Iran Cleric Pummeled by ‘Badly Covered’ Woman After Warning

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54. How do you define "threaten"?

He was acting under the authority of the state. Implicit in state-sanctioned authority is the threat of legitimized violence--whether he does the striking himself, or whether she is detained and beaten for refusing to follow his orders, the threat of a forceful response to resistance is an overt tool to obtain compliance. Her options were as follows: comply with his request, refuse and face the violence that would be done to her as a result (and I do consider forced detention to be violence, whether physical harm is done or not), or refuse, disable the authority figure from using either his own force or the force of the state to sanction her transgressions, and leave without having her identity detected.

In general I would see your point that we should not congratulate the use of violence by women against men. However, in this particular case, focusing on the immediate threat posed by the man in question, and ignoring the threat of state-administered violence which he had at his disposal, misrepresents the situation, as well as the options available to this particular woman.