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alt title(s): Wouldnt Hit A Girl; Would Not Hit A Girl "How could you? I'm a woman!"
- Catwoman's best line. Right before she kicks Batman's ass.
On average, men have greater upper body strength than women. Because most people don't actually understand concepts like "average" very well, in a lot of people's minds this turns into "any given man is much, much stronger than any given woman, always." And since a true hero never uses his strength against the weak, and all women are supposedly weak compared to him, it follows that a hero must never use physical violence against any woman, ever. The trope is well-meaning in intention, but in practice it quickly becomes ridiculous when the woman is obviously a major threat and only the token girl in the cast is allowed to hit her. (The cynical might point out that this philosophy functions as a handy way for the male character to avoid the humiliation of being beaten by a woman; if he refuses to fight against women, there's no way for a woman to ever prove she could defeat him at his full strength...)
Due to Media Watchdogs, this trope is quietly applied to many cartoons. The trope is often paraded in older shonen anime, where characters will say something along the lines of "I normally hate hitting women but..." before they over power a female character. This, coupled with the fact that many older shonen anime have a tendency to chickify an Action Girl, makes this trope go on unchallenged. Often, characters in these anime who have no qualms hitting a woman are portrayed as honorless Darwinist villains. Being the hero however, he may have to find some way to drive off or incapacitate his female opponent without actually hitting her. Perhaps turning her modesty against her...
Averting the trope hasn't become old-hat just yet, although it's considered an "equal opportunity" kind of violence. It's usually pointed out before it's done, usually with some variation of "Well, you're no lady." On the other hand, a realistic full-on punch to the face is pretty rare.
A common subversion (in the right kind of story) is for a man who says or would say this to be turned into a woman, allowing him/her to go ahead. Sometimes a man will even turn himself into a woman just to get around this card, or even use it as his/her own.
Occasionally an Affably Evil villain will express this when facing a heroic Action Girl. This is almost always treated as deeply patronising, and edging towards Stay In The Kitchen.
Slightly less common in fighting anime, although having a character refuse to fight girls is usually a way of showing they have a nice side.
Often a form of Heroic Vow. Compare Would Not Shoot A Civilian, which often encompasses this when the women are not combatants. Also compare Rape Is A Special Kind Of Evil. Contrast with Would Hit A Girl, where the character displays that they're not sexist in this aspect.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Ranma in Ranma 1/2 tends to refuse fights with "normal" people, predominantly girls, although for obvious reasons he can work around that problem.
- Note that, for all his bluster, he eventually gets over it - especially if the "normal" turns out to be a serious threat, or if they piss him off enough. However, he will still prefer to use indirect means (thrown weapons, destroying footholds, landslides...) to attack women, rather than land the physical blows himself.
- Part of the reason for this is Values Dissonance; in Japan, physically assaulting a woman is considered very morally reprehensible. Ranma's reputation would sink straight into irredeemable Jerkasshood, both amongst the readers and in the series if he started treating the girls the way he does his male enemies. Not to mention that, depending on the girl, fighting back could get in even more trouble - at one point in the manga, Akane angrily declares that she will never forgive Ranma if he actually hits her (while they're in the middle of a battle), and Kuno, Ryoga, Soun and Genma would be falling over themselves to rip Ranma a new one if he did hurt Akane. It's not that Ranma doesn't want to be able to fight girls (the manga version of Shampoo's return has him daydreaming an attempt at explaining his innocence to Akane, culminating in him pimp-slapping her for refusing to believe him), but he's pressured not to.
- In fact, this trait is vastly exaggerated in Fanon, and actually seems to stem from the fact that Ranma, despite being shown as amongst the best martial artists of his generation, is still vulnerable to the Armor Piercing Slap, and three throw-away lines from the canon. After he and Akane are Standing In The Hall as a result of being late to class on Ranma's first day of school, he mentions to Akane that guys who like girls sometimes let them win after she brings up how she always manages to beat Tatewaki Kuno. When s/he finally gets in the ring with Kodachi Kuno during the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics tournament, s/he tells Kodachi that she doesn't like to fight girls and warns her that this is her last chance to back out... though she does this while actually attacking Kuno's sister and has no qualms about beating on her with every tool at his/her disposal. An anime-only episode actually lampshaded Ranma's ability to "work around" this trope by having Ranma declare he doesn't hit girls... but then enthusiastically bragging that he can just turn into a girl and beat the stuffing out of them.
- Remember (always!) that Rumiko Takahashi did Ranma 1/2 as a martial arts parody. It was meant to be funny and thorougly nonserious. There's nothing funny about a highly-trained martial artist brutalizing some hapless damsel, no matter how annoying (and given Akane's durability, quadraplegia might be the best-case scenario). For that matter, Akane's occasional beatdowns of Ranma would lose their entertainment value in a hurry if Ranma ever suffered any lasting harm. Bottom line, if you want an entertaining fight, just like real life, you have to match ability against ability. As for the rythmic gymnastics battle, given the kind of equipment they were using, pretty much anything other than a ring-out duel wouldn't have lasted 20 seconds.
- Keeping with Takahashi's work for a moment, Jakotsu, the flamboyantly gay villain with a crush on Inu Yasha was originally supposed to be female. The author changed him to male because she didn't want Inuyasha to kill a girl. The numerous minor female villains always either transform into monsters during the fight or are dispatched by the female cast, like when Kagome killed Yura of the Hair by destroying the red skull that was her true form. Similarly, the two major female villains (Kagura and Kanna) get hit by the heroes' combined weapons only a handful of times despite being introduced very early in the series, and being dispatched very late in the storyline. In the end Kagura is murdered by Naraku for betraying him, and Kanna is killed by taking the damage from the monster she was controlling while the heroes were pleading with her to not die for Naraku. Both deaths are treated as an example of what an abomination that Naraku was.
- Against Abi, Inuyasha remarks that he doesn't like fighting women, but she's so evil he'll make an exception. However, Naraku "gave" Abi a trident (made from his bones) that creates a defensive barrier. Eventually, it is Naraku who kills both Abi and her mother.
- There was one episode of the Inuyasha anime in which Kagura was brutalized by Koga, and I mean fist to face, knee to stomach fighting. I mean, she had killed hundreds of his friends so what did you expect? Plus, he actually only managed to hit her once. She utterly destroyed him in that fight, and only got out alive because of Inuyasha and his friends interfering.
- The first Sakura Wars games has a fairly bizzare example in the form of Miroku. She invades the Flower Division's base and begins wreaking havoc, ultimately confronting them in her spirit armor. The protaganists soundly kick her ass. Afterwards, however, she makes a dramatic teleporting escape... only to die seconds later when some rocks randomly fall on her head for no apparent reason. One can only assume the game was taking an extremely roundabout method of not hitting a girl.
- In one episode of Yu Yu Hakusho, Kuwabara had this problem when fighting a female demon, until Yusuke discovered that "she" was actually a cross-dresser. In the Funimation dub, it turned into a aversion, as said crossdresser was reworked into an actual female, offended by Kuwabara's attitude towards fighting her; Yusuke promptly revealed his lack of the problem and pummeled her.
- Sanji from One Piece chivalrously refuses to fight women, or in one case a Shapeshifter taking the form of a woman (Nami, although that was partially because he couldn't stop swooning over how cute "she" was) even if it means his death, and was once severely beaten as a result, with Nami being sure to let him know how stupid he's being. He does point a gun at Nico Robin on one occasion, but admits that it was a reflex to protect Vivi.
- A fan once asked to author to expand on the scene where Sanji is beaten because he can't hurt a female assassin. The author admitted that he didn't want to write the scene, but specified that Sanji is physically unable to bring himself to hit a woman, which hurts his pride.
- Notable occurrence in Usopp's fight with Perona. Usopp never actually hit Perona, instead using his various tricks and gadgets to frighten her into unconsciousness.
- Well, he did hit her with an inflatable hammer, but it didn't actually hurt her.
