army1987 comments on LW Women Submissions: On Misogyny - Less Wrong

27 [deleted] 10 April 2013 07:54PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (472)
Tags: lw_women gender

Comments (472)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 06:57:39PM 0 points [-]

It is significantly more socially acceptable for a woman to hit a man than the reverse.

There's a perfectly good (IMO) non-cultural reason for that, namely that the average man is physically bigger than the average woman and therefore he's more likely to seriously harm her by hitting her than the other way round.

It's more socially acceptable for a woman to suggest a man should be castrated, emasculated (a word which refers to the wholesale removal of a man's genitals, incidentally, as opposed to castration, which refers only to removal of the testicles), anally raped, or <insert horrific act here> than any analogous reversal.

Wait... what? I hear men saying such things about women once in a while, but I can't recall any women saying such things about men (except when talking about convicted criminals, in which case even other men will suggest such things). But then again, I'd guess the situation is worse on the other side of the pond.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 April 2013 08:39:08PM 7 points [-]

There's a perfectly good (IMO) non-cultural reason for that, namely that the average man is physically bigger than the average woman and therefore he's more likely to seriously harm her by hitting her than the other way round.

On the other hand, some women are bigger and/or stronger than some men. Size is hardly a hidden factor. Why not use that instead of a surrogate?

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2013 05:48:08PM 3 points [-]

Indeed, if a small, weak man hit a big, strong woman, I wouldn't expect him to be frowned upon as much as the median men hitting the median woman.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 12 April 2013 07:49:51PM 3 points [-]

There's a perfectly good (IMO) non-cultural reason for that, namely that the average man is physically bigger than the average woman and therefore he's more likely to seriously harm her by hitting her than the other way round.

The reason isn't terribly important for the purposes of this line of reasoning, so I'm going to largely leave this alone, and simply state that the iterated situation is considerably different than the one-shot situation.

Wait... what? I hear men saying such things about women once in a while, but I can't recall any women saying such things about men (except when talking about convicted criminals, in which case even other men will suggest such things). But then again, I'd guess the situation is worse on the other side of the pond.

"Any analogous reversal" doesn't mean "men talking about men." It's not limited to the social acceptability of women as violence-initiators; it also includes the social acceptability of men as violence-receivers.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit