I know that coming in here to defend Strummer isn't going to be a popular move, but it doesn't seem to me that he was saying that Rice was justified in punching her in the face and knocking her out. That's criminal behavior no matter what happens (unless it's self-defense, which this very clearly wasn't), and in a just world, he'd be in jail right now. I think we can all agree on that.
The point is that she, like he, is also responsible for her behavior. They both lost their tempers and got physical, which is never OK for anyone to do. He is a 220lb professional athlete, so obviously he's a lot more dangerous than she is, but that doesn't mean that she wasn't trying to hurt him, and that she wasn't wrong for trying to do so.
Additionally, I have to wonder if not taking female-on-male assault seriously may be a factor in these kinds of things. Again, what Rice did was inexcusable, and again, I think he should be in jail for it. But let's say that when she started hitting him, he'd walked away, called the police, and filed a complaint. Do we think it would have been taken seriously? When Chuck Finley's wife assaulted him and the police were called, the media's response was to mock and emasculate him. We need to, as a society, teach men that it's always OK to walk away from any sort of confrontation, and that it doesn't make you less of a man.
Getting personal for a bit here, but I used to be in a relationship with a girl who was bipolar, and from time to time, she would get really angry and try to hurt me, physically, throwing things, punching, pulling hair, etc. Now, she was a very petite girl, and I never felt that I was in danger, but that doesn't make it feel good when your girlfriend is wailing on you. And I never reported any of it because I felt like I was expected to just take it, because I was the man and she was a woman.
Now, of course, what Ray Rice did (punching a woman so hard that she was knocked unconscious) was so far beyond the pale that it can't possibly be justified, and the way she was hitting him was not remotely comparable. But let's say he had just slapped her across the face a couple of times - would that have been justified? Would that have been ok? She's not going to the hospital for a couple of slaps, but it's still wrong to hit a woman - or any person - even if it's "not that hard." So in that vein, I think we do need to take her behavior seriously, and admit that women should be held accountable for hitting men (and, again, I'm going to reiterate here that this accountability would not be in the form of violence, but rather in involving the authorities and having those authorities take it seriously), and if, in the future, a story comes out that a man, professional athlete or otherwise, was being hit by a woman, we treat him like a victim, not like a joke.
And just as an addendum - I want to be very clear about this, so I'm repeating it again: I'm not defending Ray Rice. There is nary a doubt in my mind that he's a dangerous, violent criminal, and he belongs in jail. He's lucky she was only knocked unconscious, as he could have killed her hitting her like that. Even if it were appropriate to hit someone back because they hit you, which it isn't (excluding self-defense, which again, this was clearly not, as he very clearly was never in any danger), punching her so hard that she's knocked unconscious is so far out of the realm of reasonable or acceptable behavior that it is completely unjustifiable.
