File this post under obvious, or at least I hope it would be obvious. But in today’s world, it’s worth repeating. It’s not a sexist issue but a moral one. In fact, I would say violence per se should only be used as a last resort in self defense. Even former UFC champ Ronda Rousey agrees. “I don’t think it’s a great idea to have a man hitting a woman on television. You could have a girl getting totally beat up on TV by a guy — which is a bad image to put across.”
There is already far too much violence against women, even one incident is too many. This behavior can never be tolerated in a civil society. My dad taught me to never hit a woman and I never used any form of physical punishment on my kids.
Our recent lawsuit against the Law Enforcement Academy at St. Petersburg College Allstate Center is a case in point. My client, Kathleen Denardi was forced to fight men as part of her police officer training. The beating she endured left physical and emotional scars. That should never have happened. There should never be a police training curriculum that includes men fighting women. It’s barbaric and doesn’t offer beneficial training to either candidate. Rather, it humiliates both of them in the process. Defensive training techniques should be part of the program but boxing is not a defensive training exercise. As I wrote in a previous blog post, boxing’s goal is to punch the opponent into incapacity. If we are going to respect women and respect ourselves as men, we should condemn such events. If we don’t we’re sending the wrong signal to our children and society at large. The more we witness such violence, we become immune to its effects and become desensitized to it.