source here btw: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WouldntHitAGirl
- Commonly Truth in Television; many parents do teach their sons this rule. Men who break this taboo, even in self-defense against a woman who poses a credible threat, are treated with contempt in many cultures.
- Criminal courts are shown to be more lenient towards female defendants, who gives them sentences that are not harsh, severe, or strict, are less likely to be convicted or given a custodial sentence, and are more likely to get bail after being arrested.
- During the New York newsboys' strike of 1899note , the striking newsboys used violence against scabs (i.e. boys selling papers in defiance of the strike) and against the delivery wagons that distributed the newspapers, but they never used violence against the women who owned and ran newsstands that sold the boycotted newspapers. Kid Blink, leader of the strike, said "A feller can't soak a lady."
- Although Angel Eyes, the villain from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has no problem with hitting girls, Lee Van Cleef, the actor portraying him, absolutely refused to, requiring the director to use a stunt man in the scene where it happens.
- In 2011, wrestler Joel Northrup
gave up his chance to win the Iowa wrestling championship because his religious beliefs prevented him from wrestling his female opponent.
- Sex columnist Dan Savage has received a few letters from girls who like being knocked around in a Safe, Sane, and Consensual context, complaining that their menfolk took the not hitting girls message too much to heart and won't do it.
- After a spat between NASCAR drivers Mike Skeen and Max Papis, Skeen's girlfriend angrily confronted Papis and slapped him so hard that she sprained his jaw such that he couldn't chew the next day. He remained stone-faced and walked away, saying "I never hit a lady"
- A follow-up to the famous Milgram experiment, which tested to see if participants would be willing to give (fake) increasingly painful electrical shocks to complete strangers, checked to see how people responded to shocking those of the opposite gender. It turned out that men were much, much less willing to shock women than vice-versa.
- This infamously bit actor Ken Gibbel in the ass when Linda Hamilton punished him for adhering to this trope during production of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The injury the sadistic orderly Douglas suffers courtesy of a broom as Sarah Connor makes her escape from Pescadero? That really happened, due in part to his repeatedly pulling his punches in an earlier scene when he's supposed to hit her, which meant she had to do repeated takes of painfully falling to her knees on a hard tile floor.
- Implied with rapper Bow Wow.
- This has been debated to be one of the reasons Sonya was one of the two least used characters in Mortal Kombat (1992): Not only did the mostly male players prefer not to use the only woman, but the realistic and bloody fighting made them feel bad about beating her senseless.
- When writing Spy vs. Spy issues, the creator found it hard to find a way for the female Grey Spy to lose due to not wanting her to suffer the same over the top deaths the spies normally suffered. In a case of Tropes Are Tools, however, this meant the Grey Spy never lost and thus became very unpopular with readers, resulting in her eventually being retired.
