What a Dangerous Woman Actually Is

This was inspired by the creation of the Fighting curriculum for The Dangerous Woman Society.

I’ve spent the last few weeks refining it; figuring out what I want to teach, why and if it has a place inside the curriculum.

Of the 4 pillars, this has been the most difficult to create simply because the scope is massive and there needs to be a mix of utility and fun. A barrel kick is no way near as effective as a jab, but it’s still fun to learn.

The process of putting this together got me thinking deeper about what a Dangerous Woman is. To many, it sounds like it could be a bad thing.

To me, in the world we live, it’s necessary, and I think most people would agree. Especially when they understand the definition…

Dangerous doesn’t mean reckless. It’s not about being aggressive, unpredictable, or difficult. It has nothing to do with threat or violence.

What Dangerous means is being capable, skilled and difficult to knock over.

A dangerous woman can have a bad day and still get a decent night sleep. She can make a decision with certainty rather than falling into catastrophic thinking. She can walk into a room where the pressure is high and think clearly. She can put her hands up and know what she’s doing with them. She can be hit, in the literal and metaphorical sense, and get back up. And the getting up costs her less each time because she’s trained for exactly that.

Notice that none of those are adjectives - they’re all something she can do, on a specific day, under observable conditions.

Almost everything sold to women right now is an adjective. Strong. Empowered. Limitless (« I've used that one myself). But it means nothing because it’s just a word with no substance underneath it.

A woman who’s told she’s already enough feels briefly better, and then goes back to the same body, the same nervous system, and the same evidence about her own reliability that she’s been quietly collecting for years. It’s the exact reason why I argue affirmations are bullshit.

Nobody in the Society gets told she’s dangerous. She gets there through increased capability. She’ll know she’s arrived, because she doesn’t have adjectives - she has skills.

Why does any of this matter?

I grew up watching The Pink Ranger, Xena and Buffy (somewhat self righteous and irritating if we’re honest). Women who were competent under pressure, kicked ass and never apologised for taking up space.

I don’t believe women are meant to be weak, vulnerable, domesticated slaves to a patriarchal society. We are not meant to be subservient to men or exist to fulfil anyone’s needs other than the ones we choose.

Women have fought hard to get to where we are, yet we still lack what men are so easily given, despite holding an enormous amount of the world together.

Many of society’s systems stay standing because somewhere there’s a woman absorbing the shortfall, usually without acknowledgement and while being told to shut up and be smaller about it.

Weakness is not our natural state. It’s an arrangement we were forced into. Women have been shut down, managed, silenced and kept useful. Across enough generations it starts to look like temperament - a desired way of being.

Softness got rebranded as nature. Fragility became a virtue and then, more recently, vulnerability became a wellness product.

I’m not going to argue about whether it’s right or true - I’m interested in the consequences:

What happens when a woman who was never trained to be difficult to knock over eventually gets knocked over?

How will she react? What will she believe about herself? What will she succumb to? What will she show the women around her who look to her to learn how to be?

That’s the part that matters. Not the fall. The conclusion she draws from it.

There’s a warrior in every woman - it’s primal and we all feel it somewhere inside our souls. But getting knocked down can have you question it.

Perhaps you decide the formidable version of you was a phase. So you stop committing to things because you’ve watched yourself abandon enough of them to have a case against continuing. You ignore the primal call and let society shape you into something you were never meant to be.

It’s all wrong - at least, in my opinion it is.

Being dangerous is the correction. Because the world is hostile and I think the consensus is that women have had enough. We’ve fought hard to get here and we must continue our evolution.

But that can only happen if woman can absorb a hit and stay standing. If we get to want things again. If we can take the risks - start the business, leave the thing, say the words.

Capability is what makes appetite affordable and results a reality.

That’s what the word Dangerous means to me.

It’s not posturing. It’s not thinking you’re invincible, having a bad attitude and go around picking fights. That’s not being Dangerous - that’s being a dick.

It’s the difference between a woman who is waiting to see whether she’ll cope and a woman who has stopped asking if she can.

So how do you become Dangerous?

I’ve surmised there are four pillars:

1 - Fundamentals.

Managing your capacity and keeping your nervous system on track. It’s having high performance habits that allow you to do all the stuff. It’s having your shit together in a way others envy. It all starts with Capacity - without that, the rest is irrelevant.

2. Fitness.

Programmed and periodised by season rather than run off a template. Built in recovery rhythms, supplements and everything in between customised to you.

3. Fighting.

The thing that started this long winded essay…

I teach you personally; from striking and footwork through to the internal disciplines. A full curriculum, level by level.

4. Frequency.

A printed newsletter and an instrument that arrive by post four times a year. Some things shouldn’t be a PDF - they should be held and felt.

Bronze is our marker.

A coin.

I chose bronze because bronze is forged. It doesn’t occur; it’s made, under heat and out of things that already existed but could be forged into something better. And it can’t be bought - you earn it.

I chose these pillars because I couldn’t find one place that held all four at once. Gyms train the body and ignore the nervous system. Life Coaches work the mind and never ask what you can physically do. Martial arts schools teach the skill and assume capacity.

Each one is right about its quarter and useless about the rest, and a woman who’s fading doesn’t need a quarter of an answer - she needs the whole fucking thing.

So that’s why The Dangerous Woman Society exists.