Our judo teacher taught a self defense course connected with our women's judo class at Cornell. He was from Morocco and I think his cousin, who also taught, was from France. Our teacher said that in Italy, if a woman removed a high heeled shoe, all the men within the distance of a block suddenly disappeared.....
They considered it a deadly weapon for an overhead strike.
There were other scary techniques, but I liked the one sliding past the attacker if we had good timing and running away. The teacher mentioned Aikido, which I later studied.
Oh, a great other defense women can use when there are people within hearing distance .... the shriek or scream.... the teacher said.
There was another rather gruesome thought other than the high heeled shoe, the finger in the side of the mouth ripping it sideways, although other people later discounted that technique, saying the defender would probably get bitten first.
Any one heard of these?