This scene from Love and Other Drugs (2010) when Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal's characters meet demonstrates how women assaulting men unprovoked is considered acceptable. This propaganda is commonplace in mainstream and social media and responsible for a lot of female violence against men

pixeldaddy2000 · 2025-06-20T09:54:52+00:00

I was in a college class room one time and there was a girl chatting with my lab partner. I had chatted with her before so I considered us friendly and the current chat was light and general. She said something and I made a joke about it and she hauled off and slapped me across the back as hard as she could. I was sitting down and she was standing, and when I say slapped I mean she twisted her body and drew all the way back and came down on me with all the force she could muster. The sound of the impact was so loud that about half the class stood up and everyone was shocked. People even poked their heads in the door to see what was happening. I'm a pretty sturdy and tough guy but I have to admit, the skin on that spot right in the middle of my back is sensitive and it was like lightning branches spreading out in all directions, and the impact reverberated throughout my torso. My lab partner grabbed my shoulder in genuine concern and asked if I was alright. Then the female tried to laugh it off but my partner told her, "You better be glad you didn't do that to me or you wouldn't still be standing". Then she tried to play victim for him saying that, but no one would take her side. The worst part was how humiliating it all was. I mean... I was able to endure it and made it to the rest of my classes but i was still feeling it bad the rest of the day. Next day I was still feeling it but it had stopped throbbing. it left a big purple/black bruise on my back.

Francis_Dollar_Hide · 2025-06-20T13:32:29+00:00

Heres one of my 'favorites'.

Remember the Muppet show, for kids? Remember how Miss Piggy would violently assault Kermit the Frog to the sound of canned laughter?

Preconditioning children to find female perpetrated violence towards men as funny.

Lower_Revenue_9678 · 2025-06-20T08:26:11+00:00

Hollywood is a great propaganda machine. Hope it DIES completely.

alter_furz · 2025-06-20T09:12:48+00:00

happened to me twice in my life.

hit back both times. no regrets. it ended with them on the floor both times.

SquaredAndRooted · 2025-06-20T10:12:02+00:00

OP, Thanks for raising this very important issue. 3 questions for all of us -

Did Men report that scene?
Have Men ever leave a review or comment calling out gendered violence when it’s against men?
Do Men know their country’s media complaint body?

Women mass complain about offensive, discriminatory or violence promoting content all the time.

Most countries have media regulatory bodies where users can file complaints, but most men don’t even realize this because they’ve never been encouraged to use them.

In the U.S., the main body is FCC - https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov
They handle complaints about radio, television, wire, satellite & cable content.

For Other Countries:

UK: Ofcom https://www.ofcom.org.uk
Canada: Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC)
Australia: Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)

For streaming platforms (like Netflix, Prime, etc.), the process is platform based, but you can still:

Use their Report or Help links
Leave negative reviews
Tag them on social media with a clear complaint.

maalicious · 2025-06-20T13:18:20+00:00

This isn’t a problem with Hollywood alone. I am from India and in Indian movies also the same template follows. When a man assaults a woman it’s a setup for hero to become a white knight but if a woman assaults a man it is “comedy”

dougpschyte · 2025-06-20T08:49:17+00:00

This has become a real life franchise.

88Babies · 2025-06-20T13:22:32+00:00

I remember when this girl smacked me while I was driving. I didn’t hit her back but I pulled over and told her to get in the trunk or walk home cause it’s not safe to hit the driver.

She got in the trunk and I took a detour and found an empty parking lot (cause it was like 10 pm) and I drove up and down the parking lot hitting speed bumps hard as shit for a few minutes to give her the impression I was driving into the woods or something.

When I let her out the trunk at her house she had a “new understanding” and I think she was turned on by it cause till this day she tells people how she was “baptized in a trunk” 😂

Vegetable_Ad1732 · 2025-06-21T03:48:45+00:00

When I was in the third grade, an older girl about 50% bigger than me hit me so hard I could not move for a few minutes. I always wondered if she gave me a concussion.

