“Do not interpret anything I say here to mean “don’t fight back.” I’m also not going to patronize you with half-truths or platitudes. This is ugly on many levels: the level of the incident and the level of social conditioning to “get along,” which can make it so much harder to decide not to be a victim. This means that if and when a woman chooses to fight, it must be a total effort. In many cases, there is no level of force that will simply discourage a male attacker. He must be incapacitated. This is my advice and I think this mindset is critical, but the actual statistics are less grim—many assailants do run away and do not escalate when they encounter unexpected resistance.”