell you you can like tap someone's nose and they, it goes up into their brain and fucking writes, writes their grandmother a letter and then they stop being a bad guy forever or whatever, like that first of all, that is very much what we were raised with, because effective martial arts is relatively new to, uh, United States. Right. Mostly it was just like karate teachers or fucking boxing instructors just being like, I will make $75 on a Saturday. Yeah, absolutely.

0:46:42 Thomas: Yeah

0:47:02 Tom: Right.

0:47:02 Eli: Here's a karate punch everybody. And so, exactly.

0:47:04 Thomas: And The rubber never met the road, like, ever, so no one could ever you know, say like, "Hey, I got attacked and it didn't," you know, like that's such a rare

0:47:10 Eli: Got attacked and he didn't go backwards words and then go key op? So, do you have a non, do you have a none key op situation? No, that's what we picture, but yeah, um, there's... there's one taught at the uh place where Max does his preschool that's really good, and there's a local one near me that's very good, and there's actually a lot of really interesting conversation happening around that, um, it comes to like, uh, image of violence and victimization, uh, it's and useful stuff. It is not, not a karate class for ladies.

0:47:11 Thomas: Yeah

0:47:16 Tom: Right.

0:47:39 Thomas: I My question is, like, I know for with Lydia, for example, like we've kind of had this conversation and she's not like she's just not going to do that. You know, are you saying this is something that like, OK, if if you want to do it, this is how you do it. Are you like way you guys were talking about earlier? It was like, oh, no, I need to train Aislinn. You know, I just don't have that feeling like I'm not doing that with Phoebe because it's just it's you know what I mean? Like what

0:47:39 Tom: I

0:48:01 Eli: So I'll give

0:48:01 Tom: Would feel, I would be, I would, I would not feel wildly unsafe with Aislinn, for Aisling, if she was never trained specifically on how to avoid violence and meet the potential for violence. I think, like, the truth is, like, so many women, like, just to, just so many, by the numbers, will experience some kind of violence. And it's, it's going to be disproportionate violence, meaning it's gonna be violence from a bigger, stronger person, almost always, because it's male to female almost always. So, like, if she lived in a world as violent as the world that we live in is for women, I can't imagine not helping to equip her for that.

0:48:41 Eli: Example of where I am with Anna. When Anna and I started dating, she had lots of late night gigs, still does. Had lots OF late night gigs. And so I sort of sat her down and talked about carrying a karambit, which is something that you should consider if you have a lady person in your life. It is a small knife that opens with gravity, uh, and it's got a curved and serrated blade, uh, and it requires no skill to use, you just close your eyes and kitten mittens. Um, because it's curved and serrated, it does a lot of damage very, very quickly. And so for my comfort, Anna carries one of those whenever she goes somewhere. Light now, I know that my wife has no violent tendencies whatsoever.

I think she and Lydia are the same, and the, like, that's just not within her imagination, imagination, but I needed to talk to her about what that was and how it could be used, because for me, I want her to have that if she needs it. And while Anna's never been in a situation of violence, she has been in sketchy situations where reaching into her purse and having that in her hand was comforting to her in that moment. You, we have this image of, of a karate class where you kick the guy in the nuts and

0:48:57 Thomas: Hell is that well

0:49:52 Tom: Yeah

0:49:52 Eli: Then you, you know, do a high five to his nose and he dies instantly, his brain explodes or whatever, right, is a very different conversation than the practical realities of, like, knives are hard to dodge, uh.

0:50:03 Thomas: Well yeah, but for that reason, does the knife on average introduce just more danger to the situation if she's attacked by someone by hand then?

0:50:11 Eli: So that, that's actually a statistic that has been slightly, I don't want to say, um, but like that data is bad. The, like, you're more likely to have a weapon used on you if you're are a woman than you are to use a weapon in self-defense. Because the way that that was based, and it's interesting, do you remember that cop that you interviewed on SIO?

0:50:32 Eli: Yeah, that guy. So he is the one who actually sent me down this pathway of actually doing the research into that. So that statistic, which is sort of commonly quoted, and again, I don't want to make truth claims because give your baby a bottle of Tylenol, but that statistic is based specifically on FBI reports about victims, so it is, um, biased towards people who were victimized, and the situation sort of being reconstructed after someone was a victim

0:50:30 Thomas: Yeah that guy yeah yeah there'd

0:51:02 Eli: As opposed to

0:51:03 Thomas: Be a selection effect there

0:51:04 Eli: Right there's a selection effect there, so yeah, that, that is at least from the reading I did, oh so many years ago yeah yeah there you go, maybe, uh, maybe an SIO episode where Tom says college isn't real well

0:51:04 Thomas: Yeah yeah I'd want to look into this yeah I just think that it's a reasonable thing to, um, worry about. This, in I don't mean that it's never not going to happen, blah, blah. But like, taken, believe that it is very possible. I would like to do more research that the, a percentage of the time that some sort of self-defense or training would turn a bad situation good, or whatever, would like be the, be the deciding difference, might be so minuscule relative to like how much needs to go into just, you, situational awareness, other, other things. Plus just fucking call the police.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just not of the mindset that like self-defense is a thing that people need, but I just could be wrong. Like, I just, I don't know. It's, it's weird. I didn't know. I'd never thought about it before, but that seems just way more of my mindset.

