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I've had various experiences over the years with different women in my life hitting, slapping, slugging me. My sister and I used to get into such severe fights that my father went out and bought a couple pairs of boxing gloves from the Salvation Army store so we wouldn't end up hurting the other too much if we decided to start wailing on each other. My sister was only thirteen months younger than I, and up until I was about 18, we were similarly sized, even though she was a girl, people in our family tend to run big, and she was about 5'10" back then. So was I, but years later, at 6'1", 240lbs, I'm the smallest of my father's three sons. My two younger brothers are both taller, and heavier than I am. But I digress.
One girlfriend used to slap me when she got angry with me. My father told me that in that case, is was acceptable to slap her back, but never to hit them with a closed fist. His reasoning was, you can't put enough force to seriously hurt someone with a slap, the physics of it make it nearly impossible without dislocating your arm in the process. But one time she slapped me three times in a row, and after the third time she did it, I saw stars. I immediately grabbed both of her hands, and warned her that if she ever did that again, she was going to get slapped in return. She was a bit of a mean drunk who had too much affinity for a bottle of wine at the end of a hard day. I guess being an entertainment lawyer in LA is stressful, even if they pay you absurd amounts of money to defend celebrity clients.
On the other end of the spectrum, I once had the girlfriend of a former girlfriend hit me in the shoulder with her closed fist, and both times she dared to do it, she ended up hurting herself hitting me. The thought of the look of her pained expression, after she did it, still makes me laugh to this day.
The point is, women can hit you hard enough to hurt without necessarily leaving a bruise, or even a mark, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they should, or even that it's appropriate. I'm a pretty good-sized male, former Marine, all that; but I don't really consider myself that much of a tough guy. What I do consider myself to be, is a gentleman, and as such I would never hit a woman with a closed fist, unless she clocked me first. The law still looks at that as assault, and if she swung first, you still have the option of defending yourself, regardless of your gender, and that of your attacker.
My maternal grandmother was an incredibly abusive woman, both verbally, and physically. And as such, I was really glad that I never had to spend any great amount of time around her, because she definitely had anger-management issues. I once watched her retrieve a metal bowl out of the dishwasher during a Thanksgiving one year, and zing it at my Grandfather's head. My father told of one situation with her where she cleared an entire table full of glasses with a sweep of her hand because of something he had said to her. Conversely, my paternal grandmother once threw an entire jar of peanut butter at my Grandpa's head because of something he had said to her long before I was ever born. The dent it made in the kitchen wall was still visible years later, and when I asked her about it, she referred to her ex-husband as a "horse's petute" when she told me the story.
So female-on-male domestic violence isn't really all that unusual, even fifty years ago. Both women and men are capable of acting out their anger, it's just that in the last three to four decades, women have felt more empowered to do so. But it's still inappropriate, in any case.
