Whoopi Goldberg under fire for saying men have the right to fight back

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Dr Puts, of Pennsylvania State University, said: "On average men are not all that much bigger than women, only about 15 percent larger. But the average guy is stronger than 99.9 percent of women."


Anthropologist pseudo-evobio nonsense. I'm reading through the paper now and it consists of baseless assumptions that are non-falsifiable. His acknowledgement of sexual selection as a driving force behind the physiological differences between the genders is lacking and one-sided in terms of base research.

But yeah, it being speculative evolutionary biology means you cannot use it to make any assessments of men v women fighting capabilities in modern day. In fact, it is a stupid approach when we can just measure the fighting capabilities of modern era humans and compare them.
 
She's right. If you get hit, you have the right to defend yourself. If you're a woman and you're weaker and don't want to get tknocked the fuck out, don't hit a guy.
 
It's a thread with people disputing what Whoopi is saying by categorically placing women on a lesser tier physically than men. The reason why stronger vs weaker men are in the discussion is because of the people who refuse to hit women due to the idea of them being weaker but are willing to hit men of comparable sizes/weight.

Right.

The problem with this is that you're ignoring what's fundamentally flawed about Whoopi's statement and attacking people criticizing it based on foreign premises completely unrelated to the topic at hand.
 
Men can't hit women because women are inferior is what I'm hearing in this thread.
I think we're also ignoring a lot of history which informs why we think the way we do about violence against certain groups. There are reasons why attacking women, black people, trans people, etc. are vilified other than just their assumed stature.

She's right. If you get hit, you have the right to defend yourself. If you're a woman and you're weaker and don't want to get tknocked the fuck out, don't hit a guy.
Agreed.
 
This is in no way relevant to the topic at hand but of course I'd punch a man who tried to fight me. It wouldn't be my first decision - I'd first try to defuse the situation and make it clear I didn't want to fight, but if that didn't work then let's go. I'm not a confrontational person and while I've been in a couple fights, I didn't start them. I ended them though.

You're a sexist then, the question is if you're aware of the sexist nature of your beliefs or if you're in denial.

And it is relevant to the topic at hand because Whoopi's statement is non-sexist:

"I think Solange was quite ready for him to do whatever he was going to do. This is the thing: If anybody hits you, you have the right"

"I know that many people are raised in a different way, but if a woman hits you, to me, you have the right to hit her back."

She is treating men and women equally, instead of categorically classified one gender as an endangered species and the other as fair game. You can criticize her for not adding the qualifier of "-so long as they are roughly the same size and strength as you, as hitting a weaker individual is not appropriate", but if you do so by promoting sexist views then you are to be shitted on (and rightly so.)
 
Should always be a case to case basis, talking in absolutes on either sides is silly. If a petite woman hits a 300 pounds dude, and he hits back with all his strength by punching her in the face... that's wrong.

and it is also wrong if this big dude lays out a scrawny man. That this is about sex is what is wrong with the discussion at hand. I would treat any potential threat to my safety the same way regardless of gender. If some scrawny guy attacks me with his weak little punches I won't lay him out (even though I could). I would treat a male assailant that poses the same threat as a female assailant in the same way period. That it is okay for me to lay out a much weaker guy is wrong.

The reason we bring this up is that equal threats are not being handled equally, ergo sexism. I am not saying it is right to hit a smaller weaker woman, I am saying it is wrong to hit a smaller weaker person.
 
She's right. If you get hit, you have the right to defend yourself. If you're weaker and don't want to get tknocked the fuck out, don't hit someone stronger.

ftfy :P

If you need to use physical force to stop someone from attacking you, then do it, if you don't- then don't.
 
Some of these feminists groups are going the other way with this equality stuff. Equal means equal. Though of course restraint needs to be applied. No dude should start swinging like Rocky cause a 90 lb girl slapped him a little, for example.
 
I think if you're going to start a fight or be violent with someone you should be expected to take whatever consequences that may be regardless of gender, age or any other deciding factor as long as what the other person does is well within reasonable defense.

I'm not saying being punched means you should turn to violence yourself, but I think you should be well within your rights to do something to stop it happening to you as long as you're not over the top with what you do.
 
Right.

The problem with this is that you're ignoring what's fundamentally flawed about Whoopi's statement and attacking people criticizing it based on foreign premises completely unrelated to the topic at hand.

Whoopi is stating that when someone assaults you, you have a right to defend yourself even if it means striking your attacker regardless of sex and gender. She is absolutely correct.

Some of these feminists groups are going the other way with this equality stuff. Equal means equal. Though of course restraint needs to be applied. No dude should start swinging like Rocky cause a 90 lb girl slapped him a little, for example.

