Regularly. Mostly car drivers that endangered me and other cyclists, very often driving their shitty vehicles in cycle lanes instead of the abundant car lanes.

The most aggressive ones wanted to fight me, a lot chased me, one even was handcuffed by police that happened to be nearby (getting handcuffs by police is super rare here in Germany but that guy was so over the top even for a police squad of three officers). Called the police several times and sent several of those carholes to court over endangerment.

I don’t regret confronting such assholes and standing my ground at all. It even improved things in some ways because police started patrolling and controlling more often in my area after several of these rows which immensely improved road safety for cyclists. (And my numerous and constant complaints about shitty parking led to even more police activity which freed the blocked sidewalks in that area.)

Confront if you want change. It helps.

yes, i stand up against racism etc… so even if people consider publicly racist people crazy and try to ignore them, i’ll make sure and confront them. that will either show they’re actually crazy or show them their racism isn’t tolerated. can’t let one slip thru undisputed

Confrontation?

I was in multiple fights between thirty and forty. Even after becoming disabled, I’ve been in a few.

That being said, when I don’t go to bars with friends, and avoid a few specific gas stations, that problem goes away.

Like, the last two? In bars/places that serve enough alcohol to count. My disability and chronic pain support group has a mini group of us that are also friends, and we sometimes like to go somewhere and kinda transition from the intense setting of a support meeting to decompress a little.

For some reason, one of my friends seems to draw trouble. One time, some asshole was giving him grief for being on a mobility scooter. Dude’s spine is all messed up and it’s visible, but this drunk fuck was giving him grief. My crippled ass may be crippled enough it hurts and I pay for it, but I didn’t exactly forget the years of martial arts I trained with. So when the guy laid hands on my friend, that was it.

That was the last fracas I was involved in, and that was pre covid. No regrets. I do not allow people to fuck with my people, be it friends or family.

But, yeah, I’ve had a good bit of violence in my life, even after 30. Truth is that I don’t mind meeting violence with violence. I wish it never happens, I don’t want it, but I don’t fear it. I was a bouncer in my twenties, at a gay/drag club, in the nineties in the south. Any fear of violence got literally beaten out of me back then.

It kinda means that I always see that violence is possible because I’ve seen how people can be. So, instead of allowing someone the chance to hurt someone that I can prevent being hurt, I have no barrier to acting before things get to the point where someone I care about is hurt at all. I’m willing to go after someone with full violence at the first sign they’re willing to cross that line, instead of waiting until things progress to things that can cause injury.

Like the asshole that grabbed my friend’s arm. Maybe he would have stopped there, but he had already shown willing to cross the line with a violent grab. Why should I assume someone doing that and obviously impaired by alcohol will stop there? No, I know what people can do, and I know that some people are just assholes willing to attack someone else with no actual need. I’m just asshole enough that I’m willing to use reasonable force to prevent it getting beyond that.

Mind you, it is reasonable force. Once the asshole is down or otherwise not continuing their attempt, I’m done. I got rid of that kind of adrenaline and anger driven retaliation a while back. There was a time I tended to go past the point the fight was over, and that’s not cool. But I got past that shit with time and therapy.

Which, my fellow men, don’t ever hesitate to do therapy. Life is brutal sometimes. You wouldn’t ignore a broken leg, you’d get help fixing it. Don’t ignore when things in your head need help working through. Ain’t no shame in healing and growing as a person.

After 30 it got down to very rarely. Like I don’t even react unless someone try to hit me. But I got into an altercation with an alcoholic couple months back.

My neighbor died unexpectedly and left behind 4 children. Older is 13 and youngest is 4 or 5. This useless bottom feeder came everyday drunk until stupidly drunk (like he can’t even control his fucking face) and all around being [insert your own insults]. He supposed to be an uncle or something. I warned him about his behavior and how he is being a chore instead of help to the family. Because he can’t even be nice to keep clean while drinking and the family had to clean after him. Couple days goes by there is zero change I warned him couple more times and I saw him one evening drinking again and clearly drunk. I lost it things got to a point where I was being restrained by 4 people. I didn’t see him since. Grandmother of the children asked me if he can come visit and I said if I see him drinking I’ll beat him up again so the choice is his… He didn’t come around. No regrets.

Since the age of 30? Only when on demos/direct actions - or when patrolling the nature reserves where I have worked. In those cases, since I have had NVDA and de-escalation training etc, I have pretty much relied on that: so remain passive, smile, speak, find common ground, use the drama triangle and all the rest.

To be honest, even before the age of 30 (as an adult), as far as I can remember my only real confrontations as such have been in the same or similar situations.

Obviously, I have ended up being dragged off and arrested a few times at the direct actions, and have been hit a couple of times and also deliberately run down by an offroad motorbike on a reserve. On that occasion, I didn’t get much opportunity to ‘confront’ the guy, really though, beyond diverting his attention from my volunteers.