One time I was watching the show “Blind Date” and this girl was so annoyed with her date that she slapped him in the car so hard that his sunglasses flew off. He may have been annoying but he never even attacked her to justify him getting slapped in the face now if he had slapped her like that for no good reason I’m sure the camera crew would have stopped filming and had the guy arrested…now I will bring it closer to home this girl kept hitting my cousin (they are both around 5 years old) and all anyone did was say “That’s not ok to hit” but when Ryan finally defends himself by pushing the girl and making her fall on her butt everybody threw a fit and he was punished far more severely than the girl…so why do people say boys shouldn’t hit girls and not boys shouldn’t hit girls and girls shouldn’t hit boys.
I would never hit a girl under any circumstances but I would not feel sorry for a girl that got hit by a guy if she hit him first. The way I see it if a woman is man enough to hit a man then she should be man enough to get hit by a man, or atleast not be surprised when they get hit back.
This kind of dovetails onto this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=247726
There’s certainly a double standard at work in your second example though.
Anyone who feels like solving problems with violence should be prepared to face violence in return.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother not too long ago. She expressed the opinion that men should NEVER hit women. I said “Okay, a woman knocks you down and begins kicking you to death. Shall I just stand there and observe?” She changed her mind pretty much immediately.
I don’t think a woman should hit a man and vice versa, but I think the reason that we have this double standard is because men are traditionally much stronger than women. So your run-of-the-mill hit from a woman is (traditionally) not going to do near as much damage as the same run-of-the-mill hit from a man.
But if a smaller man wants to hit a big hefty woman who has been railing on him, I say, go for it. But, when a big burly man slaps his big beefy paw on a smaller, weaker woman, it looks much worse than seeing a teensy-weensy petite woman ineffectually try to swat a big beefy man.
But of course the real world isn’t always like that. And I’ll repeat—I don’t think a woman should hit a man (or a man hit a woman) because that’s tacky and mean. But I’m just sayin’. . . .
I’d say that the man has every right to defend himself. I think a lot of the meaning behind the saying came because they guy’s punch was a lot harder than the one he’d gotten himself.
It reminds me of what I think was an example of a guy using his greater strength in a decent way on a woman:
“I never did anything to her, mind you, except for the time she grabbed a kitchen knife and I held her on the floor so she couldn’t use it.”
I’m all about chivalry and putting women on pedastals but only if they deserve it. If I was slapped or punched by a woman, you can bet I would retaliate, either by a slap of my own or by calling the authorities, any possible teasing about being beat up by a woman be damned.
It’s a nice thought but in this day and age, it’s outdated, especially with the push for equal rights. If true equality is what they want, that is what they should get.
I don’t believe in boys hitting girls, but if there is sufficient provocation, I feel that girls deserve the same as any boy would get. An example from my own (distant) past:
When I was in the sixth grade there was a girl in my class yclept Cindy who had hated me ever since she was on the losing end in a battle of wits when we were in second grade (some women hold grudges forever).
Cindy didn’t always fight with me directly, she would also fight me by proxy by picking on my sister. One day after school, I was walking home when I saw my little sister (she’s four years younger than me) being pushed and slapped around by my nemesis.
Cindy was not a small girl. My sister was. I yelled at her to stop, she continued her mistreatment of my sister.
She was hurting and scaring my sister for no good reason. Cindy was a girl so I didn’t punch her, but the slap I gave her was probably heard three blocks away.
She never touched my sister again.
My Mother, wise lady that she is, told me this when I was 14 years old.
“Son, remember, never hit a lady. But also remember, once she hits you, she’s not a lady anymore.”
Having said that, I am very proud to say that I have never performed any act of violence on a woman, lady or not.
As a child, I was ALWAYS taught to NEVER beat women…ever! As a man, I am “supposed” to be the stronger of the two sexes. Therefore, I should never, ever show myself as being weak enough to let any woman push me to that level…Sometimes it takes a stronger person to eithe back down or run away, than stand their ground and do things that will only make matters worse.
#1.) Hitting women makes a man looks bad, even if she did something horrible to deserve it
#2) Whatever she did, hitting her only places her in a better position because once everyone sees what you did, no one will want to her tha reason why. The reason no longer matters
I’ve alwasy believed that if a relationship gets so bad that both parties have to result to physical violence, that’s only a sign that the relationship has been exhausted and its time to call it quits and move on.
When I was little, the older guys had a saying that was passed on to me that I’ve kept to heart to this very day. It went " If you gotta beat her, you don’t need her" 
I was in a fight with a kid from my area when I was about 16. I won. His ollder sister then jumped on my back and started scrathing my face. I got her off and she just kept coming at me. Spitting and kicking and slapping when she got close. Nothing would stop her. When I got sick and tired of her I wiped the blood from my eyes(I was really bleeding badly from her attacks) and decked her. She went down called me a faggot for hitting a girl and ran home.
