I had a law subject where they said that one law/fairness principle is that you can’t judge the same things that are different. Context matters.

If you take an action isolated, it might be the same. One person slapped the other and scaled conflict. But if you look at them in context, then patterns and social constructs arise. But we don’t live isolated. The context today is a society that until recently considered valid that men “disciplined” women. And those people would see nothing wrong with a man slapping a woman to “put her in her place”. This exists today. So a man slapping a woman still is read in that context. It is still a show of dominance. The very same context is the one that reads a woman slapping a man as an immature reaction but “harmless”. Two sides to the same coin.

But at the same time, what I’m seeing more and more is that we are expected to be “civil” even when as you say, there has been a “red herring”. I think that we agree that slapping people for petty reasons is not right. I just want to point out that sometimes there are valid reasons or “red herrings” as you call them. And I do precisely because you people would claim that slapping someone who grabs your ass is an “overreaction” and won’t see it as a red herring. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but I’ve basically seen that. So context is very important here.