[Kiva]

Finally, the next few posts will deal specifically with female fight stories. Next time, we’ll talk about fight action sequences. After that, we’ll discuss weaving eroticism into your story (maybe, LOL).

The present topic is choosing a style and reason for the fight. I will not include sexfights/titfights in this post as I see them as separate topics. I will really need a lot of help with this one. Everyone is invited to contribute. You need not be a writer.

Occasionally, I hear from a member asking me to help with ideas for a story. The hopeful author has characters and a fight in mind but struggles with coming up with a way to get them into a conflict, then a fight which doesn’t seem silly or make the characters seem clinically insane. I tell them that their story does not need to be believable. Their goal is to make readers willing to suspend their disbelief. There’s a big difference.

REALITY VS. FANTASY

Imagine if I decided to write the most realistic catfight story ever, i.e. a story that matches a typical fight in the real world between two women who want to hurt each other. What would I use as source material? I am very adept at navigating search engines for peer-reviewed research data. So, I would first ask if there is actual data on women who get into physical fights. It turns out there is (kinda, sorta). Most of the data comes from law enforcement and correctional system data on women who commit aggressive and violent acts, including fighting. Such activity is associated with poverty, high crime neighborhoods, alcohol and substance abuse, mental health disorders, low education and victimization of childhood, domestic, and sexual abuse. Based on my experience in hospitals, this is definitely true.

Other data is even more disturbing. The CDC has been collecting data on physical fights in high schools since at least 1990s and separates it by boys and girls. Kids (including girls) who fight tend to have poor grades, anxiety, depression, suicide attempts and feeling of victimization.

It is not my purpose to send anyone on a guilt trip. My point is that this is rarely ever the reality we write about. We create worlds where the fighters are who we want them to be, and we want action that’s exciting and sexy, without the ugly psychosocial baggage. As Bob Ross would say, “Its your world. You can create anything you want.” (I sold my second oil painting!)

This brings us back to suspension of disbelief. Your story need not be realistic, although you might decide to include elements of realism. Or it may take place in a fantasy world inhabited by fairies and unicorns. Your aim is for readers to buy into your world and go for the ride.

CHOOSING A FIGHT STYLE

A visitor to FCF will quickly see that fights are categorized into styles (catfight, wrestling, boxing, MMA, sexfight/titfight, etc). You have probably already decided a style for your story. Here are a few thoughts.

What is a Catfight?
As I understand it, the traditional sense of the word “catfight” is a fight between two untrained women with little or no fighting experience or knowledge, instinctively employing tactics of hair pulling, scratching, or even biting. It seems to me that in recent years, the term has been broadened to include just about any kind of conflict between women, including organized sports. In the 1950s, the term “catfight” might have conjured up mental images of June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson, in their house dresses and aprons, rolling around digging their nails inro each other. Contrast with today, with women making large gains in traditional men’s roles (Did you know that half the U.S. graduating doctors are women?) and the fact that women’s combat sports are flourishing, female fighting can now mean a number of different things. As a writer you have a smorgasbord of styles from which to choose.

Choosing a Style
Some of the common styles that you will see in female fight fiction stories
Spontaneous hostile fight – perhaps the most common. A conflict arises between two women. The situation explodes and a fight ensues on site.
Arranged hostile fight – as above, except the situation doesn’t allow a fight on the spot (work, public place, etc.). The combatants agree on a specific place and time to settle it.
Spontaneous “friendly” fight – two women, often discussing wrestling or other form of fighting, have a friendly sparring match, which often turns unfriendly.
Arranged “friendly” fight – women or couples agree to meet in a gym, hotel, home, etc. for an encounter, with fetish overtones. They may know each other or have met on the internet. Often arranged by husbands who watch and are turned on by the spectacle. Can also become unfriendly quickly.
Semi-organized fight events – Think of apartment wrestling where women are recruited to compete against each other. Other variations could include a company that produces vids and live events. Clandestine secret societies, tournaments with lucrative prizes and underground clubs are other spin-offs.
Organized events – boxing, mma, etc.

