Why not?

Kids ask questions all the time.  That’s what they are supposed to do as their brains try to construct a model of reality.  Occasionally, they ask difficult questions.  The cliche is, “Why is the sky blue?”  That’s an easy question, but not enough writers took physics.

“You don’t hit girls.”

Now that’s a difficult question.  If asked, most parents would say, “Well, you shouldn’t hit anyone.  Violence doesn’t solve anything.”

That’s a stupid answer, but kids are still trying to figure things out, so the parent can talk for a little while to redirect the conversation.  Kids don’t have any power, so telling them that violence doesn’t solve anything, doesn’t put them at a big disadvantage.  By the time they are powerful enough to employ real violence, they have learned about the Civil War, animal attacks and the Second Amendment.

Why are boys told not to hit girls?

It’s not because girls are fragile.  Girls aren’t taught to be fragile, and they aren’t.  For a 5 year-old, a 6 year-old is 20% older.  A girl can be taller, stronger and more coordinated than a boy because of an age difference or growth rate.  Girls can be just as aggressive or mean-spirited as boys, but they tend to have better impulse control.

Boys are told not to hit girls because we don’t want men to hit women.

By high school, most boys are taller and stronger than most girls.  That is statistically true, but our current culture insists that there are no innate differences between men and women.  That is competes with the other well-established assertion that, biologically, humans are animals.  Every other species we have studied has obvious and observable behavioral and anatomical differences between males and females.

Why should men not hit women?

In a physical fight, a typical man can do significant damage to a typical woman.  Most of us aren’t typical.  A big, strong person can do significant damage to a smaller and weaker person.  Also, it doesn’t have to be a melee battle.  Women can buy guns or pepper spray.  Assault with a motor vehicle is an option available to most adults.

Women are not inherently better people.  According to the National Domestic Violence Fact Sheet
 “1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence,”

That can only be an approximation, but half the instances of domestic violence, is still significant.  Men are less likely to report an incident, so it’s probably more than 1 in 9.

An LA TImes article talks about the first Men’s Domestic Violence Shelter opened in the US.  This is in 1994.  The shelter has difficulty getting funding and the founder’s motives are questioned.

“You don’t hit girls” cause men to under report violence and society to deny assistance when needed.

In general, men are more impulsive and direct.  “You don’t hit girls” is training meant to put a deep, instinctive constraint on men to overcome an immediate confrontation.  Men need that.   As a boy matures, the message can become more sophisticated.  “Pick on someone your own size” and criminal assault can send you to jail.

If men are more impulsive and direct, then women are more evasive and indirect.  Nobody mentions that. 

Admiral Ackbar explains another reason why men should not hit women.

When I was a young teenager, I overheard my parents talking about friends of theirs in a troubled marriage.   Apparently the wife, unprovoked, grabbed the husband’s nuts when he was getting dressed in the morning.  He smacked her.  It was clear that she was looking for this response to improve her grounds for a divorce.

That’s a disturbing story, but not unique.  If women have the capacity to be bad people and can be conniving, it’s prudent to be restrained.

I’ve never hit a woman.  Whether or not I would, is like asking if I could shoot someone.  I don’t know.  It depends on the circumstances, and even then, I can’t be certain.  If it was one of those random urban attacks by a gang of unhinged 15 year-old she-demons, I’d be justified in defending myself.  Until the situation presents itself, none of us can be sure what we’d do.  I’d prefer not to find out.

When a boy is told to never hit a girl, and asks why not, is that the time to explain feminine wiles?