- In Robin's flashback, she witnesses Spandine roughly tossing her mother to the ground, and thinks that it is a cruel thing to do to a woman.
- Tashigi thought this trope was in action when Zoro didn't kill her after their fight, but doesn't seem to understand that due to her resemblance to his childhood friend, doing so would probably would have caused him to have a Freak Out of epic proportion.
- Played with, if not subverted, in Impel Down when Emperio Ivankov uses his hormone-based powers to turn himself female before facing the prison's top female officer.
- Can't be a subversion because the only way to deal with female enemies if you Wouldnt Hit A Girl is with a Cat Fight, so by changing himself into a woman to fight Sadi-chan, he's crossing into a whole different trope.
- In the first Martial Arts Tournament featured on Dragon Ball, Ran-Fan's entire strategy revolves around this. That, and stripping.
- Also very very brutally averted with Videl's fight at the start of the Buu arc. The episode 'Videl is crushed' is aptly named as it's a solid twenty minutes of Videl getting the crap pounded out of her in a violent and originally uncensored manner.
- Completely inverted with Bandou from Elfen Lied, who proves himself an asshole by immediately back-handing a random female secretary for approaching him from behind, calling her a "stupid bitch" afterwards. In fact the only opponents that the man ever has in the series are girls (albeit super-powered girls). He even lampshades it at one point, telling a girl that he is assaulting that he really doesn't give a crap whether she's a little girl or not.
- The manga introduces a character that is more abusive and cruel towards women than even Bandou, far surpassing the boundaries of sexual predator. Luckily though he ends up getting decapitated by Lucy when he offers to protect her.
- In the manga History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, the title character refuses to hit a girl, saying that it's not something a gentleman would do. This becomes a problem twice, once with Miu who he trains with (but is told that if he does not try to fight back then it just hurts both of their chances of getting stronger) and with Kisara who HATES it when people don't fight her because she's a girl.
- Later in the series, when faced with this situation, Kenichi learns to compensate by using Jujutsu. Possessing many grappling-style techniques, it allows Kenichi to disable female opponents without striking them and with minimal violence.
- And then he has an opponent that's a little girl who is far, far better at him with Jujutsu and he'd have a real tough time fighting even if she wasn't a girl. The fight is completely avoided when his friends distract her with a birthday party and make her forget the scheduled duel, meaning she lost her 'turn' to fight him.
- Shikamaru from Naruto is faced with this moral issue several times, though he's fine with doing it if he has to (he even tried to strangle Tayuya). Although Temari says "that it's just an act."
- He does say that it's "against his code" to strike a lady, but notes that Tayuya doesn't count as one.
- In fact, pretty much everyone else, good or bad, avoids this entirely.
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, Kotarou does not like having to hit girls. Oddly this doesn't mean he has any problems using air pressure to send them flying a couple hundred feet into the air...
- Kotarou also subverts it, in that after Kaede utterly kicks his butt due to his refusal to hit her, everybody (Kaede included) treats his dislike of hitting girls as a stupid idea that he needs to get over in order to be a better fighter.
- Jack Rakan seems to be like this too. Up against female opponents, he defeats them by stealing their panties. Although that might be because he's a Dirty Old Man.
- Subverted/parodied in Natsuki Crisis. Natsuki's fellow karate club members claim that this is the reason they won't practice against her... but it's obvious that the real reason is that she can kick their butts, and they're too scared.
- In Flame Of Recca, the normally extremely proud Mikagami fakes an injury (or rather, exaggerates a very mild one), to get out of facing a female opponent.
- In Saint Seiya, apart of having the Bronze Saints consider an horrible crime to even point a finger against Saori aka Athena (though this is more for her being their Goddess, generally), Seiya refused to fight the female Silver Saint Ophicus Shaina often. When she specifically sought after him and tried to force him to fight, he specifically told her he wouldn't fight her because she was a girl, prompting Shaina to go into a Motive Rant to explain why she wanted to fight him. Also... When she attempted an Heroic Sacrifice to save him from Leo Aiolia, apart of feeling horribly guilty for Shaina's self-sacrifice, Seiya also was pissed off because Aiolia lifted a hand *against a female*. And the same happened with Saori tried a Xanatos Gambit to win Aiolia's favor, by letting him strike her with his most powerful technique: Seiya caught Aiolia's projectile with his hands, then pretty much told him "You wanted to hit a defenseless female? What The Hell Hero?!"
- Ironically, one of the filler episodes of the anime has Seiya kill a female warrior by attacking her while she's lying on the ground with her back turned to him.
- Made even worse in Shaina's case: Motive Rant aside, she's not just a Silver Saint (while Seiya and the rest of the Five Man Band are merely Bronzes,) she the second most powerful Silver Saint of all, given a position of great authority within the Sanctuary and granted the right to mentor students of her own. Having a lowly, cocksure, and younger Bronze newbie say he won't fight her "because she's a girl" is the ultimate affront to her honor as a Saint of Athena.
- In Slam Dunk, during the fight in the Shohoku gym one of Mitsui's gangster friends (from before his Heel Face Turn) slaps Ayako and throws her to the floor when she tells Rukawa not to fight. Ryota Miyagi, who's in love with Ayako, goes absolutely apeshit, kicks the guy to the floor *and* punches him until he's unconscious, all the while screaming that women should never be hit.
- In The Prince Of Tennis, An Tachibana gets slapped and berated for attempting to defend Sakuno Ryuzaki from a bully. Cue to Takeshi Momoshiro telling the bully that males shouldn't beat up women and throwing the guy to the ground.
- This was nearly averted by Ryoma in the anime, though. When a a Libby from Jyousei Shonan and her Girl Posse were harrassing Sakuno and Tomoka (and said Libby even pushed poor Sakuno to the ground and threatened to do the same to Tomoka when she stood up for her friend), he does not hit them... but throws balls dangerously close to them to scare them off. And This Troper is sure that, had one of the girls not dodged the second ball, she wuld have been hit.
- Neatly averted in the Cowboy Bebop movie, which has a very nice fight between Spike and Electra. Spike not only seems perfectly happy fighting a (pretty evenly matched) woman, he also decides it's a good time to ask for a date.
- Even more refreshingly, in the English dub he comments mid fight, "I love the kind of woman that could kick my ass."
- Brutal and bloody subversion in Basilisk. Saemon Kisaragi of the Koga Ten says it's not in him to hit or kill women... right after he kills Hotarubi of the Iga Ten by cutting off both of her hands and stabbing her in the chest, then letting her fall down a cliff.
- Greed in the Full Metal Alchemist manga refuses to fight Izumi, saying "I don't fight women, it's not my style." This doesn't stop him from making the side of his face as hard as diamond when Izumi casually tries to punch him, causing her to break several of her fingers.
- Averted by Ed, who is not sexist and doesn't mind hitting a person regardless of gender. However, it is worth noting that the only women Ed has fought against are clearly on the bad side.
- Except for Paninya, who was a thief, who made the mistake of stealing Ed's State Alchemist watch. Ed loudly declared his plans to pummel her several times while chasing her. A little while after catching her (after she helps them deliver a baby), he does give her a punch for stealing it. With his auto-mail arm, no less.
- In Eyeshield 21, the Deimon Devil Bats go up against the Teikoku Alexanders, whose quarterback is female. Hiruma senses misplaced chivalrous intent in his team and cuts the problem off at the knees by making up a story to them about Karin, the female quarterback— her name's really Karinrou and she's a man, so you'd better go all out on her. It works.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh GX, there's a rather curious variation where the one refusing to duel against Asuka Tenjouin was... another woman. Sure, Taniya is a buff and scarred Hot Amazon, but she's still a female yet says she doesn't duel against other females.
- Subverted in the second season of Suzumiya Haruhi (and the second novel), during the production of the Brigade-movie. Haruhi did her worst Kick The Dog act to Mikuru and then said to Kyon's face that it was totally okay for her to do such things. Kyon went ballistic on her... but then Koizumi stopped his punch. After that event, Koizumi also remarked that he "always thought [Kyon was] a calm person".
