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A gentleman's cane used to be a bludgeon in addition to being a fashion accessory.

Video games are the furthest thing from physical defense. They're amusement. Do you really think that playing video games leads to increased skill and confidence when engaging in a fistfight in the street?

In schools in the US, children are punished for defending themselves in a fight. There is a vanishingly small percentage of people who have the practical experience to be comfortable physically battering a stranger on the street corner to a reasonable degree.

I imagine that description will evoke the thought in your head that there is no reasonable degree, that physical violence isn't the answer, and that the right thing to do in a situation where you're physically accosted is to leave the area or call for security. Yep. That's what we're talking about. There's an amount of security provided by a man who's comfortable slapping another man in the head because the other man is being aggressive, if only because that comfort is communicated in non-verbal ways which subsequently make it unnecessary.



> In schools in the US, children are punished for defending themselves in a fight.

Not only in the US. In France, I had troubles in middle school because I reacted physically to bullying.




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