Quote:So women should be allowed going around punching men?? Its funny, I'm hearing more women defend Johnson then I am men. One of my friends (who is a woman) went as far as to say that this notion that a man can't hit a women in a circumstance like this is more of a downgrade to their gender then anything. It tells them that yes you have equality, but you're still a weaker species. Society is telling women that they have no control over their emotions, but we expect more from men.
I don't believe I would have responded in the same way Johnson did, but I'm not going to sit here and point a finger at anyone for practicing self defense. Who cares if she wouldn't have done as much damage as he would, no one wants to get punched in the face.
If a woman presents a clear and present danger to my life, you bet I'll take any actions necessary to defend myself, including cold-cocking her into the next century. Short of that, no, I'm not going to lay a finger on a woman. I'd sooner walk away and, if necessary, call the cops. For one, I believe that it's inherently wrong for a man to hit a woman unless the circumstances are extreme. Two, society (and particularly the police) have it ingrained in their heads that if a woman was touched, the man is at fault. I mentioned earlier that if the woman wails on the man and the man walks away, the man
might get out of a trip to the county jail when the cops show up. If there's a single mark on the woman, regardless of how beat up the man is, the man will go to jail and the woman will almost always walk away, as she was "defending herself".
Johnson was not in danger of his life. There was a woman slapping him at a bar. There was no reason for him to react the way he did. Compounding the matter for him is that he is an athlete in great physical condition. Based upon the video, the woman couldn't have done much more than give him a red mark that would go away in a few minutes. Johnson, on the other hand, had the ability to cause serious injury to her, and fair or not, that will be held against him.
I'm not going to say that Johnson wasn't provoked, because that woman was certainly annoying the living snap out of him, and I'll be the first to admit that there have been times that I've wanted to throw a haymaker at someone who was annoying me to death. There's a difference between wanting to and actually doing it, though, and even if chivalry is removed from the picture completely, a male athlete--particularly a football player--is not going to win in the court of public opinion or a court of law if he punches a woman who was, at most, a serious annoyance to him.