- One of the most well-known (if not THE most) Haruhi hentai doujins involves Kyon, after watching Haruhi performing even MORE heinous acts to Mikuru, not only goes through with punching her, but he then proceeds to beat the crap out of her when she fights back, and culminates the beating by showing her the same kind of humiliation Mikuru went through. His method of choice? Well, it's Hentai, so take a guess.
- Completely averted in Louie The Rune Soldier, in a episode where Genie, the Hot Amazon of the group, stays behind the group to hold off a army and tells the rest of the party to run, Louie ends up showing up and helping her out (here they both end up saving each other from getting killed several times in the fight) and the fight only ends when their country's army shows up and causes the army they were fighting to run off. Genie then uppercuts Louie to the ground, yelling at him for not letting her stay behind and calling him a sexist for not letting her stop the army herself. Louie uppercuts her back and the two end up getting into a fist fight and knocking each other out in the end, Later on Genie realises it's only because Louie didn't want to see a friend die needlessly.
- Averted with Ichigo in Bleach. During the first chapter, he kicks Rukia from behind, but this is only due to his extreme shock. It is only partly averted in the Theme Music Powerup fueled fight against three lieutenants, when he palm-strikes Isane in the stomach with less force than the male lieutenants. As an extension of this trope, Ichigo also, being a dedicated big brother, becomes furious at Orihime's brother when he attacks his sister, saying that big brothers should only protect their sisters. Add to that his unusual lack of perversion, and he becomes a novel shounen Chaste Hero.
- Aramaki feels guilty about knocking Orihime out when she tries to bite him in order to go back and assist Uryu. Mayuri suggests that part of the "honor of the Quincy" involves protecting women- even enemies- after Uryu protests his mistreating his female lieutenant and "daughter," Nemu.
- Mostly played straight with Light in Death Note. After Misa surprises him despite his desire to keep their relationship discreet, Light thinks to himself that this is the first time he's wanted to punch a girl (but he has no problem writing women's names in his Death Note, as he has done on no fewer than three occasions). He considers using force against Naomi to prevent her from reaching the station, but decides against it because he would be seen.
- Partially averted in Kongoh Bancho, where the protagonist Akira Kongoh has no problem fighting a girl, but often either underestimates them or intentionally holds back because of their gender. Although in both cases shown so far it's proven to be a rather bad idea, and he doesn't actually win until he goes all out.
- Averted in Soul Eater, where Black Star does not hold back when Maka asks him to hit her (to settle things between them following a disagreement over training).
Comic Books
- Played straight in the comic book and film Sin City; Marv has some (albeit a very few) moral lines in the sand, which he crosses only with extreme reluctance — hitting a woman is one of them. He only crosses this line in order to spare his companion Wendy, Goldie's twin sister, from having to watch him torture Goldie's killer Kevin to death.
- Averted by many other characters, who have no qualms with beating, shooting and generally harming women.
- Marv also takes this trope one step further, as other people hitting women is his Berserk Button.
- Averted beautifully in a Justice League Of America issue, where time-traveling new recruit Booster Gold has caught the female villain. She asks him if he really would hit a girl. He goes "Well... You see, it's like this..." the next panel shows her on the ground after being punched in the face by him. "Where I come from equality of the sexes is a given, so we can hit anyone."
- Subverted early in the John Byrne Superman comic reboot: Superman faces a gang which includes a violent, glasses-wearing, heavily armed female member spouting revolutionary phrases. She tries the double-powered "You wouldn't hit a lady with glasses, would you?". Superman gently removes her glasses and flicks his finger, knocking her cold. He then says, "A lady? No, but then I've never met a lady who carries dynamite under her coat."
- And yet after that, Superman backslides into being bound by this trope. Fortunately for Metropolis, most of his opponents are male because, when he fights a woman, he gets slapped around a lot because he can't be shown striking her, even when she's clearly powerful enough to take one of his punches. He'll restrain her or attack her in an indirect fashion(like pouring water on Livewire), or a female superhero will step in (often after he's been dropped) and beat the villainess up for him.
- The villain in Asterix and the Secret Weapon attempts to use this trope to defeat the invincible-yet-honourable Gauls - by employing a whole legion of women to fight them. The gauls respond by transforming their village into a giant mall. The operation succeeds.
- In Scott Pilgrim the titular character is called out by his own girlfriend as being a pussy for not hitting girls. She ends up grabbing him by the arm and hitting the girls who were attacking them with his fist, because "you've got to learn how to hit a girl, Scott."
- In Wonder Woman volume 3 #20, Diana ticks off Beowulf, and he attacks her. After she punches him in the face, Beowulf apologises and says he doesn't fight women. Then they see Grendel's worshippers approaching, and Diana asks him if he ever fights beside women. Cue the pair readying themselves for battle.
- Which is odd, because in the original Legends, one of the monsters Beowulf kills is Grendel's mother.
- ...who was less a woman, and more a man eating monster who just happened to be female.
- When Green Lantern Kyle Rayner went on a Hero Quest (asking established heroes questions on being a hero), one of Wonder Woman's lessons to him was "never underestimate a woman." (The comic opens with Kyle beating Wonder Woman in a staged fight.)
- The first time Spider-Man encountered a female villain, he literally said that he couldn't hit a girl. Few of his villains even today are female.
- He gets over this later. In Secret Wars especially when he takes on Titania(who was about kill She-Hulk) and throws her through a wall.
- He had definitely gotten over this by the videogame based on the third movie; not only can you pummel Shriek, there are also Apocalypse Gang Grenadiers, who are female, and there's nothing stopping you from catching them in a web line and slamming them at high speed into the pavement.
- In a comic this troper doesn't remember the name of, Goldbug attacks a female supervillain, who hides behind a piece of concrete and uses the trope namer. Goldbug acts contrite, waits for her to come out, and then socks her in the jaw, saying that he's from the future where they have gender equality.
- It's probably Justice League International, since that's exactly what happened in the first issue that Booster Gold was in as stated above.
- Used and subverted in an issue
 of Captain America. Going up against Anaconda, a rare female villain who is muscular, does not possess the Most Common Superpower, and genuinely enjoys a fistfight, Cap pulled a punch "in deference to her womanhood", then decided not to make that mistake again. He then realized that she could shrug off punches that "could shatter bone", and had to resort to his shield. As said in the comments for the entry, "Dude, it's Captain America. He believes in freedom, justice, civil liberties, gay rights, gender equality and yeah, that means punching men and women without discriminating."
- Used again in another comic. A supervillain and a supervillainess have escaped from prison. Long story short, Cap hits her with his elbow hard enough to knock her out briefly while saying "Sorry, lady!"
- In a 1970s Captain Marvel comic, The Marvel Family storms Hell itself. They fight various mythological monsters there; when they run into Lamia, neither Billy nor Freddy dare hit her, despite her being a half-snake monster. Luckily the brought Mary Marvel along. *Pow*
- Averted, and subsequently discussed to an Anvilicious extent, in Preacher:
Cassidy: It's like breakin' one of the rules. The rule. Yeh're not supposed to hit women. Yeh do it an' yeh're one've the monsters, yeh're doomed an' yeh're fucked[...]An' I mean the kind've things I've done—hittin' women, for Jaysis' sake—yeh can't be forgiven for evil like that.
- It so doesn't help that even a casual punch from Cassidy can (and has) shattered bone.
- Wait, Cassidy has tried to steal at least two of his friends' girlfriends, killed a whole lot of people, caused one friend to become addicted to drugs, drugged Tulip to keep her in his bed when she was going crazy with grief over Jesse, and happily goes out and gets into bar fights with Jesse just for fun — and he thinks hitting a woman is his Moral Event Horizon?
- See above, his punches maim.
- Sure. He says it can't be forgiven, but in that quote he doesn't say he hasn't done it.
- Brutally averted in one story of The Punisher, called "The Slavers". The Punisher's attitude to women is highlighted (abuse towards them is one of the few things that truly pisses him off), but when the main female antagonist is revealed to have seen to the slavery, imprisonment and rape of illegal immigrants, he disposes of her in one of the most violent and explicit manners possible.