This has to work both ways, no dude should start swinging like Rocky cause a 90lb guy tried to hit him.
 
Anthropologist pseudo-evobio nonsense. I'm reading through the paper now and it consists of baseless assumptions that are non-falsifiable. His acknowledgement of sexual selection as a driving force behind the physiological differences between the genders is lacking and one-sided in terms of base research.

But yeah, it being speculative evolutionary biology means you cannot use it to make any assessments of men v women fighting capabilities in modern day. In fact, it is a stupid approach when we can just measure the fighting capabilities of modern era humans and compare them.

Just because you find faults in this person's methodology doesn't discount factual physical differences between the sexes.
 
You're a sexist then, the question is if you're aware of the sexist nature of your beliefs or if you're in denial.

And it is relevant to the topic at hand because Whoopi's statement is non-sexist:



She is treating men and women equally, instead of categorically classified one gender as an endangered species and the other as fair game. You can critique her for not adding the qualifier of "-so long as they are roughly the same size and strength as you, as hitting a weaker individual is not appropriate."

nm3j5VX.png
 
Whoopi is stating that when someone assaults you, you have a right to defend yourself even if it means striking your attacker regardless of sex and gender. She is absolutely correct.

So physical violence against women is preferable to potentially sexist norms that deter it?

Just to be 100% clear where you stand.

Whether you're violent or non-violent, it doesn't matter. So long as you don't discriminate who you're violent towards based on sex.
 
So physical violence against women is preferable to potentially sexist norms that deter it?

Just to be 100% clear where you stand.

Physical violence used on people attacking you is preferable to sexist norms.

Whether you're violent or non-violent, it doesn't matter. So long as you don't discriminate who you're violent towards based on sex.

Sex, faith, creed- you know, discrimination. Or would you prefer to perpetuate sexist norms?
 
I would like to make it clear that I'm not trying to bait anyone or troll people. It is ridiculous how people don't understand how the "never hit a woman"-stance is sexist, and harmful.

So physical violence against women is preferable to potentially sexist norms that deter it?

Just to be 100% clear where you stand.

Whether you're violent or non-violent, it doesn't matter. So long as you don't discriminate who you're violent towards based on sex.

Of course non-discrimination is preferable to discrimination.
Go ahead and critique Goldberg for not mentioning physical size and threat assessments, but there is nothing wrong with that she said.

Gender shouldn't ever come into consideration when discussing self-defense.
 
So physical violence against women is preferable to potentially sexist norms that deter it?

Just to be 100% clear where you stand.

Violence begets violence. If you're a woman and you go to the violent place first, you get what you get. Don't get violent if you can't take what's gonna come back at you.
 
Having been beaten regularly by an abusive female cousin, I will say that despite her being much larger than me, the constant threat that I'd be labled a woman beater for defending myself played a factor in why I stayed in that situation for as long as I did. Obviously there's a lot of manipulation and mental abuse that contributed to that as well, but it took her punching me in the face in front of witnesses for anyone to believe the situation and for me to feel I had a way out.
 
Whoopi is stating that when someone assaults you, you have a right to defend yourself even if it means striking your attacker regardless of sex and gender. She is absolutely correct.



This has to work both ways, no dude should start swinging like Rocky cause a 90lb guy tried to hit him.

Would you have that control though? I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I could hit a woman even if she deserved it, whereas a guy... I'd just go at him without a second thought.
I mean honestly, this all sounds good on paper, but if JayZ had knocked that girl the fuck out... would we all not be critisizing the hell out of him right now?
 
Having been beaten regularly by an abusive female cousin, I will say that despite her being much larger than me, the constant threat that I'd be labled a woman beater for defending myself played a factor in why I stayed in that situation for as long as I did. Obviously there's a lot of manipulation and mental abuse that contributed to that as well, but it took her punching me in the face in front of witnesses for anyone to believe the situation and for me to feel I had a way out.

Yeah, sorry to hear that, and it is situations like these that I assume Whoopi Goldberg had in mind when she made that statement. We should never let sexism stop someone from defending themselves.

Would you have that control though? I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I could hit a woman even if she deserved it, whereas a guy... I'd just go at him without a second thought.
I mean honestly, this all sounds good on paper, but if JayZ had knocked that girl the fuck out... would we all not be critisizing the hell out of him right now?

Because society is sexist.
JayZ shouldn't be hitting her because she's female, but because she is smaller than him - but honestly, the way she was attacking him, he would have been in the right to use appropriate force to try to protect himself. Not everyone is a taijutsu MMA master that can put someone in a choke grip and subdue an aggressor, some people only know how to kick or punch someone (and badly at that).

