Girl starts a fight and attacks a guy in class, gets destroyed.

Realistically? It's a fine fucking line to walk. Sometimes, if you fight back and escape a situation the assailant will take it personally and strive to track you down to retaliate. Either immediately like the above story or later, when you're not expecting it. That's why there's witness protection, to shield people from violent retaliation.

The idea is that if you show a greater will to violence, you will establish such fear in your attacker that you are no longer worth threatening, you are too dangerous. Their attack will end and they will only want to avoid you or make amends.

We are still animals and we absolutely follow pack hierarchy. It's not usually so obvious as open fighting, but it certainly can and does come to that. If you make the other party truly believe you are dominant, they will be far less likely to challenge you, physically or otherwise.

However, we live in a society where people who might have otherwise expressed dominance, or believe they're dominant in error (pretty much anyone who ever refers to themselves as "alpha as fuck" for example) will not accept "defeat" (whatever that means in their situation at the time) at the hands of someone they will not allow themselves to see as holding more power than themselves. This, incidentally, at at the core of most racism AND sexism.

But what it means is that even if you absolutely dominate an attacker, it is entirely possible that they will refuse to believe it and will return with a grudge, often ready for an escalation of force (bringing a weapon, friends, etc).

Not to mention that it's not just them, even if you do "teach your attacker a lesson" and scare them off or kill them, their friends or family might see you as challenging them indirectly and respond with force.

Once the dance starts, there's not a great solution, just a series of choices you can make based on your capabilities, knowledge, and what you can live with.

/r/JusticePorn Thread Link - liveleak.com