I (21f) am 5’5" and skinny. I recently attended a self-defense class, and there I was tought how to use a pocket knife. And as I have some male friends 6’5"+ tall, I thought that that height actually makes their belly particularly vulnerable in case of a fight (compared to a short guy/girl):
- a short person’s shoulder height is around the same level as the the tall person’s belly making it easier to stab/hit;
- a tall guy’s belly is proportionally a larger target.
And in general, if a 6’5"+ guy stands in front of me with his stomach released (even if he has just a bit of a belly) it feels like having an exposed, large and squishy punching/stabbing bag right in front of me, into which, if needed, I can easily harshly and deeply plunge anything straight away.
I also practice historical fencing (rapier) and most of the times I stab tall opponents into the belly - my favorite thrusts are ducking counterattacks when I duck while they attack, go low and impale a tall guy’s unprotected belly right onto my rapier.
Okay OP. Okay. I’m sure you’ll absolutely devastate someone by trying to slash at their jacket. Lol.
As someone else who is short and skinny, this is a very dangerous assumption. I’ve trained in judo, karate, and wrestling, and gotten in a couple actual fights, so have some experience here. In a real fight for your life being shorter is a disadvantage, even more so if you have average length arms for your height. It’s possible to overcome that disadvantage if you are more skilled than the opponent, but assuming equal skill you are likely to lose.
In an actual fight, going for a gut stab with a knife is one of the worst options you have. It means you are absolutely within grapple range, have done almost nothing to hinder their mobility, and even if it is eventually fatal, it often takes a very long time to die from a gut wound. You would be much better either going for a hit that would instantly kill them, or aiming for somewhere that would hinder their mobility enough for you to escape.
Also, in the real world it doesn’t work like fencing, no one is going to break the fight up as soon as you score a hit. If you want to actually prepare for a fight you should try out a sport that doesn’t break on point scoring. In general boxing, MMA, or wrestling would be a better option to prepare for a real fight that doesn’t get broken up.
Are you the same person as BeReady77? Are you a tall man or a short woman?
You clearly enjoy writing and reading about this topic, but your approach seems disingenuous.
Counterpoint: ow oof my belly ouch
Haha, exactly
Are you a tall guy yourself?
Fencing is an outmoded form of combat. You will never defend yourself with a rapier, against an assailant with a rapier. It’s completely irrelevant to a discussion about self-defense.
Knives are bad weapons for self-defense. Particularly for a smaller or weaker person. To use one, you first have to get within reach of your opponent. Pulling a knife can escalate a robbery or rape attempt into a murder attempt. Many fatal wounds are not immediately incapacitating, or particularly painful. Pepper spray, running away, or a gun, are far more effective.
You should not carry a knife for self-defense. They’re great to have for general utility, and if you find yourself already grappling with someone that you know is attempting to kill you, a knife could be useful as a weapon. But only then, as a last resort. Don’t make the mistake in believing a knife will protect you from a robber or a rapist. It will not.
What about a greatsword?
Well, you’ll get arrested for carrying one in most places, since they’re not exactly concealable, and getting the sheath off of one takes far more time than pulling a gun from concealment and doing a ‘failure to stop’, AKA Mozambique drill. Also, you have a limited effective range; if someone is inside about 3’, you can’t use the sword effectively, and would need to drop your sword and switch to your rondel.
They’re really only effective if your opponent is riding a horse, or is a pike phalanx.
A lot of states simple require ‘single edged’
Theres also an interesting trend of states knife regulations being ruled in violation of the 2A. With the current tests being Heller and Bruen - the ban must have historical precedence AND the banned knives must be both especially dangerous and unusual
For instance, Massachusetts had its ban on switchblades overturned ib 2024 as unconstitutional, with the state supreme court finding there was not historical support for the law, and they could not be considered uncommon because they aren’t.
FWIW, merely waking around with a sheathed sword may very well be both perfectly legal and protected by your jurisdiction’s personal liberty laws.
https://legalclarity.org/are-swords-illegal-to-own-or-carry-in-the-us/
https://legalclarity.org/is-it-legal-to-carry-a-sword-in-new-york/
I know someone who walked through the streets of an upstate NY city wearing a sheathed sword. They were entirely in their rights, same as if they were carrying an unconcealed rifle. But, also just as with the rifle, they couldn’t take the bus and many stores refused entrance.
(And there’s a whole set of criminal offenses that they were suddenly applicable because they were in clear possession of a weapon.)
Asymmetry
Steel enters the fight,
One leaves in an ambulance,
The other; bodybag.
a haiku of approximately normal length, written by Zozano
I disagree with your opinion. I think being the shorter person in a fight is generally a disadvantage.