Final thought:
As sinclairfan pointed out on an earlier post, your choice of fight style and action itself should reflect the background of the fighters. If it is the first fight for both women, I think a wild catfight is the default style as other styles require some training.

WHY ARE THEY FIGHTING?
For some writers (myself included), that can be the most difficult part of crafting your story. This is especially true if it is between two women who hate each other. One of the perks of FyreCracka’s catpin universe is that no reason is required, which allows us to focus on characters and plot. However, in most stories, there needs to be reasons and motivations for fighting.

Hostile Fight (spontaneous or arranged): Motivations
This is perhaps the most difficult since it requires a good amount of tension leading to the physical conflict. For this type of story to work, at least one party must feel she has been seriously wronged. You will notice there are popular tropes used repeatedly. A few of them are:
Wife vs mistress – probably most common. Usually doesn’t work for me. If a man cheats on me, he is not worth fighting for.
Wife vs. ex – Might work if the ex is psychotic, as in a typical Lifetime Movie Network (LMN) plot.
Coworkers – a woman is promoted by using nefarious tactics like lying about another coworker. A boss who awards a promotion to the winner of a fight? No thanks.
Bullying – office in the workplace, but can be in many different situations.
Neighbor conflicts – may involve kids (more below), gossip (below), land disputes, loud trashy neighbors, etc.

Inspirations From Real Life
Most of my stories are inspired by my real-life experience. I’m often asked if I ever saw a fight between two adult women. The answer is yes, but thankfully, only a few times. I will explain more below. The truth is fights between women who do not have the risk factories in the research studies I mention very rarely fight. However, I will say that women can be very aggressive and try to hurt each other in different ways. I have seen numerous occasions where friendships and family relationships were permanently ruined. I will list below the common situations that I have personally witnessed.

1.   Kids – Threatening another woman’s child is the quickest way to get any meek and mild female charge at you with her claws out. We are all mama bears when it comes to our kids. I suggest you do not write a story about a child being threatened. However, more common triggers are criticizing a woman’s parenting skills, talking about a child’s bad behavior. These are serious killers.
2.   Gossip – Huge. Very few things end friendships like finding out you were bad-mouthed by someone who was your friend.
3.   Social isolation – Dear friends, this is how women fight in real life. It begins early in girls and sadly continues into adulthood with some. It’s the practice of deliberately trying to end someone’s friendships with other people. It goes beyond gossip. It’s throwing a party and inviting everyone from her social group, but not her. Or planning events with her friends while excluding her. It’s subtle digs on social media that undermine her that only a few people will catch.
4.   Mistress – this is generally not much of a trigger of fights as you might expect. Yes, I’ve heard women say things like “I want to punch her in the face.” But most of the hurt is directed at the husband. Women do not say things like, “I will prove I have the better pussy,” unless they have serious self-image problems. But in fantasy, this is always a good fallback reason for a fight. But yes, I have seen affairs end marriage and friendships.
5.   Work – Bullying can be a serious problem, though most large places of employment now have anti-bullying programs in place. I’ve seen employees steal credit from others and exploit people to get ahead. I personally have broken off friendships with such people.
6.   Family – A few years ago, I broke up a fight between two extended female family members. I won’t go into the details other than it involved long standing grievances each had for each other. And alcohol was involved. Families can be divided over money, inheritances, perceived slights, religion, substance abuse, failed expectations, etc.


