Astro said:
Men getting “smacked and punched” by their wives and girlfriends is spousal abuse.
If it happens “all the time” then it’s normal.
Where’s the assumption?
For those suggesting that a man getting his face slapped in a relationship is equivalent to a man belting a women, I’ve got a news flash for you … it’s not. Men are generally (not always, but usually) considerably larger and stronger than women and can take a face slap and get on with their lives without needing to visit the hospital. It’s not even in the same universe as a man hauling off and striking woman in the face. No matter how much you would like to ethically, morally and legally conjoin then as despicably violent acts, in real world terms they are two fundamentally different animals.
Secondly for those indicating that practically any degree or instance of male and females adults getting physical with each other in an aggressive fashion is indicative some sort of incipient mental illness, you need to get a grip on your drama meters. Every adult person can decide for themselves the limits and the nature of the physicality they are willing to accept in a relationship.
Domestic violence can be a terrible problem in some circumstances, but the “No aggressive physicality period, under any circumstances” standard is absurd, and would fill up the jails with women who forcefully hit, smacked, shoved or slapped their boyfriends because they were pissed off.
Make you own rules for your own lives. If even the slightest hint of physical aggression is intolerable, make that the standard for yourself and your relationship, but don’t look at a single instance of a wife slapping her husband at a party, and smugly decide that that is an abusive relationship. It would be foolish to do so.
Look, asshole, no matter how many excuses you make about the guy being ‘bigger’ or ‘stronger’, it’s not acceptable for a woman to just go around hitting any man she wants when she gets angry.
Expressing anger in that manner is not only unhealthy, it’s dangerous and it has got to be stopped no matter who the perpetrator is.
The absolute fact of the matter is that if a woman slaps a man because she is angry with him, she has committed a crime (assault) and he can have her arrested, can have charges pressed, and can sue her.
I do not understand why so many people excuse female-on-male violence, but that kind of thing can and does escalate from a simple slap to someone being dead. Ignoring it gives women the (wrong) impression that they can hit any man they want with impunity, and that there is nothing wrong with it. That’s a horrible message to send to women, because not only does it encourage bad behavior, it could backfire horribly when they finally hit a man who has been told he has a right to defend his body from any person who attacks it.
Anything can escalate out of control. People can have disagreements while discussing something, and start calling each other rude names, and then wordplay runs to tears and …Oh right… back to the point at hand. The point I made earlier was that a man has to gauge the situation in the scenario where he gets slapped by his SO. There can obviously be situations where men and women are in terribly abusive situations and need to get out, or need help to get out, but to wind up the drama engine and start screaming “Assault! Police!” when a wife slaps her husband is just nonsensical.
It makes a lot of sense to get it documented early on, especially if the relationship continues.
The police are not typically trained to deal with a male victim of domestic violence, and are going to have a harder time believing him without a documented trail.
Quite honestly though, I think that if a woman shouldn’t be tolerate being hit even once, neither should a man.
Why would you admit that it’s not a great way to handle the situation, but yet suggest that it’s how you would handle it and that others should be okay with it? Does your BF have the okay to smack you around if you kiss someone else?
Really, it’s not just the double standard that makes me PO, it’s the suggestion that anyone deserves or should be okay with being abused.
Hitting is the resort of people who have no self-control, reasoning or verbal skills. It’s a sign of weakness, not strength. It is as emotionally intelligent as throwing yourself onto the floor and having a tantrum. About as effective too.
Chotii, what is it that you can tell your brother that he doesn’t already know? I understand your desire to fix it and make it right, but sometimes those things are out of our hands.
About the only time that I would broach the subject would be if he were financially dependent on her. Even then, I would be very subtle.
As others have said, hitting a person because they have behaved in a way that you CHOOSE to be upset about, is not an emotionally mature way of responding. It’s reacting, and letting the situation control you, instead of controlling yourself, and acting reasonably.
