You Can't Hit Me, I'm A Feminist!

I've seen way too many people talk about this, and the kind of answers I get from it discomfort me to say the least. What could I possibly be referring to here, you may ask? It's the "hitting girls" argument. The fact that it's even an argument should tell you how bad it's gotten. 

It usually goes like this. You bring up the fact that you're a feminist. You talk about how you think women should have the same rights, freedoms, opportunities, and accessibilities as men. Granted, feminism has somewhat evolved past meaning that and has now become a liberation movement, but I digress. The man you're telling this to will sometimes say this little nugget: "But does that mean we're allowed to hit you?"

Yep, that's how it goes. They don't care about shit like equal pay or body autonomy. The only thing they had on their mind was whether or not they were allowed to punch a girl in the face and not see repercussions.

This bothers me for several reasons. Me being a woman takes priority there. But no, there's more to it. Let's start off with how from day one you're generally told to keep your hands to yourself. That hitting people isn't a nice thing to do. You wouldn't want to discuss that so badly unless you were this pugnacious jerk-off who can't feel good unless he's inflicted physical damage upon another person. And I say "he" because it's mostly guys who act this way and bring this thing up. Yeah sure, not all men and what not but that still doesn't change the fact that there's more negatives than positives. 

If you're trying to break the stereotype that men are violent, always jumping to the "equality means we can hit girls" bollocks is not the way to go. In fact, you're inadvertently perpetuating violence against women. No, not violence against people, against women. There's a reason why violence against women is treated as seriously as it is. Now you're probably thinking "what about violence against men?" Here's the difference. Assaults are almost always carried out by men, be the victim male or female. When the victim is male, the murder is hardly ever attributed to his gender, but rather being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the victim is female, the motives usually involve her being female. Women are perceived to be weak and easy to attack. Not helping is how men are taught to defend themselves and women are told that whatever they're wearing or how late they stay out is attributing to their risk of being attacked. In other words, she was asking for it. 

The problem is that men are already hitting us, we kinda want you to stop. 

I actually stumbled upon a picture that does state my point pretty well. 

You might ask "then what's the point of women's self-defence classes?" Well just because you can protect yourself doesn't mean you want to get hit every second of your life. A soldier knows how to use guns but they still don't want to use them all the time. And even then that's beside the point. In fact, scratch that, it adds on to our point. You're pretty much saying women should just deal with men being violent. You know, that thing you claim "not all men are"?

There's nothing cool or funny about women and feminists getting "rekt" because some alpha male douchebag punched her in the face. I don't mean to be cliched here but if any female you care about had the shit beat out of her, would you run up to her and say "oh but if you were a man who was beat up by women everyone would be happy". Whilst we're on that subject, the main reason why women hitting men isn't treated like it's a pandemic is because 9/10 recorded cases of women hitting men were done so in self-defence. Another thing, why do men need reassurance that they can beat up girls? Insecurity perhaps, or maybe it's just toxic masculinity at play. 

Men don't need to have the right to hit a woman. Do as your mum told you, and keep your hands to yourself.