All else equal, the person who is taller will likely have more mass, and thus have more muscle to utilize against you. They’ll also have a bigger wingspan, so their zone of threat is bigger.
When I used to study martial arts, my instructors always used to say “don’t bring anything to a street fight that you don’t want taken away and used against you”. Unless you have the element of surprise, and are using a knife that’s attached to your body, welding a knife against someone bigger may backfire. Being a master of de-escalation tends to have a better mortality rate ;)
I’d almost recommend getting in an actual fight so you can learn how different it is from your imagination.
Take a real self-defense class. In reality, your size is not enough advantage to make up for an opponent’s added strength and reach. Training and speed, however can bridge that gap somewhat, assuming your opponent is not on an equal footing, so to speak.
The reach is the big one…
Why is all you have posted just variations of this thread?
I just wanna hear more opinions
Why do you keep reposting this what’s wrong with you
I just wanna hear more opinions
No you have some kind of weird fetish or something and need to go away
No, its not a “weird fetish or something”. Just wondering, are you a tall guy? If so, then yep, acknowledging such vulnerability of your gut can be unpleasant, I can see that lol
I’m a short woman and there is something wrong with you
Careful; don’t be too short or you might also become a threat. It’s her advantage, being so short
AI will actually be good for occupying these creepy public role play weirdos
I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong about having a type of advantage due to size, but I will say in actual fights, unless you’re against someone the size of Halfþor Bjornsson, it won’t matter enough to protect you.
And when it comes to knife fights, one person dies on the spot, the other gets to die on the way to the hospital.
Someone once said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”
Keep attending self-defense classes and learn to kick assailant ass the proper way!
How about “Everyone has a plan until they get stabbed in the belly by a short sneaky girl”? 😉
I genuinely hope you’re never in a position to find out how badly this attitude can go in the real world.
You want to be confident and feel secure in yourself and I get that but you’re too confident and inexperienced.
Over confidence, inexperience and a bit of emotion is a quick way to end up dead.
Why you think I’m so inexperienced? I am a pretty good fencer. Yep, I have never been in a real street fight. But at least I have a skill of fighting with a thrusting blade. So, if I get attacked by a guy who has no such skill (which would very likely be the case), why you think I’ll have disadvantage?
Are you a tall guy yourself? If so, lets be honest: you just can’t acknowledge the fact that a short girl like me can actually disembowel a bigger and taller guy when being attacked.
I’ve been in street fights, bar brawls, boxing rings, mma cages, ice hockey brawls (my favourite), even tried out fencing and HEMA out and you don’t come across as someone with experience and you just admitted as much.
Do you think someone is going to swagger up to you and announce they’re attacking you? Are you going to pull your knife on every man that approaches? Oh you’ll only do it for the scary looking guys? Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t look real scary did he now.
There’s a solid chance you won’t even manage to draw your knife if genuinely attacked.
A few things to consider.
- Where are you going to keep it?
- How long does it take to pull out?
- Is it in a purse that an assailant may be targetting for theft?
- On your person where its more easily visible and detected by law enforcement?
- If carrying a knife is legal… you’re probably somewhere where carrying a gun is legal. Why bother with a knife if thats the case?
And on the legality side if carrying knives and guns is legal… WTF are you going to do when you pull your little pocket knife out and someone ventilates you with .45?
you just can’t acknowledge the fact that a short girl like me can actually disembowel a bigger and taller guy when being attacked.
I once had to get a steak knife off a toddler to stop them taking their own eye out and didn’t come away unscathed, so sure, you’re probably mildly more dangerous than a toddler.
The toddler was fine btw.
Knives are dangerous, potentially illegal to carry and adding a knife to a situation is very likely to escalate it, and if you’ve got time to draw a knife you’ve got time to run and/or get help.
You sound insecure and I hope you can sort that out.
Do you think someone is going to swagger up to you and announce they’re attacking you? Are you going to pull your knife on every man that approaches? Oh you’ll only do it for the scary looking guys? Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t look real scary did he now.
Tbf she’d be safe from Ol’ Jeff, you or I might have to worry more about him than she would. Bundy OTOH…
Also oddly it’s not usually strangers killing women, men are actually more likely to be killed by a stranger than women, women (out of those murdered of course as murder at all is fairly uncommon) are usually killed by people they know.
In addition, check out ShivWorks Instagram page. They use videos of real fights to show just how fast shit starts, ends, and how badly things go. Fights and assaults usually start with someone sucker-punching someone, not with people squaring up.