Said sort of like, in always, like, oh, in the apocalypse you're gonna want to stockpile guns, and you're going to want, and I'm like, I'll just kill myself, man, I'm not gonna, I, whatever, if that happens, I'm nothing. It's not a danger that something might happen to me, but I'm like, okay, then then I died, I don't know, like, I'm not gonna train, all this worry every day about training, just right, so that I could, I donno

0:52:21 Thomas: Know yes

0:52:21 Eli: Now I think is actually a very valid point to bring up right now, and I do fall short of where Thomas is, I do think some defense learning is important, but I do think it is important not to tell our children they live in a more dangerous world than they live in um, I fall short of you. I think some self-defense training is important, especially for female identifying children. I, I just think it's, again, again, I love my wife. She's the gentlest person in the universe. I can't imagine herself being in a violence-based situation.

But should eyes, should that incredibly unlikely version of stranger violence happen, I wanted her to be prepared for it. I think, and there's no harm in preparing if you can have that conversation in a healthy way. And let's be, be clear, like, I think if Tom sits Aislen down and is like, Aislan, listen to me, everybody's trying to get you, they're coming from the left, they're Coming from the right and that's why you need these nunchucks daddy made outside right you know you know if you're handing along dowel rod nunchuks that's definitely a problem but I think there is a healthy

0:52:33 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah sure yeah with dowel rods

0:53:12 Tom: Don't

0:53:24 Eli: Really really healthy middle ground and

0:53:24 Thomas: I Is I there a part of it that you're near New York City and you're and near Chicago, like is that part of you, this know idea of carrying around a knife and fighting off an attacker or something, um, that something that maybe just is kind of I don't know regional, like Eli just don't think in those terms maybe, or I'm wrong. I could entirely just be wrong and not thinking about it.

0:53:45 Tom: Yeah, I don't know, because I've lived in this area my whole life, but, you know, I live in the suburbs. The suburbs are very, very safe overall. The statistics crime overall are very low. But I'm also aware that, like, Reuters, like, has did a survey that names the United States as a whole as the 10th most dangerous place in the world for women. Like, like, the world is unsafe. Yes.

0:54:06 Thomas: Really? Holy shit.

0:54:08 Tom: The world is deeply unsafe for women and I am aware of that. And I feel like I would be remiss in my parental responsibilities. Do I want to give A's on a knife or nunchucks? I'm not giving her fucking nunchuks. I want her to be a woman. I'm going to teach her how to run the fuck away. I wanna teach her to walk into a place and know who she, she can ask for help if she's in a bar.

I want to teach her how to make sure she can't get cornered by people. I wanna teach her to do the things that are most likely to keep her the most safe. And I hope all of those just work. But if they don't, I do want her to feel like, okay, if it comes down to this, I know how to do something else also. Because again, I feel like the numbers, and maybe I just misunderstand all the statistics.

That could be possible, but I don't think so. An unsafe place for women. I don't think we want to teach them to be afraid all the time to go out and be in the world, but I also don't want to pretend that the world is safe for women, because it's just not. It's just not. The United States is not a safe place for woman to live.

I'm just totally wildly crazy in terms of like my understanding of these statistics, but I, that's, that's my, my read, and I feel like if I don't address that, I, I don't know that I'd give my kids a knife, but like, would I give them pepper spray?

Yeah, I'd probably give them fucking pepper spray, or you, it takes to also just make them feel safe, like I don't want to fucking mansplain to my daughter what she needs to feel safe in a world that wants to prey on her, you

0:55:40 Tom: Know what I mean, like, I don't want to do that. And I don't want to pretend that like, oh yeah, you can park in the parking garage just like I can.

0:55:47 Thomas: I my main focus would just be not getting in these situations. I Just the violence part using violence part is a place where I just wouldn't ever get there. So maybe we largely agree. It's just that last point. Of, you or not, you our daughters want to do that or or, not. I kind of would, I guess I would leave that to them if they wanted to, but

0:56:11 Eli: Before we go I don't like john candy I THEY'RE TECHNICALLY CALLED URINAL MINTS BUT I STILL THINK THEY'RE DISGUSTING

0:56:17 Tom: Right.

0:56:24 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.