There exists a great deal of anxiety where women and self-defense are concerned. For good reason, many women are worried about the threat of a stranger lurking in the shadows, leaping from the bushes to prey on them as they jog through their cul de sac or walk to a parked car. These attacks happen, and with alarming regularity. A search for “jogger raped” or “jogger murdered” will return heart-wrenching results. But much like people prefer fad diets and gimmicks to the tried and true method of, “Eat less, and exercise,” nobody wants to hear that the key to preparing for self-defense is week after month after year of consistent, practical training.
No, people want gadgets. People want easy answers. People want to defend themselves without “needing” to train for doing so. Products like “Tiger Lady” and “Go Guarded” are the result.
Women are particularly vulnerable to this type of marketing because, let’s be honest, their interest in self-defense is less than that of men overall. Every martial arts class and self-defense seminar you have ever attended, barring the free women’s classes that are often used as sales inducements, was dominated by men. In every martial art, women are the minority. While men are susceptible to martial arts con games, scams, and quick-fix solutions, women are even more so because they are under-represented in serious self-defense study.
If we consider serious students of self-defense to be “in the know,” and those with absolutely no training to be the “uninitiated,” there are far more women than men classified as “uninitiated.” It may also be the case that, per the old Onion headline, the average man is 10,000 percent less effective at fighting than he thinks he is, so he’s less likely to take the “quick” solution because of false confidence. (That’s an issue for another article.)
Quick-Fix Self-Defense Widgets
The point I’m making, though, is that women are the choice demographic for quick-fix self-defense schemes — products that purport to give them the instant solution to self-defense with little or no actual training. They have money, they are afraid, and they are reluctant to enroll in practical self-defense classes or martial arts. They are certainly extremely unlikely to enroll in one of the nastier knife combatives tribes. They are perhaps more inclined to buy guns than to carry knives — “real” knives, mind you, that can maim and kill a person — but few citizens overall buy guns even where it’s legal to carry them. Within that relatively small percentage, women are under-represented among CCW holders.
What this means is there exists a tremendous pool of potential buyers for products like Tiger Lady and Go Guarded… and herein lies the problem. Both products, like so many other similar self-defense gadgets, attempt to hand you a solution. That’s marketing 101: Identify their pain and give them the cure. The pain, in this case, is fear of rape, assault, attack, etc. The cure is a weapon that seems innocuous, that appeals to what are presumed to be feminine sensibilities, that doesn’t scream, “I AM AN ARMED CITIZEN” (because the demographic doesn’t want to take a stand that might reflect poorly during brunch with their progressive, complacent, middle-class friends), and that requires no special training.
This last is particularly important because the demographic to which these products are marketed isn’t going to get training if it’s required. They just don’t want to. (It is for this same reason that distance learning programs are so popular among male consumers of self-defense products, too. A huge segment of the male population doesn’t want to leave the house and go to classes.) Let’s look at each product and its marketing, therefore. Both products are backed by slick, professional websites and great graphics. Tiger Lady even advertises on national radio programs like Rush Limbaugh’s. Go Guarded, or copies of it, has been on the market for long enough that I’ve been aware of it for a while.
Tiger Lady
Tiger Lady is, I kid you not, a plastic, retractable set of claws you can carry in your hands while running. Marketed as being designed after a cat’s claws (you can almost hear the suits around a boardroom table saying, “Chicks dig cats, right?”), the weapon deploys when you make a fist around it. The claws project between the wearer’s fingers and retract when the unit is released. According to the Tiger Lady website, “The hollow channels on the underside of Tiger Lady’s claws are designed to collect DNA and protect it, to aid in making a positive identification.” The site alleges that “Tiger Lady enhances your ability to scratch an assailant and quickly get to safety. The three steps for using TigerLady are easy to follow, and will facilitate a heightened sense of situational awareness so you’ll feel less vulnerable, and be more prepared.”
This is everything that is wrong with women’s self-defense. It is built around making the wearer feel more prepared. Carrying a weapon, in and of itself, should not “give you a boost of quiet confidence.” It should be a weight, a responsibility, and it should be backed up with training in use-of-force issues. Among the other problems here are that the claws are plastic, not metal, and that you can only “scratch an assailant” with them. While there is a place for inflicting injury (rather than decisive force) in some self-defense scenarios, if that’s all you can do, you’re in big trouble if your “cat scratch” does no more than anger the attacker.
