Knives: everyday carry for women

[eller]

So, um, someone not on this site asked me a very interesting question, and because I believe in not wasting a carefully typed text, I'm also posting my answer here. The question was...

Do you recommend everyday carry (of knives) for women?

Sure, if reasonably possible. That is, I firmly believe wearing a knife is generally a good idea, and it’s entirely gender-independent (though the choice of knife is going to depend on biological sex, among other factors). The main purposes of a knife are food preparation, craft and repair work, and everybody should be able to do these things. Carrying a sharp tool is just practical. [Legal note: there are some types of knives that fall under the weapon law, and some situations and places in which carrying any kind of blade is inappropriate and/or illegal. Of course, I recommend knowing and keeping the laws in your area.]

Personally, I don’t wear knives literally every day (not least because, when I’m in the city, there are so many ‘no-knife’ zones scattered everywhere that finding a legal way of getting from A to B without having to cross one can be difficult), but I do so when it's possible. I also definitely wear knives when in the countryside (with bonus points for field trips) and when camping, because not having a knife can be dangerous. Fortunately (in this aspect at least), my hands are so small that all the knives I can reasonably use have blade lengths well below 12cm, which would be the German legal threshold for weapons, meaning that my knives are all legally tools. (There are some other ‘weapon criteria’, but, well, I don’t own anything specifically ‘tactical’, I don’t hunt, and of course I stay the fuck away from illegal weapons anyway, so it’s not an issue.)

Also, on the purely philosophical level, a knife is the most intrinsically human object that exists. I mean, if you ask people what sentience means, sooner or later someone is going to mention the ability to use tools. The knife (or, if we go far enough back in history, the rock with the sharp edge) is the tool that renders humans able to interact with their environment on a level that’s not purely reactive. As such, everyone should have the opportunity to use a knife. I also believe children should learn this skill as soon as reasonably and somewhat safely possible, not just for improving hand-eye coordination but also for the mental health aspect of it. (A knife does so much for connecting a person to their surroundings! I’m not going to discuss the full philosophical, cultural, and spiritual impact of what it means to wear a knife – that would have to be a lengthy and likely quite boring wall of text – but the philosophical purpose of knives goes beyond making sandwiches.) You only learn a skill when you practice it regularly, so, sure, having and regularly using a knife is a good idea.

However, if we’re talking about the specifically American interpretation of ‘everyday carry’, with the idea of having a knife for self-defense: NOPE. That’s a terrible idea. Knives are not defensive weapons. If you get robbed in the street, a) you won’t have the time to take out your knife, and b) it’s a lot safer to just hand over your money. [Technical note: yes, I know there’s a radius within which a knife has better winning chances than a gun, something like 6-7m for trained men and 5-6m for trained women, but also, there’s still a pretty high chance of dying, so, in practice anyone sane is going to hand over their money anyway unless they know for sure the other person is planning to kill them.] If anything, wearing a knife openly increases your risk of being shot if the would-be robber doesn’t want to take the risk of you jumping them. It’s just stupid all around. DON’T DO IT.

Because the question was specifically about women wearing knives: umm. Of course, I’m aware that some people will hand pocketknives to young boys but not to young girls. THAT practice is shitty and sexist. I believe in equal opportunities. (I don’t believe in pocketknives because I’m firmly a fixed-blade girl, and I don’t believe in mass-produced factory knives because those suck, but that’s another matter entirely.) However, there’s no woman-specific knife use. As far as I’m concerned, that’s really a unisex thing.

Comments

[amberdreams]

Apart from when camping, I can honestly say the number of occasions I've thought - damn, I wish I had a knife right now for xyz is probably less than twice, if ever. I guess I just don't do stuff that needs sharp edges. I suppose I could use one for sharpening my pencils if I forgot my pencil sharpener?

[castiron]

Yeah, I'm trying to think of situations where I've thought "I wish I were carrying a knife!", and none are coming to mind. But I live in a city, so the only place I use knives is when preparing food at home.

On the other hand, maybe I don't miss the knife because I've never used one enough to know where it'd work better than the tools I do use. (Today: trimming the hackberry saplings growing along the fence. Would a knife be easier to use than the secateurs? I don't know; I've never tried using a knife for the pupose. The secateurs work fine, but maybe a knife would work better, or would make it easier to trim both the hackberry saplings and the tall grass with one tool.)

[amberdreams]

Yeah, generally when I'm wielding a sharp implement it's either cooking or gardening.

[castiron]

I'll use something sharp for many fibercrafts, but that sharp thing is scissors. Though back in the Permian when I still did quilting I used a rotary cutter; I'm not sure whether a regular very-well-sharpened knife blade would work equally well for the purpose, but again, I've never tried it!

The one other time I find myself wishing for a cutting tool is for emergency fingernail care, but if it's feasible to use a knife for that, I'd want to be very skilled before I tried to use one to trim a hangnail or torn bit of fingernail, especially on my dominant hand.

[eller]

I suppose some things are different for geoscientists - it's a lifestyle. ;) But also, I find myself using sharp things all the time. Maybe it's, like, the more you grow up with tool use, the more it's a part of everyday life?