Regardless, whatever response we deem appropriate for a 90lbs person, should apply to both a male and a female aggressor.
 
Anthropologist pseudo-evobio nonsense. I'm reading through the paper now and it consists of baseless assumptions that are non-falsifiable. His acknowledgement of sexual selection as a driving force behind the physiological differences between the genders is lacking and one-sided in terms of base research.

But yeah, it being speculative evolutionary biology means you cannot use it to make any assessments of men v women fighting capabilities in modern day. In fact, it is a stupid approach when we can just measure the fighting capabilities of modern era humans and compare them.

Men having more muscle mass than women, and generally being stronger and more physically capable isn't exactly "speculation."
 
Would you have that control though? I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I could hit a woman even if she deserved it, whereas a guy... I'd just go at him without a second thought.
I mean honestly, this all sounds good on paper, but if JayZ had knocked that girl the fuck out... would we all not be critisizing the hell out of him right now?

I understand where you are coming from, but that doesn't make it okay. That you would have no hesitation hitting a man that was ineffectively attacking you but couldn't hit a woman doing the same is sexist. Again it is not that we should allow the latter but we should equally condone the former.
 
Would you have that control though? I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I could hit a woman even if she deserved it, whereas a guy... I'd just go at him without a second thought.
I mean honestly, this all sounds good on paper, but if JayZ had knocked that girl the fuck out... would we all not be critisizing the hell out of him right now?

It's about necessity, not gender. If I don't need to strike another person, man or woman I won't. If I do, I will. Jay-Z had a large size advantage and a bodyguard between himself and his attacker so he'd be deserving of criticism not because Solange is a woman, but because it wasn't needed.
 
It depends on how you see it. Is the problem that he's not hitting her because she's a woman, or is it because no one should be hitting anyone?

Treating two people who are similar physically differently based on sex. Either you're willing to hit someone weaker than you, or you're not. Sex and gender shouldn't matter.
 
Regardless of gender, i don't know about "right", but you should definitely use your common sense, and as much self control as you can muster, when someone is attacking you.
Dying for something as stupid as an half thrown punch isn't impossible, a hit on the chin, someone loses balance and they hit their head... it's fucking stupid to die like this, so i think in general, people should take this type of confrontation much more seriously.

That said, yeah it's logically a matter of power and strength, over gender, which is why Jay Z did the right thing in this case.
You don't hit back just to prove a stupid point, with the risk of seriously hurting someone or worse.
 
Treating two people who are similar physically differently based on sex. Either you're willing to hit someone weaker than you, or you're not. Sex and gender shouldn't matter.
Ideally, but we have a pretty sad history of domestic abuse and oppression to deal with when it comes to women.

I also think we all look down just as much on a larger man attacking a smaller man unnecessarily, too, so this whole tangent doesn't really fly for me.
 
I find it insulting to imply that women are so weak and frail that they can attack someone without consequence.
 
Sex, faith, creed- you know, discrimination. Or would you prefer to perpetuate sexist norms?

I'm just one to put practicality before principle.

Doing the right thing(not attacking someone) for the wrong reasons(based on gender) is preferable to doing the wrong for the right.

I would like to make it clear that I'm not trying to bait anyone or troll people. It is ridiculous how people don't understand how the "never hit a woman"-stance is sexist, and harmful.

Not so harmful that I think it's worth justifying more destructive and tangible behavior in order to do away with it.

If this was a thread about a world star hip hop video where a larger muscular guy beats a 90 pound skinny dude half to death for pushing him, and everyone was saying "He had it coming" I'd 100% be on your side.

but in the context of this thread, I can't get behind what you're trying to advocate here. You're justifying PHYSICAL VIOLENCE against a weaker party to challenge a social norm that played a factor in deterring it.

That's absolutely ridiculous to me.

Of course non-discrimination is preferable to discrimination.
Go ahead and critique Goldberg for not mentioning physical size and threat assessments, but there is nothing wrong with that she said.

She put out a statement advocating violence completely unprovoked. So as far as I'm concerned she's 100% in the wrong.

She didn't mention physical size and threat assessments because it's not a factor for her given the context of the statement. (The Jay-Z/Solange tape, which featured a smaller female attacking a much larger male) Her argument begins and ends with if you big enough to hit a man you big enough to get hit back

Which is why people are telling you your argument is out of place in this thread, which is about Whoopi's statement in response to a specific case.
 
I understand where you are coming from, but that doesn't make it okay. That you would have no hesitation hitting a man that was ineffectively attacking you but couldn't hit a woman doing the same is sexist. Again it is not that we should allow the latter but we should equally condone the former.

