To think women hitting men is not funny

[jm9138]

At the theatre last night with my daughter. Group of teenage school girls (about 20) in front of us clearly on a school trip. I would estimate maybe 70% of audience female.

It was a comedy and very funny. Lots of slapstick. A running joke is that two of the characters are in a relationship with each other. There is a scene where the male in the relationship finds himself accidentally on top of another female character who wraps her legs around him and starts kissing him. In the context it is very funny.

The woman in the relationship walks in on them, pulls him off and punches him in the face so hard he falls over. Everyone screams with laughter. The two women (his girlfriend and the woman he was kissing) then get hold of him as he staggers up and together bang his head on a table knocking him out. Everyone screams with laughter.

AIBU for feeling uncomfortable watching this and seeing lots of young girls laughing at this or is this just a nothing? I have tried to convince myself it is a nothing but I cannot get out of my head that if the genders were reversed it would not even have been considered as a scene. And if that is the case then are we saying it is ok (even funny) to see women beating up a man? If we are then why is that?

This is not a post equating DV between men and women and women and men. I just am genuinely interested as to why I felt this way and whether I am in a minority.

Thanks for your contribution. I used the term high status as that is what the PP used. I merely meant she was not a downtrodden character.

Peter Pan goes wrong. I must have seen it 3 or 4 times and never noticed this scene before - or it just never registered

A black comedian who tells jokes about white people should be less severely chastised

So you're in favour of racism as long as it's aimed where you want it to be aimed. It's this level of hypocrisy that will perpetuate racism

I was thinking why it made me uncomfortable. I think looking at how I would feel and would it be funny if gender roles were reversed is part of that. Outside of that l think it is quite possible to talk about societies attitude to female violence and part of that is driven by a level of misogyny too as other posters have pointed out.

It was a play. I know the man didn’t really get knocked out. But did people find it funny because it is a subversion of expected roles or because ‘look at the little girl knocking out the big man’ and therefore just hidden misogyny. Maybe men are laughing at it for one reason and women for another. I have found my reaction to it and understanding why I had that reaction interesting to explore - as well as my reaction to everyone finding it so funny. It was not an exercise in ‘oooh look women are just as violent as men’ and if it was then my other comments on this thread would seem a bit strange I think.

Just to repeat because I found my reaction to the scene and my reaction to others laughing at it something I wanted to talk about. And if you read there have been some really good and interesting responses.

So women hitting men is fine because there’s less risk of death or revenge porn?
Gotcha. 🙄

There’s the same level of hypocrisy in half the replies though - those saying male to female violence is somehow worse than it being the other way around.

All relationship violence needs to be dealt with in the same way, which isn’t my experience at all

@Deathbyfluffy I think when people use the word worse, I think the argument might make more sense if you substitute worse for different, and therefore need to be treated differently.

My understanding is that, generally, male violence against women is unprovoked aggression. The other way around, you often find it in response to abusive behaviour and often targeted at an abusive or violent behaviour. There's the history, too, of many scenarios where the law failed to protect women from male violence. Something that's still a problem, there's the case this week of the woman murdered. All because the police ignored reports of violent behaviour of the man .. and worse actually arrested one of the women who reported him because she was a sex worker. Treating each kind of violence separately isn't actually ranking one above the other, it's respecting both by talking about and treating each one separately. Lumping them together makes for a overly complicated and confusing conversation

I'm aware of the problems with generalisation and the fact exceptions exist.

Yeah like I say, it's incel chat - talking about women's status in terms of appearance.

We see you pal.

Yay go you. You have completely shut down any conversation through use of a single word pejorative. The strange thing is the feeling that I have to convince you I am not when the best response really would be just to ignore you as I realised that nothing I could say would make any difference.

I am sure all the other posters on this thread will be grateful that you were able to come and save them from a wicked misleading poster who were all too stupid too see me for what I really am. But not you Orab. You saw through the elaborate web I wove posting on such exciting things as the Royal Family, tax policy, ownership of second homes, how to tell your partner they are overweight and 50/50 custody. All to lull them in to starting an argument on female violence via a convulated post about a play so I could go 'ahah - see women are as bad as men'.

I suspect we both need to get out more - but first I will need to find the key to get out my mum's basement.

40% of domestic abuse perpetrated by women? I don't think so. Every statistic I've seen suggests far lower

Ok thanks. As I said I have not seen it or the context in which it's represented so cannot comment on that. But questioning how things are portrayed is not necessarily a bad thing.

At the top I said I was not equating DV between men and women and honestly did not want the thread to turn into this, but I do agree with your statement.

