I agree that these actions do not exist in a vacuum. What vacuum produces this reaction?
"im so fuckin amped for this its not even funny…i just love watching this guys face in slow motion as he turns and fires…and you can see the when he connects it probably feels like he just blew a huge load after holding it in for a week"
@emistijl: Oh my god. I know you didn't write that, and your point is valid. Good even. Yes.
But now I have to go excuse myself from the universe because that quotation is too terrible for me to continue to exist in a reality in which that exists. Holy shit I just want to die thinking about this. I wonder if the person who posted that has a girlfriend? It sounds like something a high schooler would say. Oh my god how sad for the universe.
You know who could use a good talkin' to about men's violence against other men? MEN.
Men are violent against women; men are violent against men. Yet nobody ever wants to confront actual MEN about it.
And if you think the government is actually protecting vulnerable groups from male violence you are deluded. I can't believe I just read this here.
@SarahMC: VERY good point - the problem seems to be that very few people except for women care about violence against women. As any woman who's been victimized (again) by the very system supposed to protect her when she reports such violence.
@Penny: hmmm... I don't think that's a conclusion he came to on his own. She was at least out there with a golf club, and at least took it to the back of his car. Anyway - that, I think, is beside his point.
@pleppy: Besides his point? I think it has everything to do with his point. I am soooo not diving into this discussion because I have made it very clear in past posts about Woods that violence is deplorable regardless of its victim. "Beat him bloody" is a pretty inflammatory way of putting it given that we don't even know what the fuck happened. Let's not play mind-reader, here. I feel like because these two cultural events have occurred within a relatively short span of time, he's trying to draw a line that hardly even exists. A lot of what he had to say is totally valid and thoughtful, but I have to say that I felt pretty deflated when I finished reading this post. And even more so after reading some of the comments. I am here way too much, so I see what people say, and I honestly haven't come away from any of the referenced posts with the thought that the community was, by in large, somehow explaining away female-on-male violence.
I guess I dove into the discussion just a little bit...
@bluebears: I wanted to headdesk just after reading the title. All I could hear was, "What about MEEEE?"
I get his point and I think it's an extremely valid point. I just think he went about it all wrong. Introducing something like this here is like preaching to the choir.
@little_librarian: right. I mean, it's valid to say that a culture of misogyny and violence hurts both men and women but to call commenters out for not...I don't even know? talking about violence against men in a post about a women getting punched in the face by a man? Is just unfair in the extreme and beside the point.
I'm looking forward to more of these point/counterpoint posts, by the way. Let's all give Cord a nice, warm welcome!
(Come to think of it, we already did, below. Well, the Jezebel version of one, anyway.)
It's pretty clear that it normatively, in a vacuum, should not be worse to hit a woman than to hit a man. But in a patriarchy it is, because of all the gendered aspects of violence that other commenters have covered. The conclusion to be drawn here is not "people are overly sympathetic to women," or "people don't take violence against men seriously," it's "we have a long way to go before the revolution."
"comfortable talking about violence as if it's something to be categorized and rated"
I don't understand why this is such a big issue. To discuss things meaningfully we have to break them up into pieces. Of course violence is bad and of course reasonable people condemn it - but that's it? The discussion has to stop there? I think that is wrong. I think it stems from discomfort navigating these complex social relationships.
Look, I am always going to feel sick when presented in the flesh with violence. Full stop. If I see a man smash another man's face it is awful, stipulated. For me, it is worse to see a man do it to a woman. We've covered it ad infinitum below why, power imbalances and the like. I'm more interested in determining if feeling like that is because of an internalization of patriarchal mores - which I think some people here would argue, or because of the loadedness of the actions because of the assumed (I would say rightly) patriarchal motivations of the perpetrators.
I'm not comfortable with gender essentialism but I need it pointed out to me a lot, even though I've been a feminist and have "studied" it since I was 13 - so 20 years. What I'm not interested in is all of us declaring violence in any form is bad and that being it. That's just a starting point.
Also, anyone who uses female to male violence to counter or derail discussions regarding male to female violence is committing a classical logical fallacy and derailing the conversation. It's a red herring and has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It is also a false equivocation on a societal level as I think we can all stipulate that proportionally male to female violence far outweighs the reverse. It is not meaningless on the personal level but it is not pertinent to the discussion.
I am of the opinion that you shouldn't hit people, period, and I've defended myself against both men and women in my day. Still, yeah, a guy in a bar punching a woman in the face is worse than him hitting another man in the face, because these kinds of things do not occur in vacuum. There is a cultural and historical framework that these acts exist in. It makes those acts against women worse.
