Punching women in the face.

and yes it's fucked up.

personally i don't think it's ok for anyone to hit anyone, their gender isn't really relevant

My left thumb no longer works because of this - I don't know why.

Oh, but I've known some girls who've used this as an advantage, that is, petite girls who've punched and kicked guys because they knew the guy wasn't going do anything to get back at them. As for me, in the past me and my best friend occasionally punched each other in the face, but I don't think there was anything wrong with that, because she was almost as tall as me and probably stronger too. Of course, that was between friends only, I'd never punch someone if I knew he/she would be upset about it, regardless of the gender.

My ex-flatmate, who is one of the most peaceful and non-aggressive people I know, kicked me once and that felt really awful. The kick itself didn't hurt as much as the fact that it was she who did it.

crikey, what do you do to your enemies? ;)

I have in my time REALLY wanted to punch a woman in the face on about three occasions, but have never done so and I don't imagine I ever would - I've never punched ANYONE in the face. I have been attacked physically by a woman though, but only someone I've been involved with (I think twice - once an ex attacking me during sex cos she was fucking filthy, not punching but banging and barging and shoving and grappling at me with intent to hurt [god I miss university], and the other time was during a row with my girlfriend, when I tore a door off its hinges rather than strike her back [I am a LOT stronger than my girlfriend]).

There are two issues as I see it.

1; Drunken idiocy by fucking idiots in Burberry caps.

2; Is it OK to hit a woman if she hits you first / tries to injure you?

PS. Charlie I fancy yr sister more than ever now I know she beats you up.

He high tailed it out of there when the big beefy boyfriend starting coming at him (for obvious reasons). He told me later that that was one of the hardest punchest he'd ever thrown (my brother is a brawler).

The most disturbing thing of all was that no one intervened. People just walked by and ignored it - IN BROAD DAYLIGHT.

Now, you're asking "well why didn't you do something?" Well if there was a cop around I would have, but the guy would have kicked the fuck out of me as well, so there was no way in hell I was going to try and tackle him or anything. The girl, being an evident airhead, got up to her feet and walked off with the guy anyway.

As I mentioned on ILX before, I was in an abusive relationship for a short while with someone who would physically attack me for no reason. I never punched her, nor did I think I should have, but looking back I was well within in my fucking rights to give her a slap in the face in an attempt to get her to lay off. But I never could bring myself to, not to a girl - but my mates who used to hear her freak out attacks say that they would have definately done so, and I know that one of her ex-boyfriends did the same thing.

If a girl is going to throw herself into acts of aggresive violence then the guy has a right to retaliate. But if its a punch in the face, the girl better be built like Chyna or something. I don't see that as being justifiable.

That's all. I wasn't tryin to call you out, tho I realize my post was probably poorly phrased as such.

It seems to me that if we made a point from now on of always using inclusive language when we talk about these things, it can only make the world a better place for it.

also, i do think there's a certain biological thing going on, in the same way that you think kids are cute, etc. i once worked retail with a friend who was pregnant and found myself becoming extremely protective of her with customers even, nothing like a fight.

See, there's your mistake. It isn't difficult, really.

(Also it helps to have other skills: logistical, so escape is possible once an action has been carried out; verbal, so you can get a crowd on your side with a joke at the assailant's expense, etc)

This may sound ridiculously calculating on my part but most women do work these things out in the name of safety - nobody really wants confrontation just going about their lives.

