Anna Holmes

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On the first day of self-defense class, I learn to say “no.”
We’re in a Southern California martial-arts studio not far from an In-N-Out Burger. The space smells faintly of cooked meat. I’m one of six students, all women: four nurses, one flight attendant, and me. In this introductory session, we’re supposed to get a taste of what it means to protect ourselves—and, if necessary, to fight back.

Please don’t judge me, but in March 2020, when I moved across the country, I got rid of six boxes of books, including many classic works of literature and nonfiction. Gone were titles by Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey—I’d rather reread Pride and Prejudice) and Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities—plain old disinterest). Moby-Dick went (I’d tried for years, and failed). So did Joan Didion’s Political Fictions and Robert Caro’s The Power Broker (just never got around to them).

In 1926, a widely respected Dutch gynecologist named Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde published a manual whose aim was to explain the vital role of sex in marriage. “What husband and wife who love one another seek to achieve in their most intimate bodily communion,” he wrote, is “a means of expression that makes them One.” The book, Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique, was addressed mostly to men—and became a best seller.