Billmanweh said:
I'm still interested in feedback related to my original question.
As you can tell, I've got some fairly strong opinions on the subject.
Cries of "No! Say it ain't so." I've also had a little experience, about 13 years, teaching women's self defense, everything from 4 hour demos to 40 hour self defense courses to long term martial arts programs and a fair number of trips to the range with first-time shooters.
Your desire to get her a good self defense tool does you credit. It shows you care about her and want her to be safe. The best tool depends very much on the job it needs to be put to. The world's best air conditioner is still a lousy screwdriver. Think about what sort of trouble she's likely to get in. That should tell you a lot about what would be most useful.
The most important thing is her. If she has a self-defense mindset, then whatever you get her will be appreciated and fit into her plans accordingly.
If she doesn't, the best thing would be a really good short-term self defense course that will expand her ideas about what she is capable of and clarify her values about herself, defending herself and valuing her own life and safety more highly than those of criminals. It sounds strange to most guys, but a lot of strong capable women have a problem with helping themselves if it means hurting another human being. From there, go back to step 1.
I can't speak to her particular needs without learning more about her personally, but I can tell you about some of the things that my wife and other women we know have kept, carried and sometimes used.
A good pocket knife is a good pocket knife. Indispensable tool for everyday use. Think pink Spyderco Delica rather than the Mark X MilSpecOpsTacMoFo Eviscerator
It has the advantage of being accessible and of familiarity. Carry a good knife and use it, and it naturally comes to hand. Of course, that's getting into the realm of lethal force. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the rather delicate act of curling your hand and applying three pounds of pressure to a lever with your index finger is psychologically easier than repeatedly sticking a knife into someone, feeling blood on your hands and all the other intimate (not in a good way) things that come with jacking someone up with a blade.
My wife wears a lot of shawls and scarves. She holds them together with an 8 inch upholstery needle with a pretty amber bead on the dull end. Sometimes she knots old-style silver dollars into the ends of the scarf.
If your girlfriend is the bookish sort she would probably appreciate a nice bookweight. Levenger makes a very nice doorstop-shaped one with a suede back that won't hurt the pages. It's about 11 inches long and weighs as many ounces. My favorite is from St. John's College in Santa Fe. Their bookstore sells a soft, flexible leather bookweight filled with about half a pound of fine lead shot. It even has the infinitely tweedy St. John's College name embossed on it.
They say a prepared person should always have twenty dollars in quarters and a fresh pair of sturdy socks. That way you always have clean socks and twenty dollars.
A good self defense course should include a section on improvised tools. Everything from tweezers to fluffy teddy bears can be turned to protection in the hands of someone with training and intention. I'm absolutely serious about the fluffy teddy bear.
One of the most creative I've heard of was a two-part system consisting of a sock puppet and a blowtorch. The woman who carried it was driving cross-country through all sorts of jurisdictions and didn't have a lot of training. It's disconcerting to talk to a crazy woman who only talks to you through a sock puppet and is holding a foot-long flame. More than one guy with bad intent took a look at that and elsewhered himself.
If she were a guy I'd recommend one of those Israeli field dressings. But since she's a woman she probably carries something sterile that's designed absorb blood and works just fine as a wound dressing.
The possibilities are limited only by ingenuity and imagination.
