Kingjackl said:
This sounds like the sort of question that an aging bloke afraid he's losing touch with the world would ask. It sounds like something from a Gallagher routine.
Why does it have to be Rhonda Rousey? If the principle is to ask would you hit a woman in self-defence then why make it a case where you'd lose no matter what you did? Feels a bit pointless.
I think the rousey thing is partly for the comedy of the situation, but also because I think the OP is trying to eliminate some of the ambiguity that often comes up as people tend to make the hypothetical female attacker fit their argument. I've worked nightclub security in the past, in the majority of cases a female aggressor stands almost zero chance at causing significant harm to a male defender, and can generally be stopped and restrained without throwing any punches, 99 times out of a 100 throwing a punch at a female attacker would have just been grossly excessive, so you come up with a hypothetical attacker that the average man would not be able to easily restrain, so it becomes easier to justify a full on fight rather than just restraining, pushing, or tackling the attacker.
On a flat theoretical level, self-defense is universal, but in the case of man versus woman, it is a lot easier for the man to cross the self-defense threshold into excessive force than it is for the opposite, without involving fire arms or weapons at least. That's just legally, not even the public will generally agree with justified self defense claims if a 200 pound man OHKO's a woman half his size unless she has a weapon. I've fought athletic women, with visible muscle tone and boxing or martial arts experience, no one on Rousey's level obviously, but myself as a 6 foot 230 pound man could still subdue them without a single punch thrown, whereas an average sized man with little training would require 2 to 3 bouncers to subdue and even then it was even odds one of use would walk away with a split lip or black eye. A man with actual muscles or fighting training would draw response from casino security, be dog piled by half a dozen guys and sometimes even the police would have to show up to get control of the situation, that's if he doesn't completely break away from security and escape the premises before the cops show up.
Even with the attacker being Miss Rousey, there's a reason she (intelligently) never took any challenges from fighters in higher weight classes, which she was bantamweight, so a max of 135 pounds I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Weight classes are there for a reason, and even an amateur or untrained heavyweight can KO a professional lightweight, add in gender differences and I'd rather go head to head with Rousey than even attempt to take on an untrained male my own weight class. There's a reason Olympic level women's teams get crushed by varsity high school or junior college level male teams. Don't get me wrong, if an untrained fighter, male or not, was actually up against Rhonda Rousey in a dark alley somewhere, defend yourself, I've got no problems with self-defense, just people who respond to every situation with the same level of force, those guys usually ended up hauled out of the club in cuffs because they knocked someone out for shoving them.