Knife use in the field:
- food preparation
- all the typical uses while camping
- careful digging / scraping of soil
- poking at things I don't want to touch with my bare hands
- navigation / measuring of distances (totally underrated knife use, but essential in field geology)
- because I'm whimsical: the occasional reed flute for the fun of it

Knife use around the house:
- house repairs
- opening my mail
- food preparation
- eating
- emergency gardening, plant surgery (I have orchids LOL)
- in the winter: de-icing the windows

Knife use in the workshop:
- woodworking, whittling
- emergency zither repairs
- papercutting, other papercrafts

...um, basically, I use knives a lot. I also use scissors (for fabric and for fingernail care) and a pencil sharpener (because it's convenient).

[yhlee]

The details are a little different for me but this is basically my list. I would love to hear more about navigation uses of the knife though!

[eller]

...it's mostly triangulation to determine distances, by moving the knife back and forth and see how the object size changes in relation to the knife? XD Not all that complicated if you understand basic geometry - but, sure, one of these days I can make a whole post about navigation with knives. :D

Some factory-made knives (like, say, this one, though I don't own that one and have no idea if it's any good) even have a ruler / measuring thingy printed on the blade - that's not just for measuring small objects (though it can be used for that) but also a landscape-measuring aid.

It's, of course, entirely possible to use a knife without markings, though I will say, distance-measuring is one of the reasons I like straight-back blades. (Curves just make everything complicated.)

[yhlee]

Aha! I figured it had to do with trigonometry. And yeah, I could see where one would want a straight-back blade for that purpose!

[jjhunter]

Thanks for sharing your writeup! I haven't done much with larger knives outside of kitchen stuff, but I would be interested in learning more; hobbies like whittling have always appealed to me, just haven't had the opportunity to find someone to teach me yet.

Personally, I love having a swiss army knife keychain attachment for everyday carry and a larger multi-inch one for home tasks (small knives and scissors are very useful for a number of things!), but for general feeling prepared / able to deal with a range of situations, keeping up with parkour has felt more immediately usable and versatile than carrying an edged weapon for personal defense.

Being fit enough to run away, being able to nimbly evade and vault obstacles that most people would have trouble with - these feel more realistically reliable than trying to physically harm someone bad enough to make them stop trying to harm me. Also has the everyday benefit of helping me avoid tripping and skinning my knees on the regular (which used to happen to me several times a year, and now barely ever).

[eller]

Yeah, a knife for self-defense is simply not feasible, being fit and running away sounds much saner. XD If we're going to consider knives as edged weapons, they are attack weapons only (not least because the attacked person will usually not see it coming and have no opportunity to defend themself in the first place), and, well, I'm not planning to stab anyone. XDD

I don't do pocketknives / multitools at all, fixed blades only; I'm a bit of a knife nerd, and because my main uses for knives are a) field use (I'm a geoscientist) and b) woodworking / home repairs / papercraft, I typically go for the puukko type, which is designed and optimized exactly for those needs. :)

[jjhunter]

I just looked up puukko knives online, and am now having very intense knife envy. I really want one! Those look so much more everyday usable than the American military-ish switchblade ones I've seen.

[eller]

I just realized that most of my knife nerdery (and I do a lot of knife nerdery) on here is access-locked but I just gave you access. Under the tag 'knives', I write about some really good knives, some really bad knives (I enjoy shitty knives), knife history, knife modification and whatnot. Maybe some of that info will be useful to you. https://eller.dreamwidth.org/tag/knives

[jjhunter]

Eeeeee, thank you so much! I will look forward to diving in.

[yhlee]

Huh! I taught myself whittling in childhood sort of the way one does in that time and place, which was that I was instructed in basic knife safety (mostly "don't point it threateningly at other people, keep it sharp because a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one, cut away from yourself"). For simple whittling all you really need is "when in doubt, go slow, because you can always take away material but you can't put it back." If you're trying to whittle something in a specific useful shape or you're doing serious woodworking that's different, but otherwise it's "pick up a knife and a fun expendable piece of wood, carve away at it." :3

[jjhunter]

[insert starry-eyed JJ here]

Ooooo, is there any particular type of wood you would recommend starting with? You are making me realize I may have been overthinking how to get started here - thank you!

[yhlee]

I am very much in the amateur/hobbyist end, but:

- pick some nice dry twigs with the bark still on them. To practice fine control, strip the bark off. Inevitably some random twigs are going to have rotted-out bits or weird bugs in them. This is totally normal but maybe don't commit your Michelangelo masterpiece to them. XD

- ETA: You know this already, but I had to be TOLD because I was like nine years old when I got my first pocket knife back in Texas: if you're "harvesting" stuff from people's private property, ASK FIRST. Rando dead twigs, probably okay. Living plants, people get mad about that. Also Texas is kind of not a great place to have that kind of misunderstanding even as a nine-year-old lolsob.

- I'm in the USA: basswood and balsa wood seem to be affordable and good for beginners - soft, even grain.