"But why is it unimaginably worse for an asshole to haul off and hit Snooki than for an asshole to haul off and hit a man Snooki's size, for no reason whatsoever?"
Because of the MASSIVE historical implications and power dynamics?
Let's see, men were allowed to hit women until pretty recently--and in some places, they still are able to hit or even kill them with little to no repercussions. As a woman, I need to worry about violence and rape basically every day--at the bus stop, in the parking lot at the store, getting my house keys out while there are people nearby. Add to that the endless power struggle that occurs in our lives simply because we are female, ranging from being paid less, getting talked over in meetings, being passed over for promotions or tenure, a higher risk of being a victim of sexual and/or domestic violence. Oh, and if I don't respond to some guy calling to me on the street or talking to me in a bar, I get yelled at and/or threatened. I've heard of other women getting followed and persistently harassed after such incidents. If I complain to someone else about getting yelled at, the odds are good that they will tell me that I should have humored him. What this does that male-on-male or female-on-female violence is reinforce misogyny.
@DangerMouse: Don't forget that if you do decide to punch a guy on the street for slyly groping you or making sexual comments or threats, you can very well be arrested for assault. Happened in my city a few years ago.
@DangerMouse: Hello! Yes! I like this especially, "Oh, and if I don't respond to some guy calling to me on the street or talking to me in a bar, I get yelled at and/or threatened. I've heard of other women getting followed and persistently harassed after such incidents. If I complain to someone else about getting yelled at, the odds are good that they will tell me that I should have humored him."
Because when I've been to bars and guys have tried to talk to me, and I've politely said "hello" and turned back to the conversation that they interrupted I am a bitch. If I say hello back and chat with him for a while but then decline a drink, I'm a bitch. If I do let him interrupt my conversation and let him buy me a drink and then I don't fuck him, I'm a bitch. But if I do fuck him, I'm a slut. And if I go home with him but decide to not fuck him and he rapes me, I'm asking for it. And if I take the drink but don't go home with him but get drunk and he takes me home with him and rapes me, I'm asking for it. And if I don't say hello and politely turn down his overtures and then he gets mad and calls me a Fucking Dyke or a Fucking Cunt, and I respond, then I'm a bitch, and if he punches me then not only did I kind of deserve it (I'm pretty annoyingyou know plus I yelled at the poor guy who was just expressing his frustration at my refusal to give up the vagina and fuck that he's entitled to since he did say hello to me) but it has nothing to do with my gender. And if he calls me a Fucking Cunt and I walk out of the bar with my friends ignoring him because the last time this happened I got punched and even though he's clearly going to ruin my night I'd rather not get punched, and then he follows me out of the bar yelling at me and then maybe grabs me and maybe even rapes me than I was pretty much asking for it, because I had the nerve to show up in public. The nerve to drink. The nerve to say no. The nerve to look sexual but not be sexually available at someone's demand. The nerve to assert my bodily integrity and leave. The nerve to control my sexuality.
Great piece, Cord! FWIW, many men also have a primal instinct where they immediately have a violent response to the sight of a man assaulting a woman, even if they are complete strangers. It's a viglante instinct. The craziest case I've witnessed was when a dozen men suddenly attacked a male slamdancer who accidentally smacked a nearby woman during a concert - nevermind that guys were fighting other guys throughout the day (it was ironically during the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in SF, which celebrated pacifism).
@SarahMC: In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd swear that men have an instinct to band together in SUVs, slowly following strange women on the street yelling "you look like a bitch!" out the window.
I usually argue a there is a lot of cognitive dissonance on this site when it comes to the essence of gender equality. (The comments about any male actor who makes it into "snap judgment", for example, make any other article about female objectification a wash).
I'm not 100% sure I agree in this case.
I understand how it might have felt for you personally to take a punch meant for a friend (I want to make a comment about how stupid it is to dump a tray full of nachos on a group of drunks and not expect to get punched, but no sense rubbing salt in an old wound. )
Your argument is an equivocal distinction however. You do not know if your friend was going to get the same treatment you were.
We have different standards in for assault on women versus men because the consequences are disproportionate.
My GF and I are the same height an roughly the same build. If she punched me in the face, it would hurt. If did the same I could kill her. Her 2 year old son already is stronger than her 5 year old daughter.
No amount of gender equality is going to fix that. So we have social contracts that we teach to prevent the disproportionate devastation that assault can cause.
You can argue the reasons or the history. You can argue size differences and whatnot. You can argue it's unfair.