ThrowALifeline89 · 2025-06-21T22:10:51+00:00

It's upsetting how often in TV shows and movies men get physically assaulted and it's being portrayed as a way of "teaching men how to behave". Man getting thrown a drink in his face for hitting on a woman at a bar. Man getting slapped in the face for making a sexist joke/crude remark about women. And of course the all-time classic of women hitting men in the groin because they are upset with them. If you try to educate people that this is both physical assault and a form of sexual assault you will get laughed out of the room (by woth women and men).

BauserDominates · 2025-06-21T02:02:19+00:00

Right before this, he violated her privacy by letting her assume he was a doctor while she had her tits out. That doesnt justify her assaulting him, but let's not pretend like this came out of the blue and that he is fully innocent either.

The whole post feels disingenuous.

Former-Whole8292 · 2025-06-20T21:34:16+00:00

Do you guys know that the lead up to this scene is him posing as a doctor while she undresses?

Reasonable-Recipe352 · 2025-07-02T02:28:43+00:00

As a gay man, she would be missing teeth.

Maximum-Condition304 · 2025-07-23T07:11:02+00:00

Are you forgetting the literal SEXUAL HARRASMENT THAT OCCURED? Do you not understand that men acting this way, taking any chance to view a woman inappropriately, is so common?

I've been groped, catcalled, felt up by men I didn't know from my pre-teens till now. Now I'm in my mid twenties (around Maggie's age here), and after years of all that, if given a chance to confront men who breach my privacy like Jake's character did here, I'm definitely saying some shit.

And yes, what he did was sexual harassment. Maggie could've sued the hospital for it. As for your privilege, the only reason I found this thread was because I was looking for a discussion regarding the Manic Pixie Dream Girl element of Anne's character.

Now, is it okay for a woman to hit a man? No. That's not okay, regardless of gender.

But to ignore the violation that occurred on Maggie's body here? Check your male privilege.

edit: also, almost every woman was catcalled or sexualized in some form or way in this movie. I mean, even maggie's doctor says "her tits are nice" behind her back. So, it's hypocritical that you only call out one issue, especially when the "violent" action done to a man by a woman here is a reaction of harassment.

This issue with this post is that people seem to only have an issue with the reactionary woman on male violence and not the constant objectification of women in this movie, or even the male-on-male violence too (Jake's character being hit and his character also hitting his brother).

Violence and harassment are both wrong, and it's hypocritical to only acknowledge one.

Original_Resident661 · 2025-12-06T11:24:31+00:00

TetraThiaFulvalene · 2025-06-20T15:06:26+00:00

Dude... You are leaving out some SERIOUS context. He was a pharma rep trying to get a doctor to prescribe his new pills (iirc viagra). He was wearing a doctors coat and stayed in the room, while he got a breast exam. He got to see her naked in a compromising position by pretending to be a doctor. He had the beating coming.

bassabassa · 2025-06-20T13:29:28+00:00

He lied about being a medical resident so he could sit in on her private breast exam so he could see her tits. It never occurred to her to even question his right to be there because women (have to)trust their healthcare professionals to protect them, most of all in incredibly intimate and sometimes traumatic but necessary medical procedures like this.

This would be like pretending to be a nursing assistant so you could ogle women getting pelvic exams with her feet in stirrups and is precisely why I decline any medical trainees that are not female or gay to sit in on any of my sexual health visits.

If some dude did this to your wife or mom or sister or daughter during a fucking medical exam what would you have them do? What would you do?

This sub is so fantastic it really helps me keep a realistic perspective on what men truly are and how even the ones that don't actively creep and hurt and rape will always defend the ones that do.

TaftYouOldDog · 2025-06-20T12:48:52+00:00

You are leaving out the context that he lied to her to essentially sexually assault her which leads to this.

Context matters

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