I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how escalation works.
She tries to grab a glass (low impact), he responds by tossing the entire drink in her face (high impact). That was escalation. He still had the glass, she accomplished nothing, but he “retaliated” anyways.
She goes to push him (low impact), he pushes her to the ground and then follows her to kick her while she’s down (high impact). The initial action here, a response to the previous escalation, also poses no threat to this guy but he once again chooses to increase the stakes by responding disproportionately.
Rinse and repeat. Literally everything that happened after the glass grab at the beginning of this was a direct response to his escalations. Sure, nothing forced her to continue to respond, but that’s irrelevant here because it would never have happened if he had responded more appropriately.
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how escalation works.
She tries to grab a glass (low impact), he responds by tossing the entire drink in her face (high impact). That was escalation. He still had the glass, she accomplished nothing, but he “retaliated” anyways.
She goes to push him (low impact), he pushes her to the ground and then follows her to kick her while she’s down (high impact). The initial action here, a response to the previous escalation, also poses no threat to this guy but he once again chooses to increase the stakes by responding disproportionately.
Rinse and repeat. Literally everything that happened after the glass grab at the beginning of this was a direct response to his escalations. Sure, nothing forced her to continue to respond, but that’s irrelevant here because it would never have happened if he had responded more appropriately.