These actions do not exist in a vacuum, Cord. Women are raised from an early age not to make a fuss, not to cause a scene. This means that, because of the Patriarchy, we aren't as prepared to handle violence and that the airing of said violence against women means something different then the airing of violence against men.
Airing the scene during the show and airing it during promos for the next week's show are two very different things. Is it possible out of context people may believe it is domestic violence? (I don't know because I don't want to watch it).
I also have a problem with them advertising real violence, no matter the gender of the parties. There is a difference between advertising a show with fictional violence and advertising a show with violence that actually occurred.
Where I do have an issue with the gender is how people have reacted. That there are websites where people are making the fact that it was a man hitting a woman into something to celebrate. They are making it a gender issue.
Hitting is obviously always wrong. But this wasn't just about a man hitting a woman--it was about the representation of a man hitting a woman. I don't think MTV shouldn't have aired it, any more than I think MTV shouldn't be airing anything it does. But there is a difference in the representation of a woman getting hit by a man and any other gender permutation.
Because women getting hit by men is a serious social problem; women hitting men is not a society-wide epidemic the way male-on-female violence. To act like the power dynamics of gender don't have anything to do with a fight is absurd. Even if a women is as strong as a man, the power dynamics are just not the same. Women have been taught not only to do anything they can to keep a man from getting angry, but that a man could kill them if he wanted. Men are not conditioned to feel threatened the way women are. Women are not conditioned to threaten the way men are. Is that ok? Obviously not. But pretending like it isn't different is disingenuous at best, misogynist and dangerous at worst.
Just like with rape--when a woman rapes a man, it's just as horrifying as a man who rapes a woman. But when we're talking about widespread problems, they aren't the same. And when we're talking about televised representations of violence, it isn't the same either, because representation is different from singular incidents.
And this? "The government has laws in place to protect America's most vulnerable victims—battered wives, children, elders, etc.—from calculated attacks, as it should."
Come on. The government has laws against all kinds of things, but for some reason male violence direct at women is strangely still a series problem. I mean, the government has laws in place to protect women from getting raped--so should we all just chill out about this whole "rape culture" business? I mean, if female rapists are just as bad as male rapists (which they are), does that mean that the problem of widespread acceptance of male rapists and rape culture (which is distinctly about the rape of women by men) is not important, or that we should also try to focus on the societal problem of widespread cultural acceptance of female rapists? Because there isn't widespread cultural acceptance or encouragement of female rapists--that's why women don't rape as often as men do.
The widespread socialization of men as violent and women as receptacles for that violence is why this violence is different. No singular violent incident is made any more or less worse the genders of those involved. But to act like male violence against women is no different when you're not talking about an actual act, but an actual act that is then turned into mass entertainment is not the same thing as a singular act of violence.
Oh and also Chris Brown was tried and found guilty of assault, and it was obvious from the get-go that he was guilty. Tiger Woods, his neighbors, the cops, the doctors all say that his injuries were consistent with a car accident. Why should I trust TMZ about this, when they're known for sensationalist BS?
And even acting like domestic violence against women is the same thing as domestic violence against men is some MRA bullshit. Again, singular acts of violence? Yes. But gendered violence isn't singular in this country.
There's a litmus test for this. Would the guy in question hit a man with glasses or knee another guy in the groin? If he would, I think it's safe to say he's an all-around megadouche* who truly, beautifully, sees people not in terms of race, creed or gender but in how likely they are to pop him one back.
I do think it must be awful to be a guy who finds himself confronted with violence a lot especially while out in groups, the flip-side to being a woman who's got to consider it whenever she's out alone (or on a date, in a relationship, etc.). As someone commented in the original post, we've got to stop using men's lives as the bar for equality. Equality doesn't mean beating up whoever you want – it means beatings becoming socially unacceptable for everyone.
@Pizza!Pizza!Pizza!: "As someone commented in the original post, we've got to stop using men's lives as the bar for equality. Equality doesn't mean beating up whoever you want – it means beatings becoming socially unacceptable for everyone."
This. The difference between Liberal and Radical Feminism in a nutshell (yes, capitalized, they are ideologies). I like to mix the two - discuss the radical feminism in the context of idealism and principles but the liberal feminism as a way to move through the world. YMMV of course but it behooves us to keep these differences forefront when we're having these discussions. Especially during exam season. :)
07:55 PM
"im so fuckin amped for this its not even funny…i just love watching this guys face in slow motion as he turns and fires…and you can see the when he connects it probably feels like he just blew a huge load after holding it in for a week"
[boston.barstoolsports.com]
Not to mention, the article refers to the punching action as "coldcocking."
