North Carolina law: "Assault On a Female"

Story here. Bizarre enough: a crazy guy breaks into a woman's home and offers to give her a backrub. In no way am I defending his scary, bonkers behavior. What I am doing is pointing out that N. Carolina actually has a separate law called "Assault On A Female". When the law was brought before the NC Court of Appeals in 1979, the judges upheld it, saying it didn't violate the Equal Protection Clause. Feminists decry sexism enshrined in law, but only if it goes against women. Where are their objections to laws going the other way? Excerpt:

'In reaching this conclusion, we do not find it necessary to rely upon the numerous works documenting and attempting to quantify various social factors and which tend to establish that men, particularly in conjugal settings, assault women more frequently and more violently than women assault men, while women more frequently submit to such violence. We base our decision instead upon the demonstrable and observable fact that the average adult male is taller, heavier and possesses greater body strength than the average female. We take judicial notice of these physiological facts, and think that the General Assembly was also entitled to take note of the differing physical sizes and strengths of the sexes. Having noted such facts, the General Assembly could reasonably conclude that assaults and batteries without deadly weapons by physically larger and stronger males are likely to cause greater physical injury and risk of death than similar assaults by females. Having so concluded, the General Assembly could choose to provide greater punishment for these offenses, which it found created greater danger to life and limb, without violating the Fourteenth Amendment.'