There is a difficulty in generalisation as it can lead to misbelief, so I was sexually abused by a female teacher when I was a child, and the generalisation that it is men that do this and that boys really like it when it is a female abuser made it hard for me to talk about it and actually take it to police. But I accept that it is still mostly men who sexually abuse children and the reason for my abuse may have been different than why men abuse.

So I think there is truth that the causes and types of violence are generally likely to be different between men and women. In that truth it means that whilst a general 'all violence is wrong' is a good view for society to have, to address the issues broadly you need to tailor your messaging and support to address those differences. This has made me think a little more about the scene and perhaps why it made me uncomfortable is that actually it was stereotypically male violence for male reasons that was being portrayed. She found him kissing someone else so she had the right to punch him as if she owned him or her jealousy justified it. And the other woman joining in to bang her head on the table - the act seemed a very male act of violence.

Violence against men isn't funny.

I just did a quick google and there was this from the National Centre for Domestic Violence

https://www.ncdv.org.uk/domestic-abuse-statistics-uk/#:~:text=1%20in%205%20adults%20experience,1%20in%206%2D7%20men.

It says 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6-7 men will experience DV in their lifetimes. What it does not say though is who was the perpetrator (so gay men who hit their partner would add to the 1 in 6-7 men for example) and I have not looked how they asked the question.

I also found an ONS stat that said 5.7% of women and 3.2% of men had experienced domestic violence in the last 12 months and if the abused people each had one abuser and they were of the opposite sex that would mean 36% of abusers were women. But again, it comes down to definition and no idea how much is same sex abuse. It seems unlikely given these stats that 40% is perpetrated by women.

I thought the video was interesting but I don't know enough about the experiment. My feeling is that it is probably not too far from what would happen and depending how you look at it there is a positive story there - lots of strangers stood up for the woman.

It's funny and you can laugh at it because it doesn't happen in normal circumstances . It's subverting the norm.

I'm surprised there isn't more female on male violence. If you read the glass by the dishwasher thread, it's astonishing more women don't bash their partners head in with something large and heavy.

Given the epidemic of rape and violence against women, it seems massively pearl clutchy to get upset at a fictional depiction of something uncommon being played for laughs.

I don't think it is massively pearl clutchy to question why something made me feel uncomfortable. It is not like I ran out the building screaming 'will nobody think of the children'.

Personally I think it is ok to think and talk about something relatively minor even if there are far worse things happening. It is like saying it is pearl clutchy talking about the rising cost of fresh food and veg because you can still afford it and there are half a billion people who live in absolute poverty.

I feel no hypocrisy in saying that I would find it 'worse' to be violently attacked by a person bigger, stronger and with significant physical advantage over me than a person over whom I had that advantage. While in both cases I might feel fear, humiliation and psychological trauma, the difference in knowing that the odds of escaping with your life are on your side cannot be underestimated.
The experiences of men and women subject to violence from opposite sex partners are typically very different, with very different impact on the victim. People cannot be supported appropriately by pretending they are the same.

I didn’t say I was in favour of racism so don’t twist my words.

My point was that prejudice or violence or discrimination is more dangerous when there is a power imbalance.

Also @JudgeJ there is a quote option so if you’re going to attack my posts at least quote the whole thing rather than snipping out part of my sentence to fit your narrative.

It made you feel odd because it depicted woman fictiously acting beyond societal expectations. Beyond acceptable femininity.

As @5128gap rightly pointed out, in reality there is a much more pressing problem of actual male violence that has a far more profound effect because women are generally physically smaller and more easily damaged. Many men are happy to damage them because they don't consider them human.

I doubt a few people laughing about a fictional cheat getting punched in the face is going to end patriarchy sadly.

If men did really fear physical violence from women they would be a lot better behaved around them, just as they are around other men they fear.

But they don't and they aren't.

Maybe it made OP feel odd because violence isn’t funny….

Of course it's fine to talk about minor things. Where I struggle is with the disproportionate focus on those minor things. Men (on MN at least) who are concerned about violence towards them, are very preoccupied with women as perpetrators. If I were a man, I'd know that my chances of being violently assaulted by a wonan were low. And if I were unfortunate enough to be a victim, then the odds of me escaping with minimal harm would be good. In contrast I'd also know that I was at higher risk of assault by another man. So for this reason, my priority for concern would be male on male violence. Yet I don't think I've ever seen a thread on here started by a man wanting to discuss how awful that is, what should be done differently, how seriously we should be taking it. All the attention is on the comparatively tiny issue of men being physically hurt by women. Why is that? Because to me it seems like you're squeezing round the elephant in the room to evict the mouse in the corner.

I agree OP and it's one of the reasons I hate Everybody Loves Raymond . Raymond is a twat there's no denying that but Debra punches him , pushes him , throws food on him and screams at him and it's haha from the audience 🙄