Those of you interested in violence and it's relationship to gender should read "When She Was Bad" by Patricia Pearson. She quite effectively points out that gender stereotypes which portray men as "aggressive/active" and women as "passive/innocent" may lead to women getting away with violent crimes with far less severe consequences. One should obviously take into account that female violence is often (but not always) instigated by men acting violent first; still, it seems that both the justice system and the general opinion clearly take a more lenient view on female than on male violence. Pearson argues that this is exactly because, due to gender stereotypes, women aren't seen as capable of being violent, or at least not capable of initiating violence. For example, Pearson interviews a man who was constantly beaten up by his wife. There's an awful lot of shame involved in a guy admitting that a women beats him up, but the man in question finally tried to seek help from a spousal abuse support center; however, they didn't even believe that a guy could be beaten up by his wife. Finally, the guy was forced to start his own, men-only spousal abuse support group. This was several years, and attitudes have begun change; woman-to-man and woman-to-woman violence is certainly being discussed more today than ten years ago. By all this I'm not trying to say that man-to-woman violence isn't still a far larger problem - it is. I'm merely pointing out that female violence has for a long time been (and still is) an almost invisible phenomenon because of the way gender roles are stereotypically viewed.

Oh yes, and on that subject, it's pretty fucking classy, isn't it, for "question" to razor out all my qualifiers in my original post, including the one about running away if someone comes at you armed, and then using the example of an armed woman injuring a presumably unarmed man?

Pashmina, even taking into account all of your qualifiers, you did say that if you saw a man punching a woman in the face, you'd "beat his worthless ass down on the ground". Why do you think it is necessary to beat him up? Wouldn't trying to stop him and calling the police be enough? Admittedly, if you'd go between the man and the woman, the man might just as well want to fight with you, but if he didn't, would you still beat his worthless ass? Should violence be retaliated with violence?

As an example, last sunday, I was on the bus to town, and there were all these assholes on the back of the bus. They started picking on this old woman, and I got up an told them that if they didn't stop, I'd throw them off the bus (I directed this at the biggest and most aggresive of them) I faced him down, but if he hadn't have backed down, I would have physically ejected him from the bus using whatever force was necessary to do so.

Police response times are fucking pathetic. Calling the police up here = wait 30 mins minimum for them to even arrive.

I'll just come out and say it: I think dividing this along gender lines, instead of size/strength lines, is fucking bullshit.

..and point out that the physical strength aspect seems not to be clear to everyone perhaps?

Perhaps 'perceived' strength is more to the point - nobody would guess that little me defends well if hassled, and frankly I like that element of surprise.

Here's the thing, though: the more you (or anyone) insist on dividing this along gender lines, rather than size/strength lines, the more I feel something icky is going on under the surface here. There are lot of men who'd pat themselves on the back for saying "Yes, hrrrm, hrmmm, if I saw a man hitting a woman I'd beat the crap out of him," but they're not saying anything noble or progressive, they're just acting out the same tribalistic bullshit that's been going on since the beginning of time.

It's not that I mean to dismiss the courage it takes to step in when someone vulnerable is getting hurt, but I have really grave doubts about some of the puffery in this thread. It operates under the guise of social justice, but I think it has a lot more to do with viewing women as valued commodities, capable of producing offspring and best acquired through the violent domination of other males. (And is there anyone we have more permission to hate, anyone whom we can more guiltlessly dominate, than a man who hits a woman?) What I mean is, I think a lot of what's motivating people here is pretty base, even sexist, and not just in a "reverse discrimination" way either.

So the more someone harps specifically on the male-female dichotomy, especially if they say things that amount to "yes, I think a man punching in the woman in the face is always worse than the reverse", the more I start having doubts about what that person's motivation is, and the more I start thinking that it's got a lot more to do with wanting to be an "alpha male", and wanting to have an opportunity to guiltlessly dominate and be violent towards other males whom we perceive as evil.

And it's not that I can't relate, for who among us hasn't yearned for a chance to fight evil, just like in the movies? But I think moments like these, where things seem so black-and-white, are exactly the ones where people's impulses tend to be the most self-serving and conservative.

Finally, regarding logging out, all I can say is that I have the right to privacy, and if I can't be arsed to set up a temp Hotmail account and register, then I don't think that should make my posts any less relevant than those of someone who does (and it's not like there aren't ILXors who don't have two or three concurrent identities, and people don't bat an eye). I'll do my best not to argue ad hominem here, and if I can stick to that I think that should validate my choice.