The “Friendly” Fight: Motivations
1.   Two friends compete with each other motivated by their competitive nature. Usually escalates into an all-out brawl. (See rin753’s The Gymnasts series)
2.   Two women meet each other for the first time via online, through husbands, etc. Motivation includes each woman wanting to test herself, looking for excitement, and of course, turning on her husband in a sexually charged encounter. (see rin753’s The Diner series)

The Semi-Organized Fight: Motivations
A few years ago, I learned of the world of Apartment House Wrestling in the 1970s – early 80s Sports Review Wrestling magazine. I’m convinced that many of the concepts of stories today can be traced to this iconic literature. The female characters were from all walks of life. Their motivations varied and included:
1.   Desperate need for money
2.   Need to prove herself
3.   Promises of fame and fortune (acting, modeling career, etc)
4.   Battling personal demons
5.   Two enemies agree to settle their differences in a match. I’m sure there were many more. I only found about 7-8 stories.
A lot of these plot devices still work and can be applied to all kinds of variations of the AHW concept. Bonus points if the spectators are all mysterious wealthy and powerful men.

I undoubtedly missed a lot in this post, so I am inviting all to contribute.

Thank you!

[Kiva]

Thank you, @sinclairfan. All really good ideas. I especially like the “work wife/home wife” and the traveling sports team couple. You touched on the concept of “emotional cheating.”

Which situation do you think is more hurtful to a married woman?

A. Her husband has a one night fling with a woman he met while out of town and will never see again.

B. Her husband strikes up a friendship with a woman. They frequently text and speak by phone. They share a lot of personal information including his deepest fears and dreams and private matters he’s never told his wife. The relationship is not sexually consummated.

Most women would say B is more hurtful as it is a betrayal of intimacy which is worse than a purely sexual encounter.

I suspect most of us who are married have had experiences when we gave TMI to a friend of the opposite gender, then said to ourselves, “Did I just cheat?” The question is where should the line be drawn? These do have great potential for stories.

I guess my problem with wife vs mistress stories is that most of them are so unimaginative with the mistresses portrayed as nutcases who say things like “I will win your man’s cock and prove I have the superior pussy,” obviously written by men.

The reality is far different. The mistress usually thinks she is the rightful soulmate and the man’s (or hers) marriage was a bad decision that needs to be remedied. She realizes the wife will be hurt, but thinks in the end, everyone will be better off. Often, she is a victim of the man’s lies and is being emotionally manipulated.
 
I might enjoy a love triangle story if the characters  and plot are interesting and have some substance to them. I thought Phoenix_Falcone did a nice different take on an affair with “Room 2012”.

So who knows? Maybe fictional Kiva from KFJ will have an affair with a married man.
 

[coachzzz]

First, fictional Kiva should not intentionally have an affair with a married man in the KFJ.   She is too principled for that.   But could she "accidentally" fall for someone who she later finds out is married?   No, because once she finds out she would rightly blame the guy for deceiving her, not the other woman.   So, no affair for fictional Kiva. 

I think the "friendly" fights which escalate due to personal pride and competitive natures are some of the best material to work with.  It also allows for many different combinations of women (colleagues, friends, acquaintances, even women who have just met) to get into a scrap with each other.   The intensity of the relationship between the two women grows from a low flame to a hot fire over time, and perhaps over multiple battles.   Many of the reasons Kiva mentioned above can be the initial start of conflict, but the conflict can grow beyond the initial reason and ultimately become pure competition between the two women.   Pride is a very potent emotion, and it can turn a simple situation into a very complex one. 

[MikeHales67]

I think the motivation part is something that as a writer you tend to worry about, but you as a reader not so much. I think it's all Suspension of Disbelief I as a writer promise to do an entertaining story if you as a reader promise not to get too nit-picky. I speak as a person with a Physics degree who loves Science-Fiction. Virtually without exception the science they spout is total bollocks, but I love it anyway.

Just yo complicate the picture on motivations, the reasons we give for doing sometime are not nessarily the reasons we do it.

https://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/the-situation-of-reason-2/

The automatic brain makes a decision, the conscious brain justifies it after the fact. I do think you can have fun, so the characters give reason x as a fight, but to an outside observer it's obvious it's reason y.

Must admit I've never been impressed by the jealously angle, and never used it, mainly because I can't understand how anyone could possibly find men physically attractive. I understand that this is an opinion not shared by half the humans on the planet but I cannot write about anyone wanting a man's body with a straight face!