- And feels guilty later...
- Prior to Garth Ennis, Frank had a habit of going easier on women than men. He once laments that he doesn't know why, given all the evil women he's met. Of course, they usually try to kill him despite his mercy, making it a moot point.
- Both subverted and played straight in a fairly recent Punisher Christmas Special (2005, I think), wherein a hitwoman is hired by the wives of New York mafiosos killed by the Punisher. She has a decoy gun down civilians at Times Square on New Years Eve to draw Frank out, then they engage in brutal fight. Frank wins, and the hitwoman reveals she has a bizarre Stalker With A Crush attitude towards Castle. She reveals her employers, Frank apparently kills her by tossing her out a window, and then confronts the wives. The lead one pulls a gun and is killed, while the others plead with Castle, who agrees to let them go, as long as they leave the country after donating money to the victims of the Times Square massacre.
- Played straight, but for laughs in the non-canon Planetary/Batman crossover comic. Several versions of Batman are encountered, including the Adam West one, who uses "Bat-Female-Villain-Repellent" on Jakita. The other versions have much less trouble hitting her.
- Parodied in Don Martin's "The Mad Adventures of Captain Klutz", in the short story "Chicken Soup", the titular hero bemoans the fact his superhero code prohibits him from hitting the evil woman villain turning everyone into zombies - but it doesn't say anything about not SHOOTING her!
- Batman villain the Cavalier prides himself on being a man of the highest moral fibre; not only does he refuse to harm women, but upon seeing a woman in peril he will help Batman save her, and has several times interrupted one of his own crimes to help an old woman with her luggage.
- Don Rosa's What Could Have Been sketches for Chapter 8 of The Life And Times Of Scrooge Mc Duck show scrooge displaying this attitude toward Goldie, leaving a young Elvira Duck (Grandma Duck) to take her on. Fortunately, in the actual story, Scrooge's and Goldie's relationship ultimately averts this trope in The Prisoner of White Agony Creek, albeit while using a Sexy Discre-, uh, Gory Discretion Shot... well, both, actually.
- One of the most brutal and memorable aversions of this occurs in the second issue of Watchmen. In a flashback, Sally Jupiter recounts the night after a meeting in which Edward Blake, the Comedian, attempted to rape her. She refuses his advances, going so far as to slash him across the face with her nails. He just smiles and punches her in the gut. Then hits her in the jaw. And kicks her in the stomach. Then he straddles her and unzips his pants. Only Hooded Justice's arrival stops him from finishing what he intended. To be fair, Edward Blake's portrayal is the exact opposite of sympathetic.
- It also shows up later in the final issue, when Ozymandias kicks Laurie in the stomach. On the other hand, she did just shoot him.
Film
- In the film Batman Returns, when Batman and Catwoman are fighting for the first time, she pummels him and he refuses to counterattack — for a moment. When finally he does punch her out, she whimpers, "How could you? I'm a woman!" Immediately contrite, Batman moves to help her... and she knocks him off the rooftop. "I'm a woman, and can't be taken for granted!" Note that in later encounters, Batman has absolutely no qualms about punching her. "Eat floor!"
- In the movie Romeo Must Die, Jet Li is attacked by a female assailant, and fights back by holding his love interest Aaliyah and manipulating her arms and legs so that she's technically the one beating up on the attacker. This scene inspired the famous dance between the pair in Aaliyah's music video for "Try Again".
- In Kung Fu Hustle a woman, whose husband/gangboss was just killed by the Big Bad rival gang, pleads the rival gangboss not to kill her. He tells her that he doesn't hurt women. She thanks him and walks away...and then the gang boss grabs a shotgun and buckshots her dead, launching her a couple of feet. Yup, he didn't hurt her, he killed her.
- Completely averted in Live Free or DieHard (or Die Hard 4.0, depending on where you live). Action Girl Mai Linh (Maggie Q) is treated just like she was a guy, with McClane showing no mercy as he beats her down and throws her through glass windows, resulting in quite possibly the best fight in the movie. It takes McClane running her down with an SUV through several walls, and then crashing it down an elevator shaft and blowing her up along with it to finally take her down.
- Ray from In Bruges knocks out a woman who took a swing at him with a bottle. He justifies this to the female lead by explaining he would never normally hit a woman but since she came at him with a deadly weapon he felt ok taking her out in self defence.
- James Bond played this straight for years. Most female villains meet their ends through other means, such as the Bond Girl or the Big Bad for failure (or even getting away unscathed, in one case). It isn't until Goldeneye that Bond kills a woman for the first time, if through a chain reaction. It took another four years before he actually shot a female point blank.
- Played with in Rush Hour 2. As Chris Tucker has to fight Zhang Ziyi, he says "I'm gonna pretend you a man. A very beautiful man with a great body that I'd like to take to the movies."
- So averted in the remake of The Wicker Man, with unintentionally comedic results.
- Averted by pretty much every martial arts film starring 5'3" Cynthia Rothrock. Although in most her films she easily disposes of Mooks, she'll usually get the tar beat out of her by much larger and skilled Big Bads or Dragons. This doesn't stop her from recovering and winning, though covered in blood and bruises.
- In Godzilla: Final Wars, Gordon receives the whole "You wouldn't hit a girl, would you?" routine; only to pause, smile, ball a fist, and reply "Yeah."
- No, you're right he slaps her, of course she said this after she was fighting him, making this more of a Finishing Move.
- In the Danish film Fighter, the sensei orders one of the members of the Action Girl lead's new kung fu club to fight her. He protests that he doesn't fight women. The sensei tells him to fight everyone, or leave.
- Almost averted in XXX: State of the Union. Darius had no problem punching or incapacitating Charlie, but seems cannot bring himself finish her off. His superior must do this for him, saying "I told you you should kill that bitch".
- Inverted in Ghost Dog when the mobster shoots dead a female police officer. When his mob partner calls him on it, he points out that that's the consequences of sexual equality.
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly averts this trope in order to show how evil The Bad is. However, according to an interview with the actor in question (Lee Van Cleef), he refused to actually hit her, so they had to use his stunt man for that scene.
- In Time Cop, Van Damme's character Max, confronts a female double agent who attacks him. Initially he doesn't fight back and tells her "I don't want to fight a woman." The woman of course has no qualms with hitting a man, so she gets some free attacks on him without retaliation. Max then subverts the trope when he says "I changed my mind," and punches her back.
- The 1995 Jean Claude Van Damme film Sudden Death features a brutal fight to the death between our hero and a female assassin, which ends with the villain being simultaneously strangled and boiled alive. This trope is averted somewhat by the fact that the assassin spends the entire fight dressed in a giant penguin costume.
- In Batman And Robin neither Batman nor Robin had the ability to kick Poison Ivy's ass, largely because she could seduce them by blowing a kiss, but even without that power, they would have been reluctant to hurt her. It took the convenient introduction of Batgirl to handle her, naturally.
- A variation appears in Force 10 From Navarone, when the Reverse Mole tells Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw they have to hit her to make their escape from Those Wacky Nazis look genuine. They both balk, but finally comply. Then she berates them for not hitting her hard enough.
- An early example of a full aversion was Quentin Tarantino's 1993 True Romance, in which a hitman repeatedly punches the female protagonist full-on in the face—hard enough to knock her down.
Literature
- Completely inverted in Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet; while as a page, it is expected to get some bumps and bruises, Kel is beaten up far worse than any of the boys, because a lot of people want her to quit.
- Played to the hilt in the Wheel Of Time series. Although the women of Randland wield more political power than men, and are frequently seen physically abusing men, most cultures are extremely protective of women, causing many men to refuse to harm a woman for any reason. Many women, however, protest this behavior.
