One time in highschool our teacher said that it was never under any circumstances okay for a boy to hit a girl and I asked “not even in self defense?” and he said “no” so I pointed to the kid next to me and said “so if I just started whaling on this guy then he’d just have to take it? What the hell” and he was like “you two have had the same homeroom for three years do you not know his name” and I was like “that’s not the point right now” and Mr. K if you’re out there reading this I’m still mad about it
the argument actually took up most of the class after that but there was a point where he said “why do you want men to hit women so badly?” And I answered “I don’t want anybody to hit anybody, I just think assuming that no woman you meet could possibly hurt you is kind of insulting” and I didn’t WIN per se but you could kind of feel the air shift as the conversation went from “chivalry good” to “girls might WANT to kick your ass”
Anyhow it’s been like 15 years now but I still swear by “capacity for harm is not gender-specific”, “nobody should be hurting anybody”, “men can be abused too”, and “gender equality means accepting that women CAN hurt you” so suck it, Mr. K