I think as well there's a lot of mileage to be made from subverting the trope. So instead of a hot sultry night in an expensive apartment in LA, have a wet car park in England. Instead of fighting to see who gets the job have the employers use the fight to evaluate the candidates under pressure. So the winner of the fight isn't necessarily the winner of the job.

[Phoenix_Falcone]

Thanks again Kiva for the shout out!  And as always another well thought out and interesting topic.

I think I'd probably push back on Mike's thought around the reader not worrying about motivation as much.  While my observation that readers are mostly here for the fight, I would say that the motivation for fighting is very, very high on the list of things people need to reconcile the fight.  For example, if I just described a fight, without explaining anything about it, just purely put the actions down, I'd suggest the majority would start asking "Why did they fight?"  "Who are they?"  etc.  Of course, could be wrong, but there needs to be a reason for people to fight, because the natural state of being is not fighting.  We'd be a much more unruly and violent society if everyone just fought each other for no reason all the time.

What I was getting at in the last thread was that, once people get the gist, there's probably a lot who would not read the nitty gritty, and prefer to skip to the action.  Which is fine.  But motivations are definitely important, especially because a lot of sub-kinks are based off those motivations.  How many times have we seen posts here where someone says "Oh yeah, I love when a mistress is defeated!" or "I love it when two family members go at it!"  etc etc.  In fact, after I released Life of Amy, I got a lot of comments from people about who should have fought who, and which fights were the best due to x motivation.

The suspension of belief comment is very true too.  I would extend it though by saying people do irrational things all the time, so while you may not act like that based on the situation, others may very well act like that.  Especially based on their upbringing, mental state, perceived value, etc etc.  This is where I find it most fun to write.  One way I've found to practice thinking about how a situation would escalate to a fight is to imagine something incredibly mundane, non-competitive and boring, and figuring out how to get the participants annoyed at each other to the point of fighting.

For example, two women are living in an apartment.  They decide to help each other wash the dishes.  Based purely on that, how would you get them to the point where they fight?

Jackie looked on as Lisa casually washed the dishes and put them on the sink.  Each time, a piece of food scrap was left on the plate or cup, forcing Jackie to wipe it off with the towel.  It was so typical of Lisa, she would always half-ass things.  While Jackie appreciated the help, Lisa never did anything properly around this apartment they shared.  After the fourth time of having to replace the towel as it was too dirty, Jackie complained to her roommate.  She didn't appreciate having her time wasted, and it was her apartment Lisa was renting, so she should treat it appropriately.

Lisa was always on the receiving end.  Jackie never gave her a break, it was always "You suck at this" or "You should do it that way."  She'd had enough.  She had tried to be nice about this because Jackie was her landlord, but that didn't give her the right to boss her around constantly.  She paid good money every month for this apartment, and she deserved to live in it how she wanted.  So when the complaint came this time, she snapped.

If you can take a mundane task/situation and turn it into a fight, you can definitely take an already heated situation and turn that into a fight.  Once again, this comes back to the topic of characterization.  Put yourself in the shoes of the character you're writing about.  Based on what you know about them, how do you think they would react to the situation at hand?  What emotions would they feel?

The motivation piece also lends itself to transforming and introducing a character's not so visible side.  For example, a character may exhibit normal everyday behavior in most situations, but deep down, they have a latent nasty side, and when they get into the situation of a fight, they really try to punish their opponent because of a hidden malice they don't show normally.  Or, on the flip side, a normally arrogant character who generally shows little in the way of concern for others, but once they win a fight, their competitive nature brings out a hidden sense of honor and compassion.

I also generally think the best stories are the ones where there is some justification for the fight.  As in, two mothers arguing over a situation involving their children wouldn't necessarily just fight.  There are ways of dealing with the situation otherwise.  But over time, repeated breaking of the unwritten rules of engagement (sniping each other behind the other's back, gossip, different interpretations of an agreement or truce, etc), means each of those other ways are exhausted, until finally they have no choice.