(starts to hum "there's no sex in your violence"...)
08:02 PM
But now I have to go excuse myself from the universe because that quotation is too terrible for me to continue to exist in a reality in which that exists. Holy shit I just want to die thinking about this. I wonder if the person who posted that has a girlfriend? It sounds like something a high schooler would say. Oh my god how sad for the universe.
07:39 PM
Men are violent against women; men are violent against men. Yet nobody ever wants to confront actual MEN about it.
And if you think the government is actually protecting vulnerable groups from male violence you are deluded. I can't believe I just read this here.
07:50 PM
07:30 PM
That's a very interesting and convenient way of spinning it.
07:35 PM
07:40 PM
07:48 PM
I guess I dove into the discussion just a little bit...
07:53 PM
I mean, it's possible. Likely?
07:25 PM
07:42 PM
I get his point and I think it's an extremely valid point. I just think he went about it all wrong. Introducing something like this here is like preaching to the choir.
07:47 PM
07:13 PM
(Come to think of it, we already did, below. Well, the Jezebel version of one, anyway.)
07:06 PM
07:05 PM
I don't understand why this is such a big issue. To discuss things meaningfully we have to break them up into pieces. Of course violence is bad and of course reasonable people condemn it - but that's it? The discussion has to stop there? I think that is wrong. I think it stems from discomfort navigating these complex social relationships.
Look, I am always going to feel sick when presented in the flesh with violence. Full stop. If I see a man smash another man's face it is awful, stipulated. For me, it is worse to see a man do it to a woman. We've covered it ad infinitum below why, power imbalances and the like. I'm more interested in determining if feeling like that is because of an internalization of patriarchal mores - which I think some people here would argue, or because of the loadedness of the actions because of the assumed (I would say rightly) patriarchal motivations of the perpetrators.
I'm not comfortable with gender essentialism but I need it pointed out to me a lot, even though I've been a feminist and have "studied" it since I was 13 - so 20 years. What I'm not interested in is all of us declaring violence in any form is bad and that being it. That's just a starting point.
Also, anyone who uses female to male violence to counter or derail discussions regarding male to female violence is committing a classical logical fallacy and derailing the conversation. It's a red herring and has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It is also a false equivocation on a societal level as I think we can all stipulate that proportionally male to female violence far outweighs the reverse. It is not meaningless on the personal level but it is not pertinent to the discussion.
07:11 PM
06:57 PM
06:56 PM
Because of the MASSIVE historical implications and power dynamics?
Let's see, men were allowed to hit women until pretty recently--and in some places, they still are able to hit or even kill them with little to no repercussions. As a woman, I need to worry about violence and rape basically every day--at the bus stop, in the parking lot at the store, getting my house keys out while there are people nearby. Add to that the endless power struggle that occurs in our lives simply because we are female, ranging from being paid less, getting talked over in meetings, being passed over for promotions or tenure, a higher risk of being a victim of sexual and/or domestic violence. Oh, and if I don't respond to some guy calling to me on the street or talking to me in a bar, I get yelled at and/or threatened. I've heard of other women getting followed and persistently harassed after such incidents. If I complain to someone else about getting yelled at, the odds are good that they will tell me that I should have humored him. What this does that male-on-male or female-on-female violence is reinforce misogyny.
06:58 PM
06:59 PM
07:01 PM
07:18 PM
Because when I've been to bars and guys have tried to talk to me, and I've politely said "hello" and turned back to the conversation that they interrupted I am a bitch. If I say hello back and chat with him for a while but then decline a drink, I'm a bitch. If I do let him interrupt my conversation and let him buy me a drink and then I don't fuck him, I'm a bitch. But if I do fuck him, I'm a slut. And if I go home with him but decide to not fuck him and he rapes me, I'm asking for it. And if I take the drink but don't go home with him but get drunk and he takes me home with him and rapes me, I'm asking for it. And if I don't say hello and politely turn down his overtures and then he gets mad and calls me a Fucking Dyke or a Fucking Cunt, and I respond, then I'm a bitch, and if he punches me then not only did I kind of deserve it (I'm pretty annoyingyou know plus I yelled at the poor guy who was just expressing his frustration at my refusal to give up the vagina and fuck that he's entitled to since he did say hello to me) but it has nothing to do with my gender. And if he calls me a Fucking Cunt and I walk out of the bar with my friends ignoring him because the last time this happened I got punched and even though he's clearly going to ruin my night I'd rather not get punched, and then he follows me out of the bar yelling at me and then maybe grabs me and maybe even rapes me than I was pretty much asking for it, because I had the nerve to show up in public. The nerve to drink. The nerve to say no. The nerve to look sexual but not be sexually available at someone's demand. The nerve to assert my bodily integrity and leave. The nerve to control my sexuality.