I also have a problem with the way carrying this tool is supposed to increase the user’s situational awareness as if by magic. Situational awareness is a mindset, not something conferred by an object. Carrying the Tiger Lady certainly won’t prepare you for the grisly reality of “collecting DNA” from an attacker. The danger of blood-borne pathogens is bad enough with a conventional knife; you don’t want to be dragging that stuff around with you, regardless of your CSI-driven desires for a “positive identification” of the perpetrator. And do you want to risk the claws retracting through your own fingers while they’re full of “DNA”?
The radio ad for Tiger Lady proclaims it legal in all fifty states. With state and local laws varying as they do, it’s impossible to make blanket proclamations like that. A young lady of my acquaintance once brought one of those plastic “Black Cat” keychains to a courthouse with her, not even realizing that it was illegal. She’s lucky she didn’t get arrested. What happens when some not-so-charitable cop finds the Tiger Lady unit and decides it’s equivalent to brass knuckles?
Go Guarded
Go Guarded is slightly more conventional than Tiger Lady, but suffers from similar problems. It’s essentially a serrated ring dagger with a flexible cover. Like the Tiger Lady, it’s a claw, although it’s much longer (and essentially a fixed blade). My assumption is that the blade is metal, although that’s not clear at first glance through the website. The site touts it as a “convenient, comfortable, effective way to defend yourself if the unthinkable should happen when you are out running, hiking, or walking.” The design seems to be intended for the same methodology as the Tiger Lady: scratching and possibly “DNA catching,” perhaps with some poking added, but without any decisive use of potentially lethal force.
Convenient? Only if running with a barely covered, pointed claw seems convenient. Comfortable? I haven’t held it, but that looks unlikely. It looks awkward and silly to me, and you can’t get any real force behind it when it’s worn on a finger as designed. The copy on the website makes it all worse, too: “You will naturally use your hands to fight off an attack,” it reads. “With Go Guarded on your finger, you can increase your effectiveness in escaping an attack and reaching safety. Go Guarded and give yourself a fighting chance.” The implication from the copy is clear: You don’t have to learn anything. Just put this on, run with it, and if the bogeyman lunges from the shadows, scratch him and flee.
Solutions in Search of Problems
The fundamental point is this: It is wildly irresponsible to tell anyone they can defend themselves simply by buying a gadget. To defend yourself successfully against an aggressive attacker — one likely to be larger and stronger than you, who gets to pick the time and place for the encounter — requires training. It requires practice. It requires a specific mindset that can only be developed through training and practice. Almost everyone reading this would agree that you can’t just buy a gun and check the box that says you’re covered if you’re assaulted. You’ve got to get training to use that firearm properly.
So what’s different about buying a dodgy self-defense widget that’s pink or that is designed to make you a feminine wolverine? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. You still need that training… only now you’re armed with a false sense of confidence and a “weapon” that is poorly designed. That poor design is the direct result of placing what we presume to be feminine sensibilities before practical reality.
Both “Tiger Lady” and “Go Guarded” are bad ideas. They’re poorly conceived from the standpoint of practical application. They are marketed in a manner that is both irresponsible and unrealistic. Even a trained individual would have problems using these tools to good effect (although having them would be preferable to having nothing, I suppose). Yet both products make it clear that they are selling to anyone but a trained audience.
These are talismans designed to convey a false sense of preparedness. They are essentially self-defense jewelry for soccer moms. They are not serious self-defense tools and should not be advocated as such.
Ha. Let me guess. You’re a white, middle aged privileged man telling women what we should be doing. What a joke!
If it’s “privilege” to stop you from getting raped or killed through your own ignorance, then yes, I’m “privileged.”
Cringe comment. According to your logic, I should never listen to what a woman tells me to do because I’m a man. I guess I should forget everything my mother and grandmother ever taught me then? I’m certain you’d like that, won’t you?
Nice job demonstrating your intelligence or lack thereof, “minority”.
@Minority
Did you just assume his gender?
