I will always try to avoid violence, regardless of gender. If someone strikes me, I just would wish it ends as fast as possible. I'm not really the fighting type.
But if anybody goes to hurt Mother, I will have to resort to violence.
I'll answer this with respect of my religious teachings, since such belief has been my way of life so... This is a bit long, but if you don't mind then, keep on reading. For non-religious person, you can take it as... emm a story.
According to religion (most), Adam was created as the first human, and upon his existence, God ordered other creatures including angels and demons to bow before him because human will reign over the Earth as the prime leader, and also an intelligent one among of His creations. While others did bow, only demons refused to do so as they felt they were more superior than human because of their different originality; demons were made of fire, human was made of soil. Since then, the demons swore to lead human towards Hell with them and proved that how useless and weak human was.
One day, Adam appeared to be so lonely, as he was a human with emotions and intelligence, such feeling was normal to begin with. God decided to give him a human partner to accompany him throughout the life, thus Eve was created from one of his left ribs. They were living happily in heaven, till a demon managed to pursue Eve to eat a forbidden fruit there, alongside Adam. In the end, both of them were sent to the Earth and got separated. They travelled very far to meet each other, and finally they met after several years passed.
Alright. That's a tidbit of Adam and Eve story. Now let's see, why Eve was created from Adam's left ribs? (I was baffled about this when I was a kid but today I've gotten the answer). Behind the left ribs is where our heart lies, it's a symbolic that Eve, a lady/woman/female, must always be keep close to men's heart. She is to be loved, to be cared of, to be treasured upon. Woman and man are totally different creatures even if both are obviously humans, plus each gender has its own typical traits to differentiate each other. Each has his/her own responsibilities to carry out in life, and when the time comes to calculate their deeds, all will be judged equally (means no bias), yet in the context of their respective responsibilities.
Men are to lead, to educate, and to take care of, whereas women are to nurture, to help, and to ease. It's a man's job to watch out over people/things, and a woman's job to be caring on people/things. It's true that average women are physically weak, however, they have such a strong endurance than men, they are far stronger inside which is a complete opposite to men. That's why women are chosen to be the mothers, to give birth to babies instead of men. There was this one guy who tried out a birth simulation device said that he would rather be beaten up than giving birth.
Why do you think men existed looking superior than women? As a leader, we are supposed to have the leadership traits, the patience, simple yet rationale way of thinking and behaviours. Physically, by nature, we are stronger than women. If women are committing mistakes, being all emotional without reasons and so on, including hitting or punching us, we should guide and aid them in return, advise and teach them how to handle their emotions, to correct their mistakes.
If a woman hit you regardless the reason, you have to stay calm, venting out anger in a form of physical violence would make you the same as her. Even if you have a spontaneous reaction to hit her back, keep in mind that you're only doing it once to warn her and hold back your fist, wait for her explanation or something. It's funny when men said women are randomly emotional, when us too can lose all that coolness and rationale far easily, worst, we often resorted to violence compare to women mostly would only resorted to verbal argument. [My parents and classmates, for examples.] :yeah:
If a girl hit me once, I'll try my best to hold back from hitting her in return but surely I at least yell at her, and if she keeps on attacking me, I'll try to fend them off while demanding an answer from her, in the midst of that I should grab her hands and hold them firmly to make her stop thrashing around. I feel the need to not lay a hand on women at most cases, in fact, I should've corrected them if they're wrong. Hitting back is not really a cowardice act :hmm:
Not really agree to gender equality nor feminism, but out of respect in terms of career or education, women and men are indeed equal.
Since Sanji is one of my favourite fictional characters, aside Sherlock Holmes, I'm gonna leave a few of his quotes here, from a man whose chivalry is to never ever hurt a woman:-