The nerve of women these days I tellya.
06:55 PM
07:44 PM
07:57 PM
06:50 PM
I'm not 100% sure I agree in this case.
I understand how it might have felt for you personally to take a punch meant for a friend (I want to make a comment about how stupid it is to dump a tray full of nachos on a group of drunks and not expect to get punched, but no sense rubbing salt in an old wound. )
Your argument is an equivocal distinction however. You do not know if your friend was going to get the same treatment you were.
We have different standards in for assault on women versus men because the consequences are disproportionate.
My GF and I are the same height an roughly the same build. If she punched me in the face, it would hurt. If did the same I could kill her. Her 2 year old son already is stronger than her 5 year old daughter.
No amount of gender equality is going to fix that. So we have social contracts that we teach to prevent the disproportionate devastation that assault can cause.
You can argue the reasons or the history. You can argue size differences and whatnot. You can argue it's unfair.
It may be, and it doesn't matter.
06:47 PM
07:16 PM
06:34 PM
I also have a problem with them advertising real violence, no matter the gender of the parties. There is a difference between advertising a show with fictional violence and advertising a show with violence that actually occurred.
Where I do have an issue with the gender is how people have reacted. That there are websites where people are making the fact that it was a man hitting a woman into something to celebrate. They are making it a gender issue.
06:31 PM
Because women getting hit by men is a serious social problem; women hitting men is not a society-wide epidemic the way male-on-female violence. To act like the power dynamics of gender don't have anything to do with a fight is absurd. Even if a women is as strong as a man, the power dynamics are just not the same. Women have been taught not only to do anything they can to keep a man from getting angry, but that a man could kill them if he wanted. Men are not conditioned to feel threatened the way women are. Women are not conditioned to threaten the way men are. Is that ok? Obviously not. But pretending like it isn't different is disingenuous at best, misogynist and dangerous at worst.
Just like with rape--when a woman rapes a man, it's just as horrifying as a man who rapes a woman. But when we're talking about widespread problems, they aren't the same. And when we're talking about televised representations of violence, it isn't the same either, because representation is different from singular incidents.
And this? "The government has laws in place to protect America's most vulnerable victims—battered wives, children, elders, etc.—from calculated attacks, as it should."
Come on. The government has laws against all kinds of things, but for some reason male violence direct at women is strangely still a series problem. I mean, the government has laws in place to protect women from getting raped--so should we all just chill out about this whole "rape culture" business? I mean, if female rapists are just as bad as male rapists (which they are), does that mean that the problem of widespread acceptance of male rapists and rape culture (which is distinctly about the rape of women by men) is not important, or that we should also try to focus on the societal problem of widespread cultural acceptance of female rapists? Because there isn't widespread cultural acceptance or encouragement of female rapists--that's why women don't rape as often as men do.
The widespread socialization of men as violent and women as receptacles for that violence is why this violence is different. No singular violent incident is made any more or less worse the genders of those involved. But to act like male violence against women is no different when you're not talking about an actual act, but an actual act that is then turned into mass entertainment is not the same thing as a singular act of violence.
Oh and also Chris Brown was tried and found guilty of assault, and it was obvious from the get-go that he was guilty. Tiger Woods, his neighbors, the cops, the doctors all say that his injuries were consistent with a car accident. Why should I trust TMZ about this, when they're known for sensationalist BS?
And even acting like domestic violence against women is the same thing as domestic violence against men is some MRA bullshit. Again, singular acts of violence? Yes. But gendered violence isn't singular in this country.
06:58 PM
07:21 PM
I knew there was a reason I hearted you!
06:16 PM
I do think it must be awful to be a guy who finds himself confronted with violence a lot especially while out in groups, the flip-side to being a woman who's got to consider it whenever she's out alone (or on a date, in a relationship, etc.). As someone commented in the original post, we've got to stop using men's lives as the bar for equality. Equality doesn't mean beating up whoever you want – it means beatings becoming socially unacceptable for everyone.
*It's not over yet, I added a 'mega'!
07:35 PM
This. The difference between Liberal and Radical Feminism in a nutshell (yes, capitalized, they are ideologies). I like to mix the two - discuss the radical feminism in the context of idealism and principles but the liberal feminism as a way to move through the world. YMMV of course but it behooves us to keep these differences forefront when we're having these discussions. Especially during exam season. :)