Can hitting a woman be justified?

YES! It’s that mischievous topic again. This topic of ‘Can hitting a woman be justified?’, or even ‘Should men and women hit each other?’. It’s often to related and attempted to be justified by ‘defence’.

As majority of us learn from what society tells us, it is generally not acceptable for men to hit women. In society, men who hit their wives and girlfriends are ‘senseless’ and are viewed as out of control barbarians, violent and virulent, often drunk on liquor, power or both. Until recently our society turned a blind eye to the plight of the beaten women and often continued to treat their attackers as though nothing were amiss.

On a serious note Under the Human Rights Act 1998, all public bodies have an obligation to protect the human rights of individuals and to ensure that their human rights are not being violated. The articles most relevant to violence against women:

• Article 2: Right to life
• Article 3: Right to be free from torture, inhumane and degrading treatment
• Article 8: Right to family and private life, which extends to physical and psychological integrity.

A range of factors of men hitting women can come from 

The man letting out his violent feelings. Anger and its attendant violence are pent up and demand a release.

They “want to get her attention.” The victim was hysterical or refused to listen, so the man struck her.

They want to show her who is the boss, gaining or maintaining control of the situation or her behaviour.

They want to teach her a lesson or get revenge for some wrong, whether real or perceived.
However in all of these situations it all goes down to how serious the situation is when the violence happens. Justifying it is very difficult as it hard to put your head around any kind of violence. These things happen and it is hard to put an end to it as we cannot cater to everyone who may be suffering with such scenarios.

‘If a woman came up to me and attacked me, do I not have every right to hit her back?’

I believe that self defence is a good as you do not want to be hurt for no reason. If she is uncontrollably attacking me then I have no choice but to return the favour. However there are ways and means that you can contain your self defence to a level whereby you are not hurting the woman. As I have seen men are often the victims, but it is over looked as he will have left a mark which makes him the bad person. I do not condone violence but in certain situations you have to protect yourself.