She would beat you up, but her mom is calling.

Female UFC fighter Ronda Rousey has caused a stir with her boasting that there isn’t a man in the UFC in her weight class she couldn’t beat:

I never say that I’m incapable of beating anybody, because I don’t believe in putting limits on myself.

So I mean, I would have to say if you’re just talking about what’s in the realm of possibility of what’s possible of who I could beat, well, I could beat 100 percent of them. But, um, you can’t tell me that there’s a zero percent chance that I can beat anyone on the planet, so I’m never gonna say that.

Rousey’s own mother thought this was foolish enough that she contradicted this to the press:

Seriously, that’s a stupid idea. I’m as much a feminist as anyone but the fact is that biologically, there’s a difference between men and women.

Hello. Duh. A woman who is 135 pounds and a man who is 135 pounds are not physically equal.

When pressed about her boasting Rousey didn’t back down, but explained that she rightfully won’t ever be allowed to prove her boasts because doing so would mean allowing a man to hit a woman.  She objects to fighting a man on philosophical grounds, because while she is quite pleased with with the image of a woman beating up a man, the thought of a man hitting back is unconscionable:

It’s not a reality. They’re not gonna do anything like that. Fights are chaotic. Anything can happen. And there’s no setting in which we should condone a man hitting a woman. I really just don’t think that any athletic commission on Earth would ever condone something like that.

Fights are going to go both ways. You’re going to see both people hitting each other. I don’t think we should celebrate a man hitting a woman in any kind of setting.

I can only assume Rousey is a staunch opponent of women in combat.  If a man punching a woman is taboo, a man shooting a woman or blowing her up must disturb her all the more.

Rousey knows she will receive a great deal of deference from men, and she is so free to boast about her ability to beat them precisely because she can rely on this deference.  What isn’t discussed is what kind of deference Rousey owes to men in return.