One motivation not really explored here, too, is the idea that women are commanded to fight.  And not so much in a sexual sub/dom sense.  Obviously this can be shaky ground and hard to make sexual, but there could totally be times when two combatants are from different countries, military divisions or even sports teams.  They don't necessarily have anything against the opponent personally, but realize they need to step up and fight for the greater good, the reputation of their team, or simply because their commanding officer/team leader told them to.  It's not necessarily their choice, but it is their duty.

I've had an idea floating around in my head for some time about a story where two countries decide to settle a long standing war that was going nowhere with a fight between two female representatives.  The result of their duel decides the fate of the two nations.  It's a ridiculous concept, but the motivation is clear.  Win the duel and be regarded as a hero, lose and your entire nation loses a war.

I could go on, but definitely there is much to discuss here.  Plenty of ideas spring to mind.  Especially when blending concepts.  I'll save that for another post I think at this stage...

[Phoenix_Falcone]

I've had an idea floating around in my head for some time about a story where two countries decide to settle a long standing war that was going nowhere with a fight between two female representatives.  The result of their duel decides the fate of the two nations.  It's a ridiculous concept, but the motivation is clear.  Win the duel and be regarded as a hero, lose and your entire nation loses a war.

Given the obsession in the U.S. with not having televised athletic events end in ties, you could use a 10-minute f-vs-f battle as a replacement for the ever-more-elaborate tie-breaking schemes which are being improvised.

The most natural is college football, where the alternating start-with-the-ball-on-the-other-team's-25-yard-line, which can last almost an hour, could be replaced with choosing cheerleaders on each side to settle things more directly.  (Have never seen this explored yet in an actual story, but it's been alluded to in discussions.)

It also seems like it would get better ratings than the tedious tiebreakers in other sports:
<> Penalty shot shootouts in soccer.
<> Breakaway shootouts in hockey.
<> Green-white-checkered overtime laps in NASCAR.
<> 18 playoff holes the next day in golf.
<> Extra innings in baseball, deemed so tedious to younger viewers that teams are granted a free runner on second base at the start of every extra inning.
<> Best-of-7 tiebreakers in tennis.

Now, that is a very interesting idea.  The idea of a sports related fight has flashed in and out of my head often.  Perhaps I'll take a crack at the story...

Certainly agree that it would make some of those sports much more interesting.  I personally cannot stand baseball, but I would definitely tune in if there was a catfight tie breaker...

[BarbaraUK]

I've glanced through a lot of the follow-up posts and I have to say I don't agree with them.

People are people and there are less fundamental differences between the sexes than most imagine.

You go to many MMA classes these days and a third to a half of the participants might be women, with the same going for a lot of other martial arts.

There are still societal expectations of women that constrict them but as individuality grows in importance these are receding.

The idea I would advance in creating believable female characters is creating an environment for them that nurtures why they might want to take the extreme actions you envisage.

I'll give you a real life example, meet Eleanor 'Ellie' Wright, an enthusiastic amateur flyweight amateur MMA fighter  from Merseyside, a gritty blue collar part of North Western England: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eXmeC8D-EGI

Then one day, Ellie did this: https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/mma-fighter-lurked-womens-toilets-27138275

[Kiva]

Hi Barbara,

In my post on backstories, I mentioned your beautifully downbeat work on Poacher 4 and I expressed a wish you would return. Who says prayers don’t get answered 

My goodness, Ellie Wright belongs in prison for a disgraceful assault. I hope she can turn her life around.

You raise some good points. In my town, all of the MMA/BJJ  schools encourage women to join. At least one is exclusively women. Our high school has a girls wrestling team with a full roster. It wasn’t long ago that this would have been unthinkable. With shifting gender roles and more women learning to fight, I think the traditional catfight  concept diminishes in relevance.

As Ellie showed us, a trained fighter (man or woman) is not immune to making terrible decisions. So yes, stories examining factors that influence people to do what they do is fertile ground to explore.

