What made you go WTF today?

[Enoch the Red]

Look, what I'm saying is that your response to that particular post of Steely's doesn't make sense. Obviously he should have shot her dead at the first sign of aggression, but that's not the point. If the roles were reversed, he would still be twice as strong as she is etc. Therefore, if one's position is that relative strength and the possession of a functioning brain should influence one's actions in a situation such as this one, rather than the facts of who started it etc, then it doesn't really matter if the roles are reversed.

So, how quickly and accurately does one have to size up their opponent before they get a pass on self-defense? If your opponents first blow falls short, do you have to wait for a second to see if they are actually capable of landing a punch? If he had only been one and a quarter her physical strength can he slap her? If their strength was roughly equal could he have hit her as hard as physically possible? At three times the physical strength does he have to politely ask for another blow? Do you realize how ridiculous applying this self-defense matrix is when you suddenly find yourself in a violent confrontation with someone you know nothing about? The human brain simply does not work that way.

You could apply the same crazy what-if logic to the choice of responding to her aggression with your own violence - what if she was carrying a knife and takes a punch in the face as provocation to use it, what if she had an especially large and violent boyfriend with her, which was why she felt able to pick fights with random dudes etc etc. And any way, he *did* turn his back and walk away, and he didn't hit her so hard that any risk hypothetical she might have posed (if she was completely batshit insane rather than just drunk and ornery) before he hit her didn't apply after he hit her.

The physical differences between a man and a woman will almost always make this an irrelevant comparison. If a woman wants to stop a man doing something she doesn't want him to with force, she almost always has to use as much force as she's physically able to (unless she's trained or very strong, obv), a man in the same position has a bunch of other options.

Sure, the situation could have unfolded in a thousand different ways. That doesn't mean that he was wrong to defend himself when faced with what still looks like unprovoked aggression. In a perfect world should he have shrugged it off and walked away? Absolutely. Does defending himself from an out-of-control woman make him a criminal? I don't think so.