It should be "Don't beat anyone".

Think about the underlying assumption of the idea that men should never beat women. It's that men are generally stronger than women, and so they should not use their superior physical force to oppress women. It's true that the average man is stronger than the average woman, and that we would not want people to fear expressing themselves just because of their lack of physical strength.

But why should this rule only entail women? There are plenty of men who are weaker than the average man. Why should we not give them the same protection that women get? I will give you two scenarios. In Scenario 1, Person A walks up to a man who weighs 120 pounds, and punches him in the face. In Scenario 2, Person A walks up to a woman who weighs 120 pounds, and punches her in the face.

Which scenario is worse? Imagine that both the man and woman who are punched in the face are both equally injured. Their noses are equally broken, they both feel the exact same amount of pain, and they both need the same amount of time to recover. If we truly believe in equality, we have to believe that both these scenarios are equally awful. If we accept this, then we accept the idea that both men's and women's bodies and well-being are equally valuable.

So why do we put a particular focus on not beating women? If the well-being of individuals of both sexes is equally valuable, then the focus has to be on not beating anyone, at all. What's wrong isn't to hurt someone belonging to a particular group - what's wrong is using physical strength to injure any human being, unless you are doing it to protect other human beings.

The only justification for focusing on the rule "Don't beat women", as opposed to the rule "Don't beat anyone", is that women are more valuable than men. In this sense, the rule that we should never beat women is, by omission, sexist. It's wrong for me to beat up anyone, whether male, female, fat, thin, muscular or weak.

Even if I walk up to Brendan Schaub and miracolously manage to knock him out with a sucker punch, it doesn't matter that he is stronger than me. What's wrong is that I just hurt a human being. Similarly, if a woman, who is much smaller than me, walks up to me and slams her fist into my nose, it should not matter that I'm bigger. She still injured someone, and that has to be considered as wrong as if a man had done an equal injury to her.

Maybe I'm making a point that is banal and obvious to most people. But I get the feeling, I know, if I made this point publicly where I live, I would catch living hell.

You could argue that simply because you don't adhere to the rule that men should never beat women, it doesn't mean that you don't see it as equally wrong to beat anyone at all. However, if you look at Western Society, men are completely neglected despite making up the majority of victims of assault, suicide and work-related deaths. Not even to talk about military deaths. There is an underlying attitude in our culture that men aren't worth as much, and in my eyes, "Don't beat women" is the symbol for this attitude. I think it should be criticized.

I needed to get this off my chest. Hopefully I've written something that you guys find interesting.