- Rand al'Thor is the most prominent example. He refuses to harm a woman even if she's an immortal agent of Ultimate Evil and trying to kill him using legendary magical powers. He also goes out of his way to avoid putting women in danger, which upsets his Amazonian bodyguards immensely. In fact, Rand has memorized the name or identifying characteristic of every woman who died because of him or while in his service (despite a hundred times as many men, at the very least, dying in his service and countless others affected fatally by his being the Chosen One). He once goes into a Heroic BSOD after a woman who tried to steal his throne and betray him commits suicide, even though he had already prevented her execution. To his credit he does seem to realize this is a major hindrance, but cannot seem to overcome his upbringing.
- Mat Cauthon also develops a case after ordering the death of a woman in Crossroads of Twilight (with one exception: he can and will spank women who try to boss him around too much, even Aes Sedai). Luckily for Mat, his betrothed has no such compulsion, and kills a treacherous female assassin for him.
- In the nation of Altara, women wear knives around their necks to slash at their husbands when angered. The husbands are expected to accept this treatment without resistance, to the point of death.
- The Dresden Files, book version. Harry is almost absurdly chivalrous. He knows it, and considers it a weakness (he's definitely met his fair share of evil women), but can't seem to do anything about it. He has been able to make himself attack women in very extreme circumstances, but it requires him being pushed right to the wall before he can overcome his chivalrous reflex enough to even defend himself properly from a female attacker.
- The Faerie Queene (by Edmund Spenser, published first in three books in 1590): While a pervert torturing a helpless Damsel In Distress for his own sadistic pleasure is despicable, a knight refusing to fight a Dark Action Girl Amazon queen who's trying to kill him is just stupid, as Artegall, the Knight of Justice with a strict code against fighting women, learns the hard way. Good thing his girlfriend comes to his rescue.
- In More Adventures of the Great Brain, the kids all taunt a 12-year old girl named Dottie, who dresses like a boy and has never been to school before. Ringleader Sammy gets a little too close, so she punches him in the nose. He says he'd fight back if she weren't a girl, but she tells him to go ahead. Sammy ends up eating dirt, and once she learns to fit in, Dottie becomes a celebrity among the other girls for beating up a bigger boy in a "fair and square fight."
- In Lois Mc Master Bujold's Paladin of Souls, Arhys kills seven enemy sorcerers before being defeated by the eighth. Ista tells the others that the last sorcerer was probably a young and beautiful woman, and Arhys couldn't overcome his chivalry in time to win the fight. His brother remarks sadly that it is an appropriate death for him.
- Subverted in A World Gone Mad. Jerkass Anti Hero Griffin, when confronted by teen Action Girl Tanya, raises his hands and tells her "I'd never hit a girl." He then promptly whips out his gun and shoots her in the head while she's occupied preparing to give him a "you sexist idiot" speech.
- He later tries to pull the exact same move on Kyra, but she's quick enough and smart enough to dive for cover before he can clear his holster.
- Completely and utterly averted in the Honor Harrington novels where the main character seems to end up in a fist-fight nearly every single book, against both male and female opponents, not to mention being the devotee of a particularly brutal martial art which again she practices against both men and women.
- And played completely straight in another of David Weber's book series, the Hell's Gate series where both empires have big, big issues with harming women.
- Lobsang Ludd from the Discworld novel Thief of Time met 3 humanly disguised auditors. He beat two of them, but he couldn't beat up the third one. Why? Obviously, for no other reason than that the auditor had dressed itself as a woman. Lucky Susan Sto-Helit took it out.
- Banjo, a brutish but childlike thug from Hogfather, had deep objections to hitting girls because of his monstrously domineering mothers rules.
- The Librarian usually gets agressive, when he's called a monkey, but when Ginger does it in Moving Pictures, he just pats her hand.
- He also just wags a finger at Agnes in Maskerade, to which another character says "He likes you. He doesn't usually go in for warnings."
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Traitor General, when the resistance member Sabbatine Cirk baits and snipes at the members of Gaunt's team, it is Ana Curth who finally slugs her.
- In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand, the colonel of the Tallarn regiment refuses to participiate in an interregimental compeition of unarmed combat because the women in the Vallahan regiment would participate, which is "unseemly." Whereupon their regimental champion was "promptly and informally challenged" by a female Vallahan.
- oh and he gets in trouble because she's a higher rank.
- The book Friday the 13th: Church of the Divine Psychopath has Captain Hobb, the leader of the strike team sent out to kill Jason, getting into a fight with a female member of the group named Samantha, who hates his guts and wants to take over the operation. While at first reluctant to fight back, Hobb pretty much says "screw it" after getting hit really hard one to many times and knocks Sam out with the combination of a Boob Attack and knee to the face.
- Averted by the Encyclopedia Brown series, ironically enough. Neighborhood bully Bugs Meany, his Tigers, and various other boys try to hit Cute Bruiser Sally Kimball, but she always flattens them without their ever landing a single punch, neatly averting the protests that would erupt if they actually landed a blow.
- Baccano! Drugs & Dominoes features a humorous scene in which the Gandor brothers, a Power Trio of Neighbourhood Friendly Gangsters, try to figure out a way to punish a waitress from one of their speakeasies for breaking one of their family's rules. They can't just pardon her, but they have very strong opinions on the subject of violence against women: "Raising a hand against a woman is the worst!" The final solution is
to give her an actually rather nice haircut Rape Of The Lock, at which point Claire wonders how they can even bother calling themselves Mafia.
- In several books in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar setting, there is a sword named Need that literally cannot be used against a woman, even if it's (usually female) bearer will die if they can't defend themselves. Needless to say, this can cause problems.
- In Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars, this is the rule among the Green Martians. However, Tars Tarkas warns a murderess:
He may not kill you, Sarkoja, it is not our custom, but there is nothing to prevent him tying one end of a strap about your neck and the other end to a wild thoat, merely to test your fitness to survive and help perpetuate our race.
- The Red Martians are even more so. In Thuvia, Maid of Mars, when Nutus tells his son Astok that they must hide his guilt in the kidnapping of Thuvia, and suggests that killing her would be best, even his weak and wicked son is horrified.
Cruel to their enemies are the men of Mars; but the word "enemies" is commonly interpreted to mean men only. Assassination runs riot in the great Barsoomian cities; yet to murder a woman is a crime so unthinkable that even the most hardened of the paid assassins would shrink from you in horror should you suggest such a thing to him.
- The Survivalist series by Jerry Ahern. Sarah Rourke takes a Soviet officer hostage and forces him to release members of La Resistance. She later discovers that he'd been carrying a concealed pistol all the time, but had been unable to bring himself to shoot her.
- In the short story "The Living Daylights" James Bond shoots a rifle out of the hands of a female Soviet sniper rather than kill her, endangering the defector he was covering. Given that no-one would believe that these days, it was changed in the movie to Bond noticing the sniper was an obvious amateur and realising something was wrong.
Live Action TV
- In the Star Trek Deep Space 9 episode Dax, Dr Bashier follow's Dax to her quaters to see her being kidnapped by a Terrible Trio. After punching their leader, one of the other two goes for him. He is about to punch when the hood comes down and he sees its a woman. Needless to say, the poor guy got his ass handed to him.
- Honestly, you'd think by the 24th century they'd have gotten over that.
- Spoofed in an episode of Get Smart:
Evil Female Agent: You wouldn't hit a lady, would you?
Agent 13: Well, no.
Evil Female Agent: Good. (At which point she hauls off and decks him.)
- Subverted in an episode of Angel ("Sanctuary"), where Buffy punches Angel and he punches her back, and Buffy reacts like a helpless woman... until Angel points out she could kick his ass if she wanted and she did slug him first, so the protestation is just empty air.
- Of course, almost none of the bad guys on Buffy's own show (including Spike and Angel's evil self, Angelus) had any qualms about hitting the title character, or other Action Girl characters. Buffy and the other slayers' Chosen One powers sure were a big help in making sure that the female wasn't really hurt that badly.
- Also subverted in an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer ("Ted"), where Buffy comes upon Ted having just read her diary. She waits and lets Ted physically hit her, before smiling and remarking that she was so glad he hit her so she would have an excuse to pummel him.