Are you just going to get a rapier around with you everywhere you go and fight with one arm behind your back? The only skills you’re traveling are the fitness you’ve gained from training, which is less than that if a runner.
I’m not a particularly tall guy, around 6’. I wrestled during my youth and completed against guys that were 5’ tall and others that were 6’5"+. Both heights had advantages and flaws, but universally, if they were well trained, their height was irrelevant to how skilled they were. Agility is something that can be learned and isn’t a unique trait that only you possess and that tall guys don’t.
I can say with absolute certainty that if a guy, tall or short, wanted to attack you, they could close the gap in the amount of time it would take you to get out, open, and ready yourself with a knife. Maybe if they were 100 yards away and yelled that they were going to attack you you’d have a chance.
Also, what does being sneaky mean in a fight? If you’re actively in a fight, you aren’t sneaking around. I think one mistake your making is that there are rules in a fight. There aren’t. Let’s say you have a knife with a 3" blade out and ready to go. If I bullrush you and at the last moment jump up and aim a double leg drop kick at your chest, your just hoping to make contact because the fight is over if you don’t end me right there.
why you think I’ll have disadvantage?
Physics is why.
How does you leaning forward with a short knife counter a 2m tall dude kicking you?
Why you think I’m so inexperienced?
Because the average 80 year old man can overpower the average 21 year old woman.
Crazy graph but I’ll attest to it. The difference in pure strength is just massive. We wrestled a lot in the army and our unit had women as well. One of whom had taken taekwondo most of her life. None of them stood a chance against me, and I don’t lift and had spent the previous months smoking weed and drinking beer and watching movies. Still, there was absolutely no contest. Even the girls about my height ans weight had no chance. They had more chance than the smaller ones, but still, it was below what most of the shorter dudes could give. I’d say perhaps one of the smaller guys might have lost a bout to one of the women, can’t recall, but the point is it was just ridiculously clear how much testosterone makes a difference, even without training or even when women have trained.
And this is not me saying I can beat all women in wrestling, far from it, I wouldn’t stand a chance against even an amateur hobbyist wrestler, but we had no-one who actually wrestled. Well except for one guy, who literally was a semi-pro, had ranked high in European wrestling or something. Dude could toss one of those massive medicine balls to the ceiling of the gym when I got it barely a fifth of the way there or something. He wasn’t made to wrestle with the women. Or much anyone. Actually I think the lieutenant made him coach a little iirc.
Anyways. Agree with your comment, thanks for the neat graph.
sneaky
Are you thinking of defending yourself, or murdering someone unsuspecting?
You nead to be sneaky, agile to defend yourself succesfully, especially given my short height
You need to ask the smallest guy you know to wrestle with you. Explicitly tell him that you don’t want him to hold back his strength.
If you want to get fancy with it, give him a white shirt to wear, and have an uncapped felt tip marker in your hand. See how many stabs you can get in before he’s completely overpowered you, which he certainly will.
That’s interesting. Do you manage to land those hits consistently once the element of surprise is gone? I also practice historical fencing (but I mostly do arming sword and langes messer, though I’ve occasionally dabbled with rapier), and my experience has been that taller people usually have the reach advantage.
Ducking and thrusting straight ahead of you makes basic geometry work in your favour for compensating the reach disadvantage (your arm has a 90° angle giving you maximum range), but it also massively exposes your head of your first hit doesn’t land, and prevents you from using footwork for a few seconds. Once your opponent’s has figured out your strategy it would seem like he would just have to stay a bit out of reach and counter-attack/riposte while you recover from your ducking
Well, I’m pretty good at landing those ducking counterattacks into a tall opponent’s belly, even when the surprise element is kind of gone. The key issue here is to be quick, to duck lower under the opponent’s blade and to disengage quickly enough after I land that hit into the stomach. Such a kind of counterattack is called ‘passata soto’ by the way. I rarely get hit in the head when doing it.
Seems like maybe you’ve just been fencing novices? Based on my experience, that just doesn’t seem like it would be very effective against anyone who knows what they’re doing.
Since you impaled a tall guys unprotected belly. Prison when?/s Just kidding 🤡
Well, I guess you understand that I referred to training rapier - you cannot pierce your opponent’s stomach with it anyway. So its not literally “impaling” lol
I was reading this post and like 1/3 way through I thought you were gonna say something like" I am at the perfect height to just slice off their balls, the ultimate vulnerability."
Yep, thats true as well, lol
You might get in an attack, but while they bleed out, you’re gonna be stomped on like the mushrooms on a dewy morning walk to the bus stop.
You might have well said you have an advantage because the bigger they are the harder they fall.