[Phoenix_Falcone]

Hi Barbara,

In my post on backstories, I mentioned your beautifully downbeat work on Poacher 4 and I expressed a wish you would return. Who says prayers don’t get answered 

My goodness, Ellie Wright belongs in prison for a disgraceful assault. I hope she can turn her life around.

You raise some good points. In my town, all of the MMA/BJJ  schools encourage women to join. At least one is exclusively women. Our high school has a girls wrestling team with a full roster. It wasn’t long ago that this would have been unthinkable. With shifting gender roles and more women learning to fight, I think the traditional catfight  concept diminishes in relevance.

As Ellie showed us, a trained fighter (man or woman) is not immune to making terrible decisions. So yes, stories examining factors that influence people to do what they do is fertile ground to explore.

With all due respect, I'm not so sure I agree here.

Sure, there are plenty of women taking up MMA/etc, but that a) doesn't mean all women do and/or will, and b) certainly doesn't mean the traditional catfight concept goes away.  One of the most important reasons why the idea of women, or men for that matter, fighting is so appealing to people, is that primal urge we have psychologically.  That doesn't go away just because the combatants are trained.  Arguably, it's not even really the violence that triggers it, even two people arguing can get some people going.

I'm happy to be corrected here, but I'm not really sure I understand what Barbara's point is if I'm honest.  Ultimately I concede that almost nothing I write about will ever happen.  It's fantasy for a reason.  There's also plenty of ways to write believable characters within an unbelievable setting.  That's happened a million times in novels, TV and cinema.  Not all women need MMA training to fight, and not all women want it either.  But fights based on passion, jealousy, anger and frustration happen constantly in day to day life.  Don't just take my word for it, look at the news, or youtube, or the internet in general.

I would agree though, that stories that try and dive into why women fight could be conceptually interesting.  Whether they would be appreciated on a site like this is another thing entirely though.  I'm sure it's probably hard writing something like that and still making it sexy for the masses...

[Kiva]

Thanks guys, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Why do they make that risky choice? That’s the challenge and fun of creating stories.

[Kiva]

Alice Munro, the Nobel Laureate, recently died at 92.

She said, "I never have a problem finding material to write about.  I wait for material to show up, and it always does, in my everyday life."

I couldn’t agree more. I find that people and situations from daily life provide inspiration for fiction. As Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”

Thank you for the news. I wasn’t aware Alice Munro passed. I had not been familiar with her work, so I read two of her short stories tonight. Complex female characters are central to many of her stories - definitely my kind of writer! She won the Nobel Prize for a reason.

My new goal is to be the Alice Munro of catfight stories 

[Kiva]

Kiva, your discussion of the motivations that lead women to fight is really interesting.  For a story to be interesting and arousing for me (and to arouse me it has to grab my interest) the women and their reasons for fighting need to be as realistically drawn as possible.  I used to post stories here as Norm60, and I kept coming back to the scenario of men paying ordinary women to fight brutally for their pleasure.  People will do almost anything for enough money.  Do you like the “underground fight club” scenario where untrained women are induced to fight for big money?  I wonder how much money it would take to induce two 40-something nurses to catfight with few rules in front of an audience of aroused men ?

The underground fight club is another variation of the arranged organized fight between two women who might or might not know each other. I haven’t written a story with that type of venue, but I experimented with AI generated images. Here is a series of underground female fighters with their “cornermen.”  https://www.freecatfights.com/forums/index.php?topic=114720.0
Below are a few random fight scenes.

40-year-old nurses? Now that hits close to home. Perhaps my fictional alter ego from Kiva’s Fight Journal will take a trip underground. Thanks for posting!

[BarbaraUK]

I hadn’t seen your AI art before. It’s really good. But why doesn’t that surprise me? 

[KateA - The Devil In Heels]

Perhaps Kiva we could have a discussion about the small things?