And the example at the start of the thread, a bunch of people beating on one person: that's not courage, that's hatred and rage unleashed. It may have a deserving target, but (and maybe this is the crux of my disagreement) I think the impulses behind it are no different from any other mob violence, even if we enjoy the perceived justice of the end to which it's employed. It has a lot more in common with the act that triggered it than one might think.

then in hospital
he was helpless in bed, she
grabbed his catheter

so I could freak out
and decide like "question" that
it's an equal thing

but in social work
you soon learn that it is not.
men hit more, and worse.

yes this stuff happens.
but is it gender-equal?
"question"? roger? huh?

Fact- Among reported incidents of domestic violence between heterosexual couples, the majority are initiated by the female partner.

Fact- male victims of domestic violence experience more serious injuries on the average than female victims.

Fact- Lesbian couples have equal domestic violence rates to heterosexual couples.

Fact- police are told to arrest both participants of a fight, regardless of who started it, but males are more likely to be convicted for such a crime & serve much longer terms than females.

Opinion - Therefore it might be possible that domestic violence goes unreported at least as much by male victims as by female victims.

Opinon - Men often get the shitty end of the stick here. People should start treating violence as an issue of strength/intent/etc. and not gender.

Qualification to the last post.
-if more women initiate domestic violence, more still could end up as victims.
-if men experience more serious injuries, women could experience more stalking, verbal abuse, bruises, death, longer duration.
-reports, actual incidents, convictions, and study conclusions vary a lot of course.
-again, the point isn't to minimize but to suggest replacing the gender line with people's real experiences.

some references-
1. http://www.batteredmen.com/

2. http://www.batteredmen.com/abusedme.htm

Rate of Violence per 1,000 Couples- 1975/1985

Husband against wife
Overall violence 121/113
Severe violence 38/30

Wife against husband
Overall violence 116/121
Severe violence 46/44

3. http://www.batteredmen.com/batmphil.htm

Study after study shows women are not merely violent in self-defence but strike the first blow in about half of all disputes. The American social scientists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles reported from two large national surveys that husbands and wives had assaulted each other at approximately equal rates, with women engaging in minor acts of violence more frequently. Elsewhere, they found more wives than husbands were severely violent towards their spouses.

Moreover, there is now considerable evidence that women initiate severe violence more frequently than men. A survey of 1,037 young adults born between 1972 and 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand, found that 18.6% of young women said they had perpetrated severe physical violence against their partners, compared with 5.7% of young men. Three times more women than men said they had kicked or bitten their partners, or hit them with their fists or with an object.

In any event, the idea that women are never the instigators of violence is demolished by the evidence about lesbians. According to Claire Renzetti, violence in lesbian relationships occurs with about the same frequency as in heterosexual relationships. Lesbian batterers "display a terrifying ingenuity in their selection of abusive tactics, frequently tailoring the abuse to the specific vulnerabilities of their partners". Such abuse can be extremely violent, with women bitten, kicked, punched, thrown down stairs, and assaulted with weapons including guns, knives, whips and broken bottles.

nervous don't worry you are a treat too. :)

i kinda love late-night ilx, sometimes.

Incidentally, I quickly read this thread again and though there is a lot of brave "if I saw a man beating a woman I'd kick their ass" talk, no-one seems to have mentioned a woman punching another woman. Would anyone have stepped in to defend my honour when being assaulted for no reason by a drunken woman? (I just got up and walked away from her)

(it was a mistake, I aimed for his belly in wrestleplay, I missed. He threw me across the room, I probbaly deserved it)

It's very bad (and deserves a beatdown) for a man to hit a woman, and 90% of the time this is the strong hitting the weak.

It's very bad (and deserves a beatdown) for the strong to hit the weak, and 90% of men hitting women is covered by this.

And Pashmina opens with the first then argues the second, hence confusion and frustration with him.

some Rosetta stone posts itt