- Maurice "Boscoe" Boscorelli of Third Watch never hit a woman. Of course in his case it was a result of growing up watching his mothers abusive relationships.
- In the MacGyver episode "Phoenix Under Siege," Mac Gyver has a fight with a female bomber. Well, not exactly. She does all the hitting, he doesn't even try to hit her and she eventually plummets to her death after missing during an attempted flying kick. By going out through the window.
- Both played straight and subverted in a single episode of Highlander: The Series. An immortal former lover of Duncan's, (a Psycho Ex Girlfriend sort) with a penchant for trying to ruin his life (or the lives of people around him) including by murdering potential Love Interests shows up. When they duel, Duncan disarms her but cannot bring himself to kill her. At that point Methos, a friend of Duncan's and a 5,000 year old Anti Hero immortal with no qualms about saying I Did What I Had To Do steps in, introduces himself to her as a man born long before the age of chivalry, challenges her to a fight and beheads her in about 30 seconds.
- In the 1960s Batman show, the villains' girlfriends never got involved in the fights, Batgirl never got hit, and in one especially WallBanger moment, the villain uses a gang of schoolgirls to capture Robin, knowing that he's 'too much of a gentleman' to hit a woman. I really wish I was making that last part up.
- Avoided in Stargate SG-1 in the episode "Prometheus Unbound." Vala Mal Doran attempts to hi-jack the Prometheus and gets into a fight with Daniel. She punches him in the face and he responds in kind leading to this response:
Vala: Oh! Oh you hit me!
Daniel: You hit me!
- This is followed by a They Live-esque rumble, where both hit the other many times, in many amusing ways.
- In one episode of Lois And Clark (a.k.a. The New Adventures Of Superman) a female villain yells at Superman "You can't hit a lady can you?". She is then, however, promptly hit on the head by one of her male victims.
- Taken more or less as a given in Ashes To Ashes — while the two male leads of Life On Mars could and did knock each other around as a regular means of conflict resolution, for Gene to raise a hand to his new female opposite number would be Crossing The Line. Not that they actually fight any less often, you understand — he's just forced to resort to verbal baiting and blatant sexual harassment.
- It's probably a side-effect of this trope that leads to Gene's sidekicks being astonished when she hits him with a fist, instead of with an open hand.
- In the S Club 7 in L.A. (aka L.A.7) episode "Fall Out," after Jo and Bradley were fighting, Tina is shocked that Bradley had hit a girl, while Jon is more concerned that Jo had half killed Bradley.
- Walker Texas Ranger rarely features female villains presumably for this reason. The few times they do appear in the show, another way around it is generally found, such as the female ranger they introduced in a Very Special Episode showing up to stop her.
- In the episode "Forgotten People", a nursing home is run by a sinister group experimenting on Alzheimer's patients. The group is headed up by a woman, and at the end of the episode, after Walker and company beat up the Mooks and the villain's sidekick, the villain herself has to be punched out by an old woman introduced in this episode, who had previously masqueraded as a Cloudcuckoolander.
- Apparently averted at least once... because Conan used that clip on his show, acting shocked after it was over.
- Given a speech about 'shooting girls' Mal gives in the pilot of Firefly, you'd think that this is alive and well in the Old West In Space. Right up to the end of 'Our Mrs Reynolds', when he corners would-be ship thief and title character Saffron. He asks her what her real name is in a moment that seems full of emotional tension. She pauses, starts to speak ... and he slugs her. Then again, this is well after she poisoned him and left him and his crew to die, so he's probably feeling a mite justified. Of course, the brawl at the start of 'The Train Job' suggests that this doesn't apply anyway.
- Seeing what usually happens to people who so much as threaten Mal's crew, let alone put them in actual danger, Saffron really got off lightly.
- The second (In Color!) intro of Wild Wild West changed a scene of Jim West incapacitating a female assassin with a kiss to incapacitating her with a right cross. That's right: Woman-punching was specially added for the new-and-improved credits sequence.
- Played with in Chuck:
Enormous bully: I don't fight girls.
Anna: Neither do I (proceeds to hand out a beatdown).
- Burn Notice is an interesting case study. In the episode Broken Rules, Fiona and Michael get into a fight. While Michael hits back, he apologizes when he lands blows and is clearly being entirely defensive in his approach. The potential for a feminist critical analysis of that scene is huge.
- Well, there's also the complicating factor that Michael is in love with Fiona.
- Which would be more of an argument were the feeling not mutual. Though Fiona's psychotic nature could be a factor in her overriding it.
- Remember: to Fiona, violence is foreplay.
- While Michael has issues hitting Fiona, Thomas O'Neill clearly doesn't. When he kidnaps Fiona in "Long Way Back", he punches her multiple times in the face.
- Averted in The IT Crowd, when Douglas gets into a fight with his one-time girlfriend April. Though she slapped him first. And she used to be a man.
- Doctor Who. In "The Giant Robot" the female Mad Scientist says The Brigadier won't shoot a woman when he threatens to do just that (seeing as she's about to destroy the world by nuclear holocaust this is frankly hard to believe). Sarah Jane Smith then grabs the Brigadier's pistol and says that she has no problem doing so. The Mad Scientist promptly surrenders.
- In an episode of Star Trek The Original Series, subverted when one of Khan's minions slapped Uhura when she refused to help them, much to the shock of the crew. He would have hit her again if the female lieutanent (who interestingly betrayed the crew earlier) didn't stop him. And a third time as well, only for Khan to interrupt.
- In the episode "Turnabout Intruder", an ex-lover of Kirk's, while in Kirk's body, hit Kirk, who was in her body. It shocked the rest of the crew and they grew suspicious, as Kirk would never do such a thing.
Newspaper Comics
- Subverted in an early Peanuts strip, where Charlie Brown is fed up with Lucy, and shouts at her. She challanges him to a fighting match, but he declines. Linus says that Charlie Brown should've slugged Lucy. Schroeder explains that Charlie Brown "would never think of hitting a girl, so he deliberately humiliated himself to hold on to his high moral standards". Charlie Brown responds that he was just afraid that she would beat him up.
- In another Peanuts strip from the late 1950s, Linus takes Lucy on in a backyard boxing match but takes two hard lefts before he knows it. Stunned, Linus begins to get serious and then Lucy lowers her gloves and says "You wouldn't hit a girl, would you?" while Linus, saying "Huh?" then lowers his gloves upon which Lucy rips a left hook to Linus' jaw to knock him out.
- Then again, this is Lucy....
Professional Wrestling
- A longtime trope in Professional Wrestling (at least among faces), averted when Triple H (then Hunter Hearst Helmsley) hired a female bodyguard (Chyna), who was more muscular than most of the men on the roster. She established her position early on by beating up Bret Hart in one of her first appearances, without giving him a chance hit her back. Then they went up against "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, who had no such qualms, and thus made it OK for men to get physical with her (and occasionally, other women). She would go on to regularly wrestle men and even win the Intercontinental title.
- Amusingly enough, however, in Canadian broadcasts of WWE programming they will cut away from a woman being hit by a man (however justified it might be storywise) even today... of course, women can beat women up with no problems. Thus leading to ridiculous situations where a group of female heels can mercilessly pummel a female face, but let a man come to her rescue and it's edit time.
- And it's not an entirely dead trope in the States, either. Spike TV (the 'Men's Network') apparently dislikes showing men striking women, even when it's a horrible heel. Or when it's a replay of something that happened during a pay-per-view. Of course, showing a 275 lb monster heel legitimately (though lightly) concussing a smaller female is alright if said monster is female herself. Yes, 275 (although I might be off by a kilo or two).
- TNA, whose programming is currently carried on Spike, frequently lampshades this; it's often mentioned that Spike has promised dire consequences for any man who hits a woman on Impact, and the female heels often use this to taunt and bait the male faces.
- Part of it may be that Spike also airs the program in Canada.
