Women can look after themselves

Most of us will have found last week's picture on most front pages of a young man punching a girl in the face so forcibly as to lift her off her feet deeply, unbelievably, shocking.

If the young man had been a thug trying to steal a girl's handbag, that would have been bad enough, but for a young man to use that degree of male force against a member of the weaker sex in a mere water frolic among friends in Hyde Park was far, far worse; something which we have never seen before and trust never to have to see again.

Steady on. Did I say "the weaker sex"? Surely one doesn't use that kind of discriminatory language anymore? For nowadays women are meant to be just as well suited to armed combat as men. That is why they are fighting and dying alongside our boys in Afghanistan,

and if the law declares that they can be expected to look bearded tribesmen in the eye, there can be no reason to suppose that they can't be expected to exchange punches with young men who lose their tempers when doused with fizzy lemonade.

That is exactly right. Our concern about that girl with a black eye is indeed a bit silly. Either we give up the idea of the male sex naturally protecting the weaker sex, or we give up the idea of women being the equal of men in the armed forces and the police.

Realistically speaking, of course, the feminist movement are not going to give up on that idea. There can be no 'turning back' on that one. So we had better get used to seeing more pictures of this horrible kind in future.