Escape?
"Ronda Rousey wrote in "My Fight, Your Fight" that she slapped her boyfriend across the face "so hard my hand hurt," "punched him in the face with a straight right, then a left hook," and then "grabbed him by the neck of his hoodie, kneed him in the face" and threw him onto the kitchen floor."
Flip flop the genders or substitute her for someone you're not a fanboy of and you'd be okay with this behavior?
And here... we... go. Right on time. First, full disclosure: I've been falsely accused -- and cleared -- of domestic violence before, that's why this topic is particularly annoying to me when people throw around claims that someone is an abuser. False accusations impact people's lives. It's not fun.
1. Rousey did, indeed, slap her boyfriend, as she wrote in her book. She found out he was taking nude pictures of her behind her back without her permission. She was angry. She lost control of her emotions when she confronted him. She slapped him. She should not have slapped him. There are, however, very clearly some mitigating circumstances at play here that anyone can understand, and to call someone an "abuser" because of this demeans the power of that word. She shouldn't have done it, but trying to shoe-horn her into a crowd of domestic abusers because of it is much more dangerous and careless than what she actually did. The guy was taking naked photos of her without her knowing, she slapped him. She shouldn't have slapped him. That's the extent of it.
2. In her book, if you read it -- and I'm assuming you've only read excerpts -- it was very, very clearly written that she was trying to leave the confrontation with her boyfriend. He wouldn't let her leave because he wanted to apologize and explain his actions. He physically blocked her exit and would not let her leave. She has every right to use whatever force is necessary and within reason to secure her escape if she's being falsely imprisoned by someone, especially when you just found out that someone arguably committed a sex crime against you. He wouldn't let her leave, she tried to push him out of the way, he still wouldn't. She hit him to try and get him out of the way, he still refused to let her leave. This repeats two or three times with him refusing to let her leave. When she finally got outside, the guy jumped in the passenger seat, grabbed her steering wheel, and flat-out told her she wasn't going anywhere. She got out of the car, went to the passenger side, slung him out of the car by his hoodie. Then got back in her driver's seat and drove away.
That's what happened. Calling that domestic abuse is to know absolutely nothing about your rights as a citizen if someone is trying to falsely imprison you. You have the right to use *reasonable* force to get away. Clearly, her use of force was more than reasonable because she was only barely able to leave -- he was so persistent he even jumped in her car. Any experienced arbitrator is going to arrest him, if anyone, for that altercation because she was the one trying to leave the situation, he was the one refusing to allow her to do so.
3. Do things appear different if the gender roles are reversed? Yeah, they do, but only because genders come with them physical traits we attribute. With power comes responsibility. Ronda's actions, for example, would be excessive if the person blocking her way and refusing to let her leave was an 80 year old man that she could just walk through. The force necessary to get away from him is not the same as the force necessary to get away from someone that is bigger, and stronger than you. But to the heart of the point, if the gender roles were reversed and the size disparities remained the same, then yes many would view it differently but no they shouldn't. If there is a problem with treating both genders fairly in violence cases with the law, then the answer is to treat them fairly, not to treat both unfairly.