The Humor In Mutilating Men Versus The Atrocity Of Harming Women

JackFisherBooks · 2018-08-20T09:17:26+00:00

I want to once again thank this sub for helping to inspire this piece. Last week, more than a few people posted about the new Netflix movie, "The Package." This movie is built entirely around a man getting horribly mutilated, yet is listed as a comedy on IMDB. Just hearing about this concept made me recount all the times male mutilation was fodder for comedy, going back to sitcoms and famous movie quotes. It got me thinking why people laugh at this, but recoil at the thought of any harm coming to a woman. I try to answer that question in this article, but I'm certainly open to further discussion because so long as movies like this keep coming out, it's worth talking about.

Splatriarchy · 2018-08-20T15:29:31+00:00

Violence and physical harm to men is seen as funny. Which gender is oppressed again?

kochier · 2018-08-20T14:34:46+00:00

I love your theory that being okay with violence against men is because we had to be, we are the one to take violence and have it be okay.

azazelcrowley · 2018-08-20T16:08:46+00:00

She had it coming, she had it coming, she only had herself to blame. If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it, I bet you you would have done the same.

Mode1961 · 2018-08-20T11:59:30+00:00

Great article! I buy your theory about making physical violence against men humorous may have been a way of desensitizing men to the possibility of physical violence in their world.

I do think this understates how differently physical violence and sexual violence specifically tend to be portrayed. You can blow up a man but you can't sexually violate him without making it a joke. It's not just that sexualized violence is minimized, it's that it's taboo to treat it seriously, even in a horror movie (Snakes on a Plane). The exceptions, like Deliverance or Theon, stand out sharply in our cultural memory.

For women it's the opposite: you can't maim a woman but sexualized violence gets more of a pass. It has become unacceptable to make it a joke; you couldn't get away with making Porky's or Revenge of the Nerds today. But in horror female characters are a lot more likely to die a sexualized death (without the humor element) and porn frequently mixes a lot of violence into its sex.

I think in many ways this boils down to a crass, lizard-brained intuition that men fight and fuck while women get fucked. If a man is getting fucked/sexually violated that must be ironic because that's not the thing men do. By extension, it becomes easier to rationalize circumcision as a religious or medical practice because otherwise it's basically a form of sexual assault on males, and that's not a thing that happens to males. Women get fucked. Sexually assaulting a woman is still a woman getting fucked, which is the thing women do. Maiming a woman is making her less fuckable.

Ted8367 · 2018-08-22T02:14:11+00:00

In 18th-century England alone, there were 25 deaths per 1,000 births.

With odds like that, there was a legitimate reason to give women extra protection and care that was not afforded to men. Men didn’t have the babies and no society could survive in the long run if it didn’t have a growing population.

Yes...

no society could survive in the long run if it didn’t have a growing population.

But these days, we're below replacement rates. Why could that be, I wonder.

thrway_1000 · 2018-08-20T10:41:56+00:00

Archive -- https://archive.is/62fPk

Title	The Humor In Mutilating Men Versus The Atrocity Of Harming Women
Author	JackFisherBooks
Upvotes	88
Comments	19
Date	August 20, 2018 9:13 AM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/98s2eg/the_humor_in_mutilating_men_versus_the_atrocity/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-humor-in-mutilating-men-versus-the-atrocity-of.895863 https://theredarchive.com/post/895863

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