Escalating to physical violence looks a lot riskier if you're smaller than the person you're striking. And you can't know that the escalation will end with your hitting them: they may hit back, and they may not stop. Moreover, assault is a crime: you may feel justified, but if you can't prove the other guy hit first, you can be stuck.
Finally, women in our society are socialized to be nice, to not make waves, to get along. Maybe you don't like that, but you can't just make decades of socialization that millions of people have undergone disappear because you don't like it.
Because you're legitimately afraid that your assaulter could seriously injure you in a fight?
Because you just want to get out of there as fast as possible and escalating into violence is likely just going to draw it out?
Because you're afraid bystanders will take his side and you'll be seen as the aggressor?
Because there's a lot of cultural pressure for women to ignore sexual harassment and you don't want to "rock the boat" that badly?
Or how about because these are grown men and women in an at least semi-professional environment and the idea that they should have to resort to violence to solve their problems is completely fucking absurd?
This is exactly the consensus that all but one of my hacker friends, including the women, have come to.
No. If you assault me, guess what's happening? I'm going to hit you in the fucking face, and most of the people here, since we're, you know, a community are going to physically remove you from the area.
Edit: if this wasn't clear, the "I" in this story is would be my female friends.
But hitting someone in the face is not an act of self-defense, it is an escalation. If someone hits you and you can't get away, hitting them back is justified. But if they grope you, hitting them back is not legally justified, because a groping is not the same thing as an attack.
Just because the groper deserves to get his ass kicked doesn't mean that doing so is legal.
The slapped puncher is not going to say that. He’s going to say something like “I was in a crowded bar and some crazy bitch hauled off and slapped me, and I don’t know about you, but when someone up and hits me, my first impulse is to hit them back. Now she says I ’touched her inappropriately’ before she slapped me. I don’t know what she’s talking about. Maybe my hand brushed against her accidentally or something, but really, if she’s so hypersensitive she should keep the hell out of crowded bars.”
When the cops show up, and there's a crying women with a broken bloody nose or a black eye next to a guy with a faded pink hand print on his cheek, who do you think is going to jail?
There is a concept of escalation in most states' self defense statutes.
If a 110 pound woman slaps you in the face and you react with a force that could cause death or serious injury, you'd be hard pressed to make anyone believe that you reasonably feared for your life (or serious injury).
Yes, because slapping someone in the face is exactly equivalent to giving them a brutal beating resulting in lasting physical harm.
WHY does this topic come up so much in hacker/geek culture? Seriously, I'm starting to believe there are guys walking around who WANT to be slapped, just so they can finally live out their "equal rights mean equal lefts" fantasy.
Regardless, I don't like the idea of slapping someone. I think we can come up with a better idea, like the cards.
"Defending myself" implies the need to be defended. If she slaps you across the cheek due to you groping her, hitting her would not be justified. She wasn't continuously attacking you; she was responding to your assault.
My post was confusing. It was meant to say that my female friends' reaction was that if somebody assaulted them, they're not going to give them a red card, they're going to physically defend themselves.
I would like to see some sort of experiment between using these cards and slapping someone— although, slapping is pretty rare. What happens most of the time is the woman feels incredibly unsafe and awkward while she tries to understand the reason all those people are just watching her get assaulted.
So really, if you see this behavior, please step in. Tell the asshole he needs to get out. Make it known his behavior isn't appropriate.
Devil's advocate: Prove a grope occurred. It's a light, soft-tissue touch. A slap is a violent strike with an open palm, and a punch is a violent strike with a closed fist.
>A slap is a violent strike with an open palm, and a punch is a violent strike with a closed fist.
A slap from a 110 pound woman (just a hypothetical weight) is not equal to a punch from a 160 pound man.
A punch from the man can easily cause lasting harm--broken nose, broken jaw--an open-handed slap across the cheek from the woman cannot (barring some crazy edge case).
>Prove a grope occurred.
She's not going to have to. The cop who arrests you is going to believe the crying bleeding woman over the man with barley a scratch on him--and eventually the prosecutor and the jury will too.
It's best just not to punch someone much physically weaker than you are unless you actually fear for your safety, e.g., she's holding a knife.
yeah, hardly a good approach in a world of lawyers and lets face it, there will be alot of geeks there who would gladly like to be red carded and I suspect somebody will make up some teashirts saying "red carding welcome".
Still I'm sure some people will abuse this system like any system and lets face it the audience will not exactly be angels in not abusing any form of system. Lets face it, in Football it's not exactly perfect. Unless all events are video'd to death and can be verified then it is abusable. That said how long until somebody does a erect nipple/penis video recognition system, scary thoughts on many levels.
Today red cards, tomorrow video survalence and full location tracking with all your comminications monitored so you can be at a event were people complain about privacy.
There again I thought sexual harrasment was a against the law and that carries more weight than any token scoring system that trivialises the offence.
>There again I thought sexual harrasment was a against the law and that carries more weight than any token scoring system that trivialises the offence.
Was that a quote, because sexual harassment is not against the law--it's a civil matter that only applies in certain very specific situations.
Sure there are other laws you could break in the process of sexually harassing someone, but "sexual harassment" is not something you can be charged with.
