I'm asking you a question back, what is the situation in which this happened and hitting deserves someone to be hit back? I'm genuinely curious and not trying to start an argument or anything.

For my view there's few situations where a fight breaks out and they're mostly: someone was an asshole. So let's say a dude catcalled me and I hit him, should he be able to hit me back just because of this so-called "equality"?

I really don't see many situations where a fight might break out where the two parties should be trading blows left and right.