Speaking of Google, I tried looking up “Woman stops attacker with self defense gadget”. I got no hits. Nothing. I did get a lot of articles talking about self defense lessons and boxing as being credited with helping to fight off a woman’s attackers, but those take time, effort, and self discipline.
We just don’t want to take classes ? That’s the only reasoning you could come up with? Dude some of us can’t. Leave it up to a middle aged white male to criticize women for the methods they use. We put our keys between our knuckles every time we leave somewhere alone, this is the same thing. And one woman I know was able to stun her attacker with her keys to give her a chance to run. No training. We are not stupid. We have reflexes and have just as much fight/flight response as a man. Training is great. We should all do it if we are able, but you are tone deaf af if you really think women don’t go because they don’t wanna
Most women simply don’t want to. In all the martial arts classes I’ve ever seen, women were a minority for a reason. The overwhelming majority of women don’t take self-defense seriously.
Don’t put your keys between your fingers. It’s a very bad technique. If you must use a key, hold a large key in the same grip you’d use to start your car. Jab and poke with that.
Probably because women are so busy taking care of the kids in addition to working full time jobs, running errands, grocery shopping, cleaning the fact that we even have time to work out is astonishing. Maybe when men start helping out more we will have time to add self-defense classes to our to-do list.
Or maybe in MEN’S free time they can go around educating other men on respecting women and building a culture where we don’t have to worry about getting raped or killed.
This article was stupid and a waste of time to read.
And hold the keys between you knuckles gives you a solid base to slam it into a person whereas if you hold it as if you’re starting a car that requires sole strength in your thumb and pointer. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
While I’m not in disagreement with anything you’ve written, you actually make the case for these gadgets toward the end of your article. “(although having them would be preferable to having nothing, I suppose)”. That’s what this is about. My wife isn’t going to spend time training in self defense. She wants to run in her spare time, not train for an event that probably won’t happen to her. She’s not going to be riskier wearing it. She’s not going to make poor decisions in a false sense of security. BUT, if she can effortlessly wear something that MAY help her thwart an attacker, why not? Like you said, it’s better than nothing.
Phil, I live in a neighborhood where women are now being attacked at random and raped almost daily. I am an avid runner with one single hour per day to do anything I want. I choose to run during this time. Though I *really want to* I can’t in my wildest dreams afford self-defense classes, boxing, or a gym membership of any kind. I run because it’s free. So, what do you suggest someone like do? This isn’t a rhetorical question; I genuinely want to know what you suggest for a woman who lives paycheck to paycheck. Thanks.
I would recommend you carry a knife, assuming it’s legal for you to do so, and that you get some rudimentary training in its use. Your best bet would be to network with people in your area who might be able to show you the basics and who would be willing to do so at no cost to you. I know if someone asked me that question in my neighborhood, I’d be happy to impart the basics.
Reviewing self-defense aids that you’ve never even held seems a bit irresponsible. As someone who has had some (introductory only) self-defense training AND uses Go Guarded, I can say that I’m a fan of the little finger knife. It’s made entirely of plastic but can gouge like crazy and makes me feel more confident when running.
You’ve put your finger on the problem, and you are the very person being done a misservice by these products. It makes you “feel” confident, yet you have almost no training and certainly no experience trying to deploy it under stress while being attacked. You don’t “use” Go Guarded. You carry Go Guarded to feel better about the world. It’s a dangerously false sense of security.
