As I see it...
The problem is often shown places like town centres late at night where you get a lovely congregation of drunken idiots. I have seen it happen before where a female rather worse for wear decided that a bloke has slighted her in whatever way and needs to be taught a lesson, so takes a swing at him.

If you are that bloke, lets take a look at your options...
You can fight back and defend yourself. Seems fair since she was the one that initialised the encounter, which most likely will result in you taking a hiding from the array of knuckledraggers who have stopped to watch and decided that you are 'beating up your woman' or somesuch.
You can stand and take the kicking from the female happy in the knowledge that 'at least I didn't hit a girl' and let everyone know that you can get beaten up by girls.
You can cut your losses and leg it, take no beating but be forevermore known as the one that was scared of a girl.

This is the reason a lot of people get annoyed by the 'dont hit girls' thing, which I see as perfectly fair, as the girl can effectively pick a fight with a male safe in the knowledge that she can generally walk away with little repercussions to herself by exploiting the 'rule'

Personally I would still say that to hit anyone (whatever gender) is still wrong, but would like to reserve the fight to defend myself should someone else be the one to start on me...
(442, Wed 30 Dec 2009, 14:50, Reply)