Pepper spray, a noisemaker, and a kubotan
Amy Choi was assaulted and mugged at knifepoint in Manhattan’s West Village one morning six years ago. “I couldn’t leave the house for a few days,” she recalled in an essay for Shondaland. “I couldn’t walk alone for weeks.”
But Choi, who is 41 and lives in Brooklyn, said that attack and the trauma that followed did not spur her to buy any self-defense items. Rather, it was the recent string of crimes against women of Asian descent that made her feel more unsafe than ever, convincing her she needed to take steps to protect herself. She now carries around a kubotan, a pointy self-defense tool about the size of a pen, and a loud alarm button recommended by a self-defense instructor she worked with last month.