When is it socially acceptable to hit a woman?

That doesn't make sense. In other words, you would say that if a guy forcibly took the remote out of his wife's hands to watch a football game when she wanted to watch jeopardy, that would be the equivalent of rape. Come on. There are different degrees, even if you won't admit it.

Your example makes no sense at all. How can you compare taking a remote to taking someone's body? You don't sound like a very nice man.

You said that there is no difference between my two sexual examples, and that it's because nobody has the right to take away someone else's free will. I'm just trying to point out that people take away other people's free will all the time, and that there are degrees!

And that midget thing? I was just messing with you. Hee hee.

Which means your options are pretty much limited to midgets?

LOL

I'm pretty sure the average midget could handle Bill with relative ease, Slappy. Bill must be talking about bed-ridden octogenarians who are blind and at least partially paralyzed. I'm fairly confident Bill could take care of those gentlemen.

Bill,

I would expect my daughter not to get herself in a compromised situation to begin with. Once you've given consent, it's a little hard to retract it.

You're either a virgin or you're not. There isn't any in between.

What does virginity have to do with it?

Either a lot or nothing.

Well, Kickycan, it is kind of like this.

Imagine somebody holds you down and shoves a something up your arse, or forces something into your mouth, or grabs your penis and roughly squeezes and and yanks on it, even though it hurts, and you cry out in pain, for as long as they want to when you do not want them to, and you say no repeatedly? Even if you fight, they still hold you down, maybe punch you around a little, or a lot?

Does it make a major difference to you if the person happens to be your wife? perhaps you might feel MORE upset that someone who is supposed to love you treats you like that?

I mean, it might be part of your sex play to enjoy sucking her fingers, or to like a little anal stimulation or to love her to masturbate you, no? So - if you enjoy that when making love, you always have to want it, no? I mean, you wanted it last month, why are you objecting now? This is MARRIAGE, dammit - isn't she entitled to her satisfaction? You are just being hard to get along with - you really want it, you know. You like it a little rough...hey, we all know men always want it, when he says no he really means yes...

Does this help?

Men seem to be in an unfair, unwinnable position socially, when smacked or punched by a woman. Regardless of her actions, when he strikes her, he has lost some masculine cache...

I think we expect men to be so physically superior, he should be able to stop the confrontation without resorting to physical violence. The best response I have seen is a man, who restains the offending woman and says something of a warning/insult--holds her helpless for an extended moment and abruptly leaves the scene. To have to meet a woman on matching terms seems to cut into one's manhood.

Completely unfair to men--but an honest observation of our odd mores. When you are physically outmatched by a woman, there is no saving grace.

Gawd almighty I hope so. Couldn't be more explicit for the lad.

I agree with Bill and dlowan. I could care less if consent was given 10 seconds before, if a no shows up in there and sex is forced, it's rape. I don't even care if they're right in the middle of having sex, if she says stop and he doesn't stop, it's rape.

Bill
I like the way you have explained things here and I admire the way you handled the situation with the girl that hit you. You must be a very strong person to have allowed her to hit you 5 times and do nothing. I also agree with everything else you've said here.

Hmmm - your comments hold true too, Sofia, for men who are raped. I mean, the impact, in my experience, seems to have an added element of it being somehow "unmanly" to be raped. Both sexes feel degraded and humiliated (amongst MANY other emotions!) but, I suppose, rape is an almost daily mental presence for women - taken into account when we park our cars, walk the streets and so on - but is not so much part of men's mental landscape (except in prison) and seems to hold even MORE shame.

It is so sad - because it means it is even harder to come forward.

Seems to be changing, slowly - I have had more than my fair share of big, tough fellas suddenly dissolving in sobs and finally disclosing what happened when they were younger...sigh...and more young guys seem to report straight away.

They seem to require an extra special tenderness in your responses, too - it is almost like holding a very fragile something that makes you hardly dare to breathe...