- There are books on whittling ideas - I sort of recommend getting them from the library rather than buying them (unless that makes you happy!). At the point where the book is wall-to-wall "Hey, did you know you could whittle a FISH SHAPE with a rectangular piece of wood? :D :D" (not a made-up example, unfortunately, although details changed to protect the guilty), I'm all "I don't need to pay you $25 to tell me that, thanks." XD It's another thing if the book has useful info on wood types and what they're good for or more advanced woodworking, but...yeah. XD

- The other thing is that in the USA, no one bats an eyelash at a folding knife that doesn't look like some kind of "tactical" "ninja wannabe" thing, but people will ABSOLUTELY lose their shit if you're carrying a fixed-blade knife like a puukko in public (say, at a café, or even a local city park) and you're not in a camping/outdoorsy context. This is, I gather, extremely dependent on local culture. So do check local laws on how you're allowed to carry around/transport knives if that's something you hope to do.

[jjhunter]

Oh nooooooo. I bet very recently living wood would also be harder to work with for whittling, no? They can be great for bendy purposes, but the sap mess is definitely a factor. (I did a fair amount of fun nonsense (read: homemade bows and arrows) with fresh-cut maple boughs from my folks trimming a maple hedge where I lived as a kid in New England.)

I haven't done anything with basswood before; familiar with balsa wood for crafting and plain never thought of shaping it with a knife, but that's definitely a non-intimidating place to start.

...my brain has taken the boring 'how to make a fish' book trap and jumped to 'what about making a prehistoric fish'. Brain, please. There's got to be a good intermediary project in the middle there to start learning basic techniques.

Sounds like it would be wise for me to check my local and state laws on fixed-blade knife carry! I am definitely drooling over puukko, and would hate to get myself in trouble if I acquire one and don't think about how that would look outside of home use.

[yhlee]

Yeah, I know about sap not just from junking up my pocket knives with green wood, but because I'm the dumbass who PUNCHED A PINE TREE out of curiosity in high school. Not only did the bark tear up my knuckles, the sap hurt like all get-out in the wound lolol.

My dad made me a homemade bow and arrows from an extremely out of control rose bush where we lived, and noted that "This is the wrong kind of wood for a bow," which I only realized decades later meant he had opinions/knowledge on what is the right kind of wood for a bow and where the heck did he pick this up? Did this use to be standard Korean boyhood knowledge?!

This may be peculiar to Louisiana but possibly also check city law as well. For example, Louisiana explicitly makes concealed blade carry perfectly legal in the state, and this includes weird switchblade type things, because Louisiana. HOWEVER. There are specific CITIES where it's illegal to concealed carry a knife (sorry, details escape me, I have a headache), and if you're in that city, that takes precedence over the state-wide law. I'm in one of those cities.

[jjhunter]

Huh; good to know re: city-specific laws also being a thing!

I am wincing SO HARD at the punched a pine tree ref. This is like wee!jj catching a bumblebee in her tiny hand out of curiosity, and getting that first bright sting of highly memorable pain that I've never forgotten since. Except sappy and full of extended regret (ow).

That sounds like excellent and very specific knowledge for your dad to have! Now I'm curious how rose wood bow would handle...

[yhlee]

I got stung by a wasp at the age of six or so, and I still remember that pain!

I used to catch bees, put them in a scavenged coke bottle with air holes and clover, and sell them door to door for a nickel. For some reason no one ever bought. XD It's very very easy (I once wowed my high school math class doing this to release a bee that had gotten in, they were so good for the rest of the period haha) BUT I also know that I am not allergic; obvs disrecommended if there's a possibility of allergy.

Wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets, OTOH, I don't mess with them, they're mean.

[havocthecat]

I Am Not A Lawyer This Is Not Legal Advice Just A Link: https://www.akti.org/state-knife-laws/

But it's useful to know, because some knives are definitely illegal to carry around or even own, depending on the state.

[yhlee]

Yep, I remember this coming up when my father-in-law went off-script and instead of buying me the nice, safe, very unremarkable legal-in-my-jurisdiction folding knife I'd asked for as a Christmas gift, decided to upgrade me to a knife that - FORTUNATELY it turned out not to be a switchblade, but it had some "waitasec did he buy me a SWITCHBLADE because it looked cooler" characteristics, and I had A Discussion about "hey be careful about this PLEASE, Father-in-Law" because switchblades ARE illegal to own in my jurisdiction. :wry: He meant well! But also I didn't want to have legal trouble around a knife! for Christmas!

[jjhunter]

That is a very helpful resource, thank you!

Skimming through that website more generally feels like I'm caching story seeds ("What is AKTI’s position on knife intellectual property?", "Counterfeit Knives: Be Safe. Not Sorry", etc.).

[havocthecat]

I do like pocketknives because I love the compactness of a folding blade, and it's harder for a pocketknife to come open and knock around in my purse. But I loved reading this entire post. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on knives and women carrying them. As a woman that thinks that carrying a knife is a useful thing to do regardless of whom you are or what gender you are.