I wouldn't say that... I'd say, forward thinking is great, for forward thinking situations. But violence isn't. If violence enters into a situation, the situation is already out of the hands of modern ethics. It's old world, and should be dealt with with old world methods.
 
She's right.

Although a man should consider how much force he uses and not use it excessively. However, the woman should not be surprised if a man's use of force overpowers her and does seem excessive in self defense.
 
Wow, I cant believe some of the comments in this thread. Women are fragile in comparison to men. You do not hit women period.
You shouldn't hit anyone, really. Women are fragile? Oh, come on. They're humans, just like men; they aren't weak.
 
I'm just one to put practicality before principle.

Doing the right thing(not attacking someone) for the wrong reasons(based on gender) is preferable to doing the wrong for the right.

Not defending yourself with strikes if necessary because the person is a woman is doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

If this was a thread about a world star hip hop video where a larger muscular guy beats a 90 pound skinny dude half to death for starting crap, and everyone was saying "He had it coming" I'd 100% be on your side.

And this is part of the problem, you've placed women as a group lesser to men.


but in the context of this thread, I can't get behind what you're trying to advocate here. You're justifying PHYSICAL VIOLENCE against a weaker party to challenge a social norm that played a factor in deterring it.

That's absolutely ridiculous to me.

I'm justifying violence as self defense regardless of the attacker's sex or gender. Perpetuating the idea that one sex and gender is too weak to ever strike is insane.



She put out a statement advocating violence completely unprovoked. So as far as I'm concerned she's 100% in the wrong.

She's stating that hitting someone that's attacking you is morally okay regardless of whether they're a man or woman, and she's right.


She didn't mention physical size and threat assessments because it's not a factor for her given the context of the statement. (The Jay-Z/Solange tape, which featured a smaller female attacking a much larger male)

The question of whether or not someone ought to hit as self defense someone smaller is a different discussion from ruling women as being physically lesser than men.
 
I'm just one to put practicality before principle.

Doing the right thing(not attacking someone) for the wrong reasons(based on gender) is preferable to doing the wrong for the right.



Not so harmful that I think it's worth justifying more destructive and tangible behavior in order to do away with it.

If this was a thread about a world star hip hop video where a larger muscular guy beats a 90 pound skinny dude half to death for pushing him, and everyone was saying "He had it coming" I'd 100% be on your side.

but in the context of this thread, I can't get behind what you're trying to advocate here. You're justifying PHYSICAL VIOLENCE against a weaker party to challenge a social norm that played a factor in deterring it.

That's absolutely ridiculous to me.



She put out a statement advocating violence completely unprovoked. So as far as I'm concerned she's 100% in the wrong.

She didn't mention physical size and threat assessments because it's not a factor for her given the context of the statement. (The Jay-Z/Solange tape, which featured a smaller female attacking a much larger male) Her argument begins and ends with if you big enough to hit a man you big enough to get hit back

Which is why people are telling you your argument is out of place in this thread, which is about Whoopi's statement in response to a specific case.

If a women attacks a man, the man has a right to defend himself. No more no less. He is not advocating violence.
 
I wouldn't say that... I'd say, forward thinking is great, for forward thinking situations. But violence isn't. If violence enters into a situation, the situation is already out of the hands of modern ethics. It's old world, and should be dealt with with old world methods.

There is an ethical code called the rules of engagement that work just as well in a fist fight as they do on a battlefield. That is to subdue with necessary force, that should be allowed, and it has nothing to do with gender. You have the right to defend yourself, but that right stops at necessary force. It would require far greater force to subdue a larger more muscled assailant than a smaller less muscled assailant. Your right to hit somebody weaker than you ends when it is excessive. That line does not need to be nor should it be different based on sex.
 
She's absolutely right.

All that needs to be said. If someone throws a punch at you male or female, you have the right as a male/female to defend yourself by knocking them out.

That said I think Jay-Z was in the right in this case on not fighting back.
 
If a women attacks a man, the man has a right to defend himself. No more no less. He is not advocating violence.

But literally no one is arguing that women should be absolved from physical retaliation. The "never ever hit a woman" argument is a straw man of the actual arguments being made.
 
It is ridiculous how people don't understand how the "never hit a woman"-stance is sexist, and harmful.
I can see your logic in it, but at least for me, it's coming off as a disingenuous appropriation of feminist ideals to score a win in an argument rather than a real stance you've always had and defend. There's been too many attempts to try and trap people into answering wrong for me to buy into it.
 
You should never hit a lady, but if a woman starts hitting you she's no longer a lady so feel free to hit her back.
 
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