- Hilariously averted on an episode of Monday Night Raw where Santino Marella, Beth Phoenix, JBL and Randy Orton are all arguing before Batista comes out and challenges Santino, JBL and Randy at to a fight at the same time. He then apologizes and tells Beth Phoenix he'd gladly kick her ass too. After Santino comes at Batista and get dropped Beth slaps him and gets slammed on top of Santino.
Video Games
- Raijin in Final Fantasy VIII will refuse to attack if there is only a single female character left standing in the player's party, claiming "I don't hit girls, ya know?" His partner Fujin is female and has no such restriction.
- In Final Fantasy IX Zidane also has a skill in which he will protect the party females from getting hit. Zidane as a whole has a soft spot for women and will even express hesitation on fighting them when they're clearly evil.
- During a particular boss battle, the boss will refuse to attack Princess Garnet. However, he has a good reason - he was sent to kidnap her. If Garnet is the last party member alive, the boss will attempt to put her to sleep, and that counts as being defeated. So while she won't be attacked, she doesn't have to die for you to still lose.
- Subverted in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Several characters make mention of their reluctance to fight the female characters, but in the end they still fight. Even the aforementioned Zidane says he doesn't feel right about fighting Terra and Ultimecia, but once the fight starts he'll pummel them just as hard as he would a male character. Other (mostly evil) characters take the time to declare to their female opponent that they've no intent of showing mercy.
- Garland: Expect no chivalry here, woman!
- Played straight in one scene, by Zidane yet again. He arrives to see Squall about to fight Ultimecia and Garland 2v1. Zidane chooses to tackle Garland and take him off Squall's hands, because he says he didn't feel like fighting a lady.
- Ky Kiske of the Guilty Gear games has the traditional chivalrous aversion towards fighting women all-out, as evidenced by his post-fight quote against Millia Rage. If she ends up beating him, she also notes that he held back. This attitude probably ends up being more counterproductive than not, especially considering his run-ins with hair-trigger powerhouses like Baiken and Jam Cloudberry.
- In Puzzle Quest, optional party member Princess Serephine makes use of this trope as her support ability, improving the players battle skill against good opponents that "wouldn't strike a lady." Which invokes a nice bit of Fridge Logic when you're playing as a female.
- During the first half of No More Heroes, Travis Touchdown has no problem with beating on his female opponents with his beam katana during the ranking match battles but chokes when it comes time to actually kill them. He gets called out on this by Holly Summers, the sixth ranking assassin, before she eats one of her own grenades to spare Travis the experience of dispatching her. After this, Travis never shows any hesitation in finishing the job in subsequent fights against female assassins.
- Completely averted in World Of Warcraft, where the various hostile groups are entirely equal opportunity. Men, women, hideous extradimensional things, you treat them all the same.
- In fact, most Fighting Games ignore this. Rarely will gender interfere with performing punches/kicks/headbutts/slams/bites/stabs/folds/spindles/mutilations (Johnny Cage not doing his Split Punch on women is an exception).
- The very existence of female characters in the fighting genre is a subversion by itself. Yet, developers STILL managed to somehow SC
- Mortal Kombat was the first big fighting game series where gender is never even mentioned at all, not even as the occasional bit of smack talk. Of course, all people are truly equal once their flesh is burned off, or they get eaten by a dragon, or they get frozen solid and smashed to bits...
REW the should-be subsequent equality of these appearances.
- In Super Robot Wars Z, Kei Katsuragi of Orguss gets a bonus to damage against men, and a penalty against women.
- He's a womanizer extrodinaire. In Setsuko's route, he asks her to a date not 5 seconds after dispatching some grunts during their first meeting. During a truly hilarious crossover scene from King Gainer, he professes his desire to date every single woman in the world.
- Played straight and subverted with Leven/Raven (ugh...transliterations). Subverted in that he's feigning his fear of women. In reality, he hates all women besides his boss. This is displayed in-game by having his Leadership skill change from +damage on men and -damage on women change to +damage on women.
- Fallout 3 not only averts this, but actually offers a perk with a damage bonus against girls. Female characters get the same thing against guys.
- While Mass Effect lets you play as any gender, and has many female enemies, one of the most memorable scenes for fans is the one when you get to cut short an interview with a female reporter by punching her square in the face.
- Partway into Visual Novel Princess Waltz the incredibly dim Arata finally realises Chris is a girl in disguise, and finds himself unable to compete with her to his full potential. Chris finds this incredibly insulting, and later asks Arata to return a punch she gave him earlier to prove he’s treating her no different from before. Arata manages to weasel out of it by explaining that he can’t hit a friend he’s not angry with, leaving the question unanswered.
- The Sims added different slap animations depending on who a particular sim was slapping. If a sim slaps a sim of their same gender, it will be a full-force hit in the face, but if they slap a sim of the opposite gender it will be a light formal "British Officer" slap.
- Mostly averted and referenced in Sonic Adventure 2. Following Knuckles' fight with Rouge, she shames him for attacking a lady (despite her trying to kick, electrocute and at one point even strangle him). She's forced to eat her words when he saves her from dying seconds on.
- In Freedom Force, when you first encounter the Ice Queen enemy, Minuteman says "I can't hit a woman!". The Ice Queen replies "Good darling, as I'll happily hit you!". Naturally, you can kick her ass without restraint.
- In Batman: Arkham Asylum two female villains appear, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. Even though Ivy is The Dragon in the game, you don't actually get to fight either hand to hand despite having pummeled, dropped, tossed, hung, and concussed in various amusing ways a horde of (male) mooks.
- In Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, a conversation between Largo and Mia involves Largo not wanting to spar with a woman. Mia's response doesn't end well for him.
Webcomics
- Justified in the webcomic Fans! with Will Erixon: he feared becoming like his father, who beat his mother to death.
- Noted in Order Of The Stick: when a dire situation requires heroic warrior Roy Greenhilt to magically change his gender, and his friend Haley gives him some grief about it, he/she warns her: "You know, technically it's now OK for me to hit a girl. I'm just saying."
- Roy later proves to have little compunction fighting women, or at least those who mean to kill him, as shown in his battles with Miko and the fiend Sabine. True, one of them started the fight in demonic form, but after assuming a totally human form and offering her body to him, he still kicks her out the window of a multi-story building (which he should have known wouldn't be an effective means to get rid of her). The other one, however, was human start-to-finish, and Roy stabbed through her at one point. That didn't even slow her down, which only further justifies Roy's judgment.
- Belkar, meanwhile, being the Chaotic Evil Heroic Sociopath that he is, has no qualms about hurting or even killing women, as shown by his fight with Miko which he draws out specifically to hurt and enrage rather than just kill her, an an offhand reference in the prequel book as to him killing some barmaids in a bar brawl. With daggers. In one instance, however, he spares a female opponent who is sufficiently attractive by knocking her down and kissing her instead. A less attractive woman in the next strip gets one of Belkar's daggers in the back.
- Ozy And Millie plays with this trope here.
- Used straight in Misfile when Emily slaps Ash and tells her she can only hit back if she's willing to accept being a girl. Semi-averted later when Ash picks a fight with Tom and he fights back (offscreen) until they're pulled apart. (It's not a true aversion since Tom is never actually shown striking Ash.) Naturally, the Double Standard ensures that Tom gets punished and Ash doesn't even though she started the fight, which both relieves her and annoys her to no end. Fully averted later here, when Ash loses her cool and actually does hit a girl full-force in the face, only to freak out about it afterwards.
- So averted in this Loserz strip. Fortunately, Jodie isn't one to take things laying down, as seen here.
- Played with later on as well, when Jodie wants Ben to hit her as payback for her having slept with Ben's long-time crush Jessica, who had just come out of the closet. Ben plays the trope straight at first... then immediately subverts it.
- Mostly averted in 'El Goonish Shive''. Elliot refuses to go all out when sparring with Nanase but he claims it's only because he's afraid to go full out against anybody. Tedd becomes extremely upset when he learns that Damien used to hit Grace but that's probably because he loves her. However, the fact that the comic uses women hitting men with a hammer as humour and shows no real consequences when, for example, Susan slaps Tedd, does show that the double-standard is in play.