I had to fight her other brother the next day. sigh
I agree with yosemitebabe that this attitude stems from the old-fashioned idea that women are delicate and helpless, so it would always be wrong for a big, strong man to use his size and strength against her. Of course, a delicate, helpless woman would probably never raise a hand against a big, strong man, and even if she did she wouldn’t do much harm. But like, yosemitebabe said, real life is not always that way. I think a man is justified in hitting a woman in the same circumstances he’d be justified in hitting another man – in order to protect himself from attack, or to protect a third party from attack. The same for women hitting men or other women.
That said, I think it’s also important not to be overinfluenced by media depictions of women hitting men. They don’t accurately reflect real life either. Blind Date may be a “reality show”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman described in the OP had been encouraged to slap her date by the producers. Such things have been known to happen with these shows, and they’re doing it with the intent of making the show more exciting and shocking.
Over the years, I’ve observed behavior on the part of women that one would almost never see on the part of men. I’m talking about stuff in bars and similar situations.
I think that women (those few who behave this badly) feel free to do so because they know they’re pretty much never going to get called on it, whereas a man behaving the same way knows that he better be prepared to back up his obnoxious behavior.
Just an observation.
Big and strong doesn’t always cut it. I’m big and very strong, yet, when I was actively training in Tae Kwon Do, I regularly got my ass kicked by a then 13 y.o. girl who weighed maybe 110 lbs. soaking wet. She was also a nationally ranked competitor, and I was in it for recreation and the exercise…
My father had the answer for this when I was a lad.
At about the age of 8, my older (about 12-13) and larger female cousin was ‘picking’ on me at a family gathering. It got to the point of her slapping me, punching me, and pushing me down repeatedly. All of this was done in sight of the adults.
I did the unthinkable.
Punched her as hard as I could right in the boobs.
Her and her mother went ballistic. “You don’t EVER hit girls THERE”
Dad pull me aside and said
“But, you can hit a jackass wherever you want.”
Reminds me of an episode of Firefly where River slashes Jayne across the chest with a knife. Without provication. He ups and backhands her to the floor. He’s a much bigger, much stronger person than she is, but I think he had every right to do what he did. I like how the show handled it, too. No one yelled at him for hitting a woman, because she attacked first and without cause.
If I hit a man for no reason, I’d expect to be hit back. I don’t expect to allow a man to be abused just because the abuser is a woman.
The only acceptible method of striking a woman is the backhanded slap to the face (commonly refered to as a “bitch slap”). It is worth mentioning that men do not use a forehanded slap. Only women do that.
The reason that men don’t hit women is because
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our supperior size and upper body strength would make it a ridiculously unfair advantage - kind of like beating up a midget (ie - my girlfriend likes to wrestle and jump on me and otherwise playfully torment me. I can basically stop it whenever I want by rolling over and pinning her until she gets tired or whines…at which point she starts the process over again)
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because you never want to pick a fight with anyone you would be embarrassed to have your ass kicked by.
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because no one is going to listen to you brag about that time you “kicked that chicks ass”. (ie - my friend instigated some drunk girl into slapping me at a nighclub. Knowing my temper, they thought there was a better than average chance I would chuck her off the mezanine. In the end, there’s not really much you can do that won’t make you look like an asshole - she slaps me, I punch her, she cries, all her friends hate me, and so on)
Not fair!
Like I keep telling everyone, that midget was strong as an ox! - How was I supposed to know it was a female midget?
A girl dropped a huge boulder on on of my mate’s head while he was fighting some other guys at a dance (annual drunken barn dance thing) and he just knocked her out cold. In his defence he most probably didn’t realise it was a girl at the time and that rock was huge. I probably would have done the same even if I’d known she was a chick (he bled like a stuck pig, God that was a big pice of rock), but then again I am a man who beats up midgets. Not really, though.
As a youth I was taught to never hit a lady. As an adult I decided to not tolerate physical attacks from anyone. I usually give one warning, but then will respond in kind if attacked.
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- It’s perfectly understandable for boys to hit girls, because females try to use emotional violence to control relationships but when males ignore that, females will resort to using physical violence – even if they know they will lose. The point they are making is not to win, but to provoke a reaction.
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- This might be different in various cultures (-in some of the Islamic countries for example women are basically second-class citizens to men, so what they must tolerate is beyond their control) -but at least in the US, as much as some people will insist that men beating up women is reprehensible, it occurs commonly–in some couples, quite regularly–and often doesn’t result in the relationship ending.
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Neither should hit each other, but I agree with the perception that supposedly since men hit harder/men are more physical or violent, then boys are taught “don’t hit girls.” I might slap a man if he groped me, or perhaps if he said something extremely vile, but I would expect that he would strike back then, so this would be very uncommon. I don’t think I’ve ever slapped someone.
I have a sister-in-law who used to slap or scratch her (now ex-) husband, and once was even tossed in jail for it; he had huge, bleeding scratch marks on him. She filed a domestic violence report against her current boyfriend as supposedly he’d broken her rib. Considering how she can fly off the handle and strike out first, I hate to say that I half suspect she attacked him first and they just started fighting. She’s still with him - or perhaps I should say, he’s still with her.
A guy I knew in college was being hit occasionally by his girlfriend, mostly slaps. People who knew told him to leave her, including me. He said he was planning on doing it after exams, but I don’t think he did.