My point was, one shouldn’t do it in the first place, but “shouldn’t do it” is not equivalent to “if you do it you must be prepared to fight”.
I’m with you as far as “the idea that you can flip someone off without the risk of verbal retribution is abhorant”, but I don’t get why the “and or physical retribution” gets added in there. Why do you believe that gesturing ought to entail the risk of physical retribution? I realize that in reality, it does, but why is it you believe that such ought to be the case?
When I was in college, I had a somewhat similar situation happen to me, actually: I was with a friend in a grocery store cashing a check, and completely unbeknownst to me my friend was trading dirty looks with a group of guys in the store for no particular reason. A few minutes later the guys pulled up next to me on the driver’s side at a stoplight shouting obscenities (much to my mystification), and my friend rolls down my window, leans across me, and flps them the bird with a hearty “fuck you, man.” They then try to force me to pll over several times, and when I don’t, they ram my car repeatedly. They chased me around town throwing beer bottles out of their car until I reached the police station.
Now, my friend’s actions were unwise; in fact, they were just plain stupid. Still, was I cowardly in not pulling over and accepting the challenge once the gauntlet was thrown down? Fuck no. For one, there were at least four of them, and the driver at least had already exhibited some behavior bordering on the homicidal by ramming my car. This was not just a fight over traffic rules, this was a fight over nothing at all that this lunatic was willing to inflict a couple of thousands of dollars of damage to his own car over. Regardless of my friend’s stupidity in provoking them, pulling over to engage in a fight with some lunatics with apparently nonexistant anger regulation mechanisms in their fevered little reptile brains is pretty much playing craps with your life, and “pride” is a pretty bad reason for doing so.
Beside, even if I pulled over and beat the lot of them down, what have I accomplished? If you win a fight, all you’ve accomplished is beating up some tool. That’s about as much fun as successfully kicking a dog that’s trying to bite you, which is to say not very. Given the opportunity, I will walk away from ten out of ten fights that I can safely walk away from with no harm to myself or others, including those I could win. If they want the opportunity to attempt to break my nose, they should at least have the decency to offer to pay me for the privilege.