Taking advantage of a disadvantage

[BigFan5o]

It's because it's a male-dominated field. There's not a police department out there that has more females than men, or even close. My local department has one female on it out of about thirty officers.

This is a male-dominated field you are correct. But, be careful when you make absolute statements like the one in bold above. My old explorer post's (there for 6 years) had 15 officers, and 7 of which were females, so 8 were males. Out of those 7 females 2 of them were in command staff positions, and one was a detective. Just be careful when you make blanket statements like "no department ANYWHERE has a female to male ratio that is close, because a department somewhere does.

[DeltaV]

I know I'm at a disadvantage by being female because departments only look for a certain number of females at a time.

I didn't address this in my post about the physical abilities, however this statement is completely incorrect. To think that there is some sort of quota for females and only a small number of females will be hired is simply bogus. Police work is a male dominated field because it mainly attracts males. The vast majority of the applicants are males, which means the vast majority of the new hires will be male. It is usually easier to get hired as a female as long as you are well qualified simply because most departments want to hire as many females as possible for the sake of diversity.

Since there are less female applicants, there will be far less hired. When I went through the testing process I could only count a handful of female applicants while there were dozens of males. When you factor in that many applicants won't pass the testing process for various reasons, it's easy to see why there are fewer females than males.

There are also departments that have even less females because of their testing processes. Many females do not have the upper body strength that males have, so agencies that require their applicants to scale a six foot wall during or complete pull-ups will lose more females during the testing process. That's just the way it is.

[Samuel]

Hey, I've lost, I never said I hadn't. I've left the dojo with bruises and scrapes and a hell of a lot of rug burn, but I feel like I can survive most situations. Ten guys with guns and knives, no, of course not, but if someone, a single someone, jumps at me, I feel like I can take care of myself and while I might get scraped, beaten, and broken, I feel like I have the skills to at least crawl away from the situation with my life. That being said, I'm a student for life, I know I can always be better. I strive for perfection even though it is the unattainable goal because then I'm always improving. To me, in fighting, being able to hold your own means you got away from the fight with your heart still beating instead of in a body bag, so I may have a different interpretation of what that means than you do.

I'm a big believer in what you said above (bolded) and I'm glad you feel the same way.

RE: "hold my own" - I guess it comes down to what that phrase means to different people. To me, "always been able to hold my own" means that you have never lost - now you may not have always won but you've always been able to give as good as you got. I could never say that and, in my experience, I don't know of anyone with substantial experience who could legitimately claim that.

That being said, your mindset is correct - you ARE going to win Every fight, you ARE going to go home Every night.

Ideally, I/we will do all my/our losing during Training...