For me my favourite kind of catfights are those where a very small; some would say insignificant incident escalates into an out of control catfight or rivalry. For example I can give you this gem from history; a duel was fought over the arrangement of flowers:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3460930/Nobles-gone-wild-moment-Princess-Countess-took-topless-sword-fight-settle-dispute-flowers-1892-detailed-fascinating-video-duels.html

Now a duel is not a catfight; but the psychology that drove these women to risk their lives in duel over nothing of any importance. Is the same psychology that could drive two other average women to catfight.

Looking back at my own personal experiences in boarding school; two friends of mine got into a catfight over a pencil case of all things. From that point on they engaged in tit for tat retaliation against each other and catfights between those two were regular. The last instance I recall ended in a catfight in a classroom and the cutting of hair. And I must stress there was no feud between them until the pencil case incident and even into adulthood I’m told their feud is very much alive; however I have not witnessed it myself.

Another example would be my own experience at university; allegedly I looked at a housemate funny. She went for me and I fought back. From that point on me and Rachel spent my first year at university fighting on a regular basis…and all this occurred just because of a glance. Also hand on heart as far as I’m concerned there was no bad blood or cattiness between us until this incident. If me and Rachel met today; would we fight? Quite possibly we would; what I am certain of is we would have nothing nice to say to each other.

I suppose to summarise I would say this; we’re human and humanity is capable of and frequently does engage in all kinds of ridiculous endeavours / incidents.

Anyway I would love to hear people’s thoughts?

Xoxo
Kate

[Kiva]

Perhaps Kiva we could have a discussion about the small things?

For me my favourite kind of catfights are those where a very small; some would say insignificant incident escalates into an out of control catfight or rivalry. For example I can give you this gem from history; a duel was fought over the arrangement of flowers:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3460930/Nobles-gone-wild-moment-Princess-Countess-took-topless-sword-fight-settle-dispute-flowers-1892-detailed-fascinating-video-duels.html

Now a duel is not a catfight; but the psychology that drove these women to risk their lives in duel over nothing of any importance. Is the same psychology that could drive two other average women to catfight.

Looking back at my own personal experiences in boarding school; two friends of mine got into a catfight over a pencil case of all things. From that point on they engaged in tit for tat retaliation against each other and catfights between those two were regular. The last instance I recall ended in a catfight in a classroom and the cutting of hair. And I must stress there was no feud between them until the pencil case incident and even into adulthood I’m told their feud is very much alive; however I have not witnessed it myself.

Another example would be my own experience at university; allegedly I looked at a housemate funny. She went for me and I fought back. From that point on me and Rachel spent my first year at university fighting on a regular basis…and all this occurred just because of a glance. Also hand on heart as far as I’m concerned there was no bad blood or cattiness between us until this incident. If me and Rachel met today; would we fight? Quite possibly we would; what I am certain of is we would have nothing nice to say to each other.

I suppose to summarise I would say this; we’re human and humanity is capable of and frequently does engage in all kinds of ridiculous endeavours / incidents.

Anyway I would love to hear people’s thoughts?

Xoxo
Kate

Thanks Kate. Interesting article. Being a medical person, I especially liked the female doctor advising the women to duel topless to reduce the risk of infection. Smart lady 

Yes, I’ve seen relationships go sour because of dumb stuff that escalates. A few off the top of my head:

Weddings can be very tense. Anything from floral arrangements like the dualists to a single wrinkle on a bridesmaid gown, seating arrangements at the reception, and a thousand other things can trigger bad feelings. https://www.freecatfights.com/forums/index.php?topic=111192.msg730143#msg730143

I create the work schedule for my unit. God forbid if one person gets one less hour of work over a six month period. I’ll get accused of favoritism.

I helped organize a charity golf tournament involving men and women. Deciding who should be in a foursome together while keeping everyone happy was harder than solving theoretical physics equations about the gravitational pull of black holes.

Parents at kids sports events, music or dance recitals. Why is Joey playing third base and not my Bobby? Why is Bethany getting the lead position?

Some people are so insecure that they rethink and reinterpret any little thing someone said. I have a close friend who drives me nuts with her constant “What did she mean by that?” Exhausting!