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• Friday, October 26, 2007 08:27 AM

  hitting is stupid

  Between 1956 and 1968, my mother had 8 kids and one miscarriage that occurred well into the second trimester. One of my sisters died in 1967 after being in and out of the hospital her entire 3 years on the planet. It was a bad time for my family and my mother did not handle it well. She flipped out on a couple of occasions and pounded my father on his back and shoulders. My father never hit her. My oldest brother, as a teenager tried to beat up my father once. My father could have easily beaten the crap out of him, but he didn’t. In both cases, my father realized he was far stronger and he could stop the damage being done to himself without physically harming his attacker. I find it disturbing that men on this thread are posting how they’d hit a woman back if they were hit. It sounds almost gleeful. That has nothing to do with self-defense, that’s petty revenge.

  And I’m not excusing women who hit. Hitting is stupid no matter who does it. I’ve disciplined more than one teenage girl for slapping or kicking boys who made them angry. I don’t care how justified they are in their anger, and they are often very justified, they lose my sympathy and get in far greater trouble than the boy, even if his ruthless teasing started it. The idea that because they are “the weaker sex” they can get away with hitting is stupid and I discourage that line of thinking whenever I can.

  —max mendalbaum Read max mendalbaum's other letters
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