My dad always told me to punch bullies in the mouth, though I was too cowardly to do so.
It was a jungle when I was growing up. And it is a jungle today. It is unfortunate that zero-tolerance policies keep boys (and some girls) from working out their differences with a little fisticuffs.
Now get off my lawn :-)
With zero tolerance policies, often both parties get punished in an altercation. Even if the victim never hits back. So if you're getting punished for "fighting" while cowering in the corner, you might as well go down swinging.
This was genius because if you were big, it was considered extremely cowardly and unmanly to enter a dispute with someone smaller than you.
If you did, your friends would make fun of you for picking a fight with no personal risk, since everybody knew that no matter what it would come to blows. There is neither honor nor glory in a cruiserweight battering a featherweight for six minutes, and everyone knew it.
And little guys never picked fights either, for obvious reasons. In fact it ended up in practice that hardly anyone ever disagreed about anything if they were even approximately near Mr. Burns, and we all learned a bunch of very important lessons about character, civility, and how to stay on your feet after you get hit.
If I ever have kids I will go to great lengths to have them grow up somewhere like that.
I was bullied to shit at school, all anonymously (pre-internet era)....urine soaked chocolates put through my front door, cans of drink emptied and refilled with urine, someone even fired an air rifle through my front door one weekend..not all bullying is "easily" solved by retaliating in kind, and punching someone will have fairly heavy consequences as an adult, so perhaps it is best to learn other ways of dealing with it..."But he started it" does not cut it if someone bullies you at work.
(incidentally, I later found out that it was my "friends" who had been doing this)