Punching A Woman 101: When Is It OK? (PODCAST)

The Baltimore Ravens announced today the termination of the contract of Ray Rice after a video of him punching his wife unconscious surfaced today from TMZ.

The NFL piled on by suspending Rice from the league indefinitely, and the ensuing media firestorm has sparked outrage, casting fresh light onto the behavior of star athletes and the free pass they get for bad behavior.

Previously, the NFL had suspended Ray Rice for two games, due to footage emerging which showed him dragging his fiancée out of the elevator. At the time there was no footage of him actually punching her.

Both Ray and his fiancée Janay had been arrested over the incident and Rice was allowed to continue to play after he agreed to enter a counseling program. The Ravens coach even defended Rice’s character.

But now the NFL appears to have changed course, saying they never saw the original video of Rice dragging his unconscious fiancée out of the elevator, and upon viewing the newest video where he knocks the woman out, Rice is now out of the league.

Still, upon viewing the video, it does appear that Rice’s wife was participating in the violence in an aggressive manner. But who cares? We don’t take female violence seriously apparently. The Baltimore Ravens are in hot water right now for a tweet they wrote back in May, which stated that Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident. They’ve since deleted that tweet, but is that victim blaming? The video does show her throwing blows as well.

Columnist and project manager for Liberty.Me's Tiffany Madison joins the Freedom Report podcast to discuss this topic. Madison is the author of the controversial piece "When is it OK for a man to punch a woman," which analyzed an incident where a man was demonized after defending himself from a female attacker at a football game.

All this leads to so many interesting questions such as, Why did the government give Rice such a lenient sentence? Do sports heroes often get lenient treatment due to their social status?  What kind of force is appropriate to defend yourself from a violent attack, if that attacker is a woman? Is it ever OK to strike a woman?

Listen to the Freedom Report podcast below for answers to these questions.