- The Villain Protagonist Hunter Ravenwood of Suicide For Hire claims that "I draw the line at the unwarranted violent abuse of the fairer sex." This does not stop him accepting female clients of the eponymous business, however, nor did it stop him from planning the most grotesque death yet for a female client. His plan involved, in Arcturus' words, "having metal hooks shoved up [her] ass to forcibly remove [her] innards". When Arcturus argued that this was too close to rape, Hunter amended the plan and shoved the hooks down her throat instead. Evidence suggests he tries not to think of the clients as people in the first place.
- Parodied in Girly in this strip.
- Last Resort, being a (reasonably) egalitarian Cyberpunk future setting, sees very few problems with women fighting alongside men on the show, or shoving people into a pit full of robotic chickens for a job interview... but when Jason slaps Daisy upside the head, almost every other woman in the room is still shocked and appalled, to the point that Jigsaw's overly dramatic Freak Out is dismissed as a bad reaction to the scene, totally ignoring the dead eyes she just showed off...
- Daisy was chained to the wall by her hands and foot, and was pretty much helpless when it happened. Of course, she was trying to provoke him at the time anyway...
- Averted hard, by Dan of Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures, when Dan unexpectedly ran into an old enemy from his adventuring days. Of course, Regina had given him a lot of reasons to take her down.
Web Original
- Totally averted by Jonas Wharton of lonelygirl15, who has no qualms about punching a female villain in the face, to the discomfort of some viewers. A particularly extreme case occurs in "Handcuffed," when he repeatedly punches a handcuffed and (mostly) helpless female villain.
Western Animation
- Lampshaded in Futurama, "Where No Fan Has Gone Before":
Shatner: There's no right way to hit a woman.
Leela: Then do it the wrong way!
- Xiaolin Showdown had an episode where Clay refused to fight the villain Kattnappe. But this was resolved when he decided crushing her in a bear hug was okay, because, you know, he didn't hit her. Well, it is just a hold...
- In an episode of Justice League, in a full on brawl between the Justice League and Gorilla Grodd's Society, Giganta, a woman the size of a several story building, causes Superman to pause by doing the "You wouldn't hit a lady, would you?" routine. So Wonder Woman announces that she would and promptly decks her.
- Of course, Superman has hit women in his own series, so that probably wouldn't have worked for long anyway.
- Ed from Ed Edd N Eddy mentions that he is forbidden to hit girls. His younger sister Sarah, who knows full well that he can lift houses with ease, endlessly exploits this.
- Of course, Ed is an endlessly cheerful Cloud Cuckoo Lander, so she can get away with it. The one time he isn't, she's genuinely frightened.
- In Ben 10 Ben won't hit or fight a female criminal, except when she has been transformed into an alien cyborg by accident; after she is transformed she tries to use the "I'm just a girl" defense only to be kicked in the head by Gwen.
- In addition, he also usually doesn't actively combat teenage villainess Charmcaster, leaving it to Gwen to defeat her (Well, Charmcaster is Gwen's arch-enemy, not Ben's, after all.)
- Popeye has to fight Bluto and the Sea Hag, but he will not strike a woman, so he gives Olive Oyl some spinach, he dispatches Bluto and she takes care of the Sea Hag.
- Even before he fell head-over-heels for her, the Transformers: Beast Wars character Silverbolt's Knight In Shining Armor personality prevented him from attacking Dark Action Girl / Femme Fatale Blackarachnia throughout the series. This fails to please anyone, as the other Maximals have no qualms over stomping her flat, and Blackarachnia herself gets sick of his chivalry, insisting that he fight back.
- In Transformers Animated, this Blackarachnia does take advantage of it. In "Along Came A Spider", she asks a gawping Bulkhead and Bumblebee "You wouldn't hurt a helpless femme-bot, would you?". Then she poisons them both. There's no Silverbolt in this series, so it looks like Optimus Prime is going to be the one she uses most.
- Soundwave doesn't follow this trope, and with ignoring Wouldnt Hurt A Child too, attacks Sari with the power of rock, slamming her against a wall.
- In one episode of the 90s Fantastic Four animated series, the Thing says he can't hit a lady when he meets Malice. It doesn't take her long to convince him that she ain't no lady. Of course, since Malice is Brainwashed And Crazy and has no compunctions about how she uses her forcefield powers she shuts Ben down real quick. (After this episode, you'll never say her powers suck again.)
- In an episode of Duck Tales, Gizmo Duck tries to get a robot to stop hitting him by disguising himself as a woman. When that doesn't work, he tries the same costume again, but with glasses. He still gets hit.
- It turns out Birdman refuses to harm women in "Empress of Evil," the one episode to feature a female villain. Fortunately, that's what non-injurious (and completely out-of-nowhere) "stun rays" are for.
- Brock Samson, the Made Of Iron murder-happy bodyguard from The Venture Bros follows his mentor's rules to the letter- he never kills women (he will fight them, however, with gusto). Said mentor, on the run from the law years later, uses this to his advantage- Brock hunts him down only to discover he's had a sex change, although he always wanted "big beautiful tits". It's purely out of his respect for him, as Brock seems to think the rule is silly, and tries to provide examples where killing a woman would be okay.
- In an episode of The Fairly Odd Parents, Timmy and his grandfather are transported to the world of classic cartoons. When Vicky tries to crash the party and complete her evil plan, Timmy can't hit her because in this era of cartoons, a man couldn't hit a woman. In response, Timmy merely wishes for his fairy godparents to turn Vicky into a man. Problem solved!
- In another episode, when Mrs. Turner as Mighty Mom faces one of the Nega Chin's henchmen, he refuses to face her because he doesn't fight girls. She retorts with "I'm not a girl! I'm a soccer mom!" and hits him with soccer balls.
- Parodied in an episode of Family Guy, when Joe attempts to arrest Lois for shoplifting, he pins her to the ground and begins brutally assaulting her before pausing to apologize that due to equal opportunity legislation, he must treat both male and female suspects equally.
- And in the beginning of the infamous family brawl scene, after Peter hits Lois:
Lois: You can't hit me! I'm a girl!
Peter: Sometimes I wonder.
- And yet she had just viciously belted Peter in the face mere moments before he returned the favor (and she's had earlier earned a black belt in Taijutsu to boot). Nice Double Standard there, Lois!
- By and large averted in Avatar: The Last Airbender, but played with, in in-story Kayfabe no less, in the episode "The Blind Bandit":
- The trailer for the upcoming Wonder Woman animated movie has WW saying "It's not polite to hit a lady." Some fans found it rather odd that she would say this, considering her native culture is a Proud Warrior Race. There's a good chance that line was take deliberately out-of-context.
- Completely averted in Kim Possible where not a single male is above hitting a hostile female if given the chance. Not that any of them are good enough to actually land a hit on either Kim or Shego...
- With the notable exception of Ron, who has never physically atacked any girl (except electronique, but then he was not Ron, he was Zorpox), even when facing shego and mind controlled kim with his hands tied up, and warmonga doesn't count because she's an alien.
- Also completely averted in The Powerpuff Girls where every single villain has no problem not only attacking three girls but three kindergarten-aged girls.
- In the Freaky Friday episode of Phineas And Ferb, Perry the
Platypus Teenage Girl defeats his nemesis Dr. Doofenshmirtz even more easily than usual, because Doofenshmirtz can't hit a girl: "It's so, como se dice, awkward!"
- Averted in Batman The Brave And The Bold. When Mrs. Manface gets her mech disarmed, she tries the line, but Batman only says: "The Hammer of Justice is Unisex!" and floors her.
- Also averted in Danny Phantom. Girls and guys regularly get smacked around. Sam of the Token Trio is just as likely to take damage as her friends. Danny, being hero, constantly battles both male and female villains without clause. That also includes Anti Hero Valerie whom Danny only avoids hurting her enough that she won't, ya know, die.
Other
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