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 Originally Posted by Renton
Not much to add except to echo the carebear sentiments of wufwugy. I will say that there's a rather serious double standard in our culture of what violence we permit and do not permit. Male against female violence is certainly a major problem in society and I don't want to downplay that, as I grew up around domestic violence, but we frequently permit and even sometimes laugh at female against male violence all the time. I try to treat this issue with a high enough level of seriousness without giving too much fuel to the fire of rad-fem rhetoric, and it can be a delicate balance.
a very early episode of How I Met Your Mother bothered me a lot for this exact reason.. (I only saw the first maybe.. 6 episodes, not by choice - i don't care for that show at all). anyway the storyline was something about a girl he dated being an expert at krav maga and she basically beat him up for dumping her twice, some shit like that. and allison hannigan beating her fists against jason segal.. i think.
i also remember another time, in a nonfiction writing class, this girl was reading something she wrote about her family life. in it, her mother physically attacked her stepfather, who had not done anything to physically intimidate her in any way. she lauded her mothers actions in the piece, as did a few other people in class. so i spoke up, and i was basically like... look, i understand why man-on-woman domestic violence might offend people more - there is a physical advantage, and in this case, it doesnt sound like your mom posed the same kind of physical threat to him as he would be able to pose to her. that being said, it's pretty unacceptable for us to be congratulating anyone for violence against their spouse, man or woman. it's not okay for anyone to do that to their partner, especially completely unprovoked.
a guy came up to me after class to thank me for saying that, because as a man, he didn't feel comfortable speaking up about it..
so yes, generally speaking, men have the physical edge over women, and so i think women are more vulnerable to psychotic abusive men.. most guys probably don't need to worry about being overpowered physically by their girlfriends if they piss them off. part of the reason my relationship was as insidious and toxic as it was because he dominated me physically (we're talking 115 lb waify girl vs a 200+ weightlifter/gymnast).. and i hear more stories about guys killing their girlfriends than girlfriends killing their boyfriends, but that's purely anecdotal, i admit.
nonetheless, I share wugy's stance on violence.. and while I think it's less likely for a woman to be able to establish physical dominion over a guy, it's still a) not ok to attack them regardless of whether they can properly defend themselves, and b) we shouldn't live in a culture that makes men ashamed to speak out against this sort of thing, because there -are- cases where the guy is being seriously physically abused and cannot defend himself. and that ties into our cultures ideas about masculinity and what "real man" is, and affects what men even feel comfortable talking about publicly.
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If you tell a chick you gonna kill her...
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(( poor kitty..