Sofia; that is a very generous point you're making there. But we didn't exactly get the short end of the stick. The vast majority of men will never have to fear for their safety or their loss of free will when alone with a woman. Could any woman live her life without ever having that fear? If our manhood has to take a smack once in awhile, it's no big deal.
Cjhsa; I sincerely hope your daughter's instincts are as perfect as you believe they should be.
Kickycan; I sincerely hope you are just playing Devils Advocate.
Gus; you are behaving like your normal entertaining self. Keep the laughs coming.
Montana; thank you for your kind words but it really isn't difficult to do the right thing. In fact, if you know what the right thing is; its damn near impossible not to do it. :wink:

I couldn't agree more Bill, but it takes a very strong person in my opinion to repeatedly take punches in the face without hitting back.

I'll share a story. My Neighbor Woman is one of the toughest wimmin I've ever known. She saw our other Neighbor Man, pulling his wife by the hair in the front yard...(I swear it's a decent neighborhood).

I wasn't home. She stalked across my yard and started yelling, "Come over here and pull my hair, you son of a bitch!" and kept heckling him until he left.

One day, we were talking on my front porch, and he came home for lunch. She yells, "We're watching your ass, you son of a bitch." (I stared through slitted eyes. My contribution.)

I asked her why she didn't call the police. She says the wife always acts as though that type of interference is unappreciated--and if she wants to do that, she will. Meanwhile, we give him the Evil Eye. I have never been the victim of that type of abuse, and I wonder why a woman stays in a situation where she (and her children) are subject to this type of reality.

I am a great fan of Neighbor Woman. She kicks ass.

Another good story. (OK, my neighborhood is not sounding so great, now. Well, the houses are nice...) Neighbor Woman's husband, Neighbor Man, was out in the front yard washing his boat, when he saw Drunk Neighbor Man strike his mother. Neighbor Man was on him like Forrest Gump at the Black Panther party. He wailed on him about five successive times, pulled him to his feet and said calmly, "We don't hit women in this neighborhood...or anywhere else where I can see it." He stood by until Drunk Neighbor Man apologized to his mother. Drunk Neighbor Man moved. He could have pressed charges, but he probably would've gotten a worse beating by the cops.

Hmmm - a bit like when adolescent clients threaten us (ain't been hit, yet, touch wood) - your life passes before your eyes - cos they are often stronger and taller, but I don't think it would be a good look to hit back!!! And, I imagine they would easily deck me, too.

So far, I have worked on looking calm and fearless as they wave chairs over my head, or advance on me, or, as happened once, lunge at me with secateurs.

Apparently I have a fantastic, icy blue, "hairy eyeball" which strikes great doubt into angry and full of bravado young hearts! (Been known to scare the bejesus out of nasty senior hospital consultants, too)

But I digress.....badly.....sorry - slinks away....

Rape is a violent act. Violence pure and simple, the sexual act is simply a weapon.
When a person is raped, there are specific physical markers. While we've all, I hope, suffered a few 'injuries' during sex, victims usually suffer similar symptoms, wounds and bruises.
Most of the women that have successfully charged an offending husband with rape have strong evidence of the rape occurring.

To answer your initial question, I don't think it appropriate to hit anyone, man, woman or child ever. Violence only begets more violence.
If you need to defend yourself, do it, life or death situation, yeah, I'd hit back.
But I'd would have looked for another avenue. Half the self-defense battle is trying to avoid a nasty situation. I'm not saying this woman wasn't an absolute bitch, a cow, but if he saw her coming, why did he provoke an ugly confrontation in the first place.
What happened to offering someone a seat? Common decency is dead and instead of bemoaning it's demise, we wonder about retribution.
Having said that....I would most definatly have reported her. She committed assault. The woman was a bully and needs an attitude ajustment.

I haven't read through the responses yet, but I just wanted to give my straight opinion. In my mind, it's never ok to hit anyone male or female, even in self-defense. Run, sheild yourself, grab their hands, pin them down; there are so many options besides fighting back. Of course it's easy for me to say this since I've never been punched, but I also think that the above mindset leads to an understanding of why I've never been in such as situation as well.

I guess I just think that random acts of violence, just for the shear purpose of being violent, are rare. So I believe that if I ever got in such a situation of being in a fight, I would spend my energy reminding the attacker that I am a human and pose no threat to him/her instead of trying to intimidate the person. I'm not the scrawniest person ever, but I'm far from being ripped, and I honestly believe that my thought process would be the same if I were some 6'5'', 280 lb. guy.

If the attacker still feels the need to hurt me in one of those unprovoked acts of violence, it would be a horrible twist of fate that I would work through.