I’m probably going to be the only person to agree with you. Just so everyone knows I’m 5’2” woman that began running about 8 years ago. I’ve had a few situations that made me uncomfortable during runs. I tried keeping a knife with me but didn’t have luck finding a carry method that kept it quickly accessible. About 2 years ago I purchased a GoGuarded. I put that on and felt like well it’s something. I had some life circumstances change a little over a year ago and haven’t run much. I did however start taking a kickboxing class at a local BJJ school. About a month ago I started running again, out of habit I put on my GoGuarded ring. Somewhere along my run I realized if I threw a proper punch it would do zero good and actually might cut me. There is a big difference between feeling like you can protect yourself with something and actually being able too. The way you would have to “punch” with that wouldn’t produce much force and is very awkward and unnatural even if you aren’t trained. Now I’m still very much a beginner but I know enough that it’s no longer something I take with me. I would prefer some type of “brass knuckles” or something that would protect my knuckles if I ever had to throw a punch. They are legal where I live out state recently changed the law. Thanks for an honest article
I’m probably going to be the only person to agree with you. Just so everyone knows I’m 5’2” woman that began running about 8 years ago. I’ve had a few situations that made me uncomfortable during runs. I tried keeping a knife with me but didn’t have luck finding a carry method that kept it quickly accessible. About 2 years ago I purchased a GoGuarded. I put that on and felt like well it’s something. I had some life circumstances change a little over a year ago and haven’t run much. I did however start taking a kickboxing class at a local BJJ school. About a month ago I started running again, out of habit I put on my GoGuarded ring. Somewhere along my run I realized if I threw a proper punch it would do zero good and actually might cut me. There is a big difference between feeling like you can protect yourself with something and actually being able too. The way you would have to “punch” with that wouldn’t produce much force and is very awkward and unnatural even if you aren’t trained. Now I’m still very much a beginner but I know enough that it’s no longer something I take with me. I would prefer some type of “brass knuckles” or something that would protect my knuckles if I ever had to throw a punch. They are legal where I live out state recently changed the law. Thanks for an honest article
Hey Phil,
I’m new to this site. I’m a 35-year-old, single, 5’5″, 150 lbs. Black woman. I’m moderately in shape, love aggressive sports like Crossfit and MMA, but I can rarely afford to practice them consistently.
To support your point, back in grad. school, I took a “Self Defense” class. The teacher was an amazing female police officer. The entire class consisted of women who were scared to punch the bag (except me). I’m not exaggerating and it still baffles me. I don’t understand how anyone can punch a human, if they can’t punch a bag. They wasted a full semester and tuition refusing to put any force behind a strike.
The next semester, I took a Martial Arts class. I was one of two women in a class full of men and we all loved to hear the bag pop. It was a completely different experience.
I still don’t consider myself trained and I’m currently saving money for my second round of MMA classes. Still, I know enough to see that the mentality you’re talking about is REAL. People need to understand that an unprepared woman with a gadget is still an unprepared woman.
I also came across the Tiger Lady and Go Guarded, while looking for a jogging aid. I’ve never held them, but they look and sound completely illogical. For the Go Guarded, who punches with that part of the fist? Whoever it is is clearly unprepared and likely to injure themselves. For the Tiger Lady, I’ll never spend time, money, or effort with the single goal of scratching an attacker. If someone is attacking me, they need to leave with more than just scratch marks. How weird and irresponsible to make a product like that.
I’m still looking for an jogging aid. I don’t want spray or a taser or something that’s too big in my hands. For anyone else who is looking, I found a bra knife call the Booby Trap. lol. It’s handsfree and accessible from most grappling positions, but it can get expensive if you want several bras.
I think I’m going to get the Mini Metal Brutus Bulldog. It’s a Black Cat keychain with a knife that flips out. It would be specifically for jogging, so I don’t like that it would be noticeable in my fists. I’d also like if it were secured around my wrist or in a glove. But so far, I think it’s the best for my skill level. Maybe I’ll make some alterations, when it arrives.
Thanks for this article, Phil.
as a old white guy MAA guy my vote for female joggers would be a Kubotan keychain and some basic instruction in developing a self defense mentality, Situational awareness, some basic Kubotan technics etc
You have to love that the nutters criticizing your advice say nothing meaningful about your knowledge, experience, or argument, instead they pull out identity politics. You are a middle age white male, so why would your opinion count, regardless of your credentials. Leftist/democrat/liberal/commies are a disease, lets hope for the best, the loonies never learn to fight, they will likely misuse it in their vile, deluded, ignorant, lie filled quest to push the agenda. Please do not help anyone like them.
I have years of martial arts training because I find it satisfying and not because I think women have a responsibility to learn defense skills. However, it was my situational awareness combined with a gadget that saved my neck. I noticed a suspicious character lurking in the shadows on the only path available between where the train let me off and “civilization”. I paused, looked directly at the alleged would-be assailant, held up my bright yellow can of mace, and watched him slink off, presumably in search of a softer target. He was bigger than me and physics dictates that no amount of training would have saved me if he happened to also be faster than me. Women are largely considered soft targets, so staying aware and making yourself a hard target is the best advice I ever received from my police officer friends.