I can understand choosing to feel very hurt, and even betrayed if you caught your SO cheating on you. This does not give you the right to compound things by assaulting them, no matter the genders of the people involved. Why not send such people to anger management classes, and maybe fine them.
Just FTR, I know that the domestic abuse shelter in this town has “satellite” offices in other towns, one of which deals with males who are abused. Males who are abused do face a “stigma” of somehow being “less of a man” because they are reporting the abuse, and taking steps to prevent it.
Chotii Your father is a wise man. Maybe you should try to find a way to spend some time with your brother and his wife, make yourself more available to him?
Chotii,
I would call your brother and start with “Brother, I heard something the other day that really concerns me. I’ve thought of a way to bring this up to you without getting you angry at me or feeling like I think you’re a wimp or something. I heard that sister-in-law smacked you…(go into what happened)…This really concerns me, Brother. I just want to let you know that I am here for you if you ever need to talk about what is going on in your life. I love you and hope that you realize it.”
And I also agree with what DogMom said. Don’t be surprised if he blows you off. Don’t be hurt if he blows you off. You planted the seed and let him know that you love and care for him enough to be concerned over something like this.
Astro: You’re the one being a drama queen! We’re discussing whether Chotii should have a word with her brother. You’re the one who keeps bringing up calling the police and domestic abuse shelters.
I don’t think anyone here is claiming that Chotii’s brother is definitely in a physically abusive relationship based on one alleged data point. What many of us are saying is that the one data point indicates that there may be a serious problem, and that it might be worth investigating. If Chotii’s brother responds by saying “Yeah, she smacked me that once. I told her in no uncertain terms that if she ever did it again, I’m leaving her. Period.” then no problemo. If he responds by saying “Oh, that was nothing! You should see what she does to me when I leave the toilet seat up!” then maybe he is in an abusive relationship.
And your statements about a man being able to “handle” being hit by a woman are very sexist. It’s like you imagine a big strong Rhett Butler type clasping Scarlett to his chest as she pounds away with her little fists going “I hate you I hate you I hate you!” Gimme a break.
My husband is a foot taller than me and much much stronger. He’s your classic broad-shouldered 6’2" 220 lb. brawny man type. If we’re play wrestling, I don’t stand a chance. If I wanted to, I could throw a punch that would break his jaw.
Maybe you think of women as being generally more physically ineffectual than men. And most of them are. But not necessarily because they are so small and weak. It’s because they generally weren’t trained to use their bodies (and tools) to be strong and aggressive. I’m very fortunate that my dad taught me how to use the proper techniques to be strong and that he also taught me to “take it like a man,” (though he never used that phrase).
Newsflash: More and more girls are growing up to be physically capapble women. Girls today grow up doing serious competitive sports and taking shop class. They are learning the techniques of being strong–from their dads and their moms. They are learning to use their strength. (Cute anecdote. My husband is a middle school teacher. I went in after school one day. I walked into the wood shop to find the male and the female teacher working with a couple of girls. One had been complaining that her clog was coming apart. They had this girl’s shoes clamped into the vise and were showing the girls how to replace the staples with nails. 
)
Gah. I would often get men like you on my raft in my guiding days. “Oh, but what if I fall out?” Then I’ll pull you back in, jackass. One of the things I love about the whitewater community is that the men don’t assume that the women are weak fragile little flowers.
Obviously you missed the main salient point I made in my initial post in this thread in discussing the important differences between male and female physical iteractions, possibly the telephone pole sized chip you have apparently hoisted on your shoulder is making it difficult to bend your neck in the correct position to read.
I have no doubt about your physical prowess and capacity to physically injure someone should you so choose, so stop working yourself into a tizzy about it. My 17 year old daughter is 5’11 and 175 lbs and can handle herself just fine. My ex is 6’ tall and well over 200 lbs. I do not see women as Scarlett O’Hara’s, although my 17 year old’s inherent physical strength, and her desire to employ this strength in useful work related activity are somewhat at odds with each other.
The point I made in the specific context of aggressive female physicality was that:
A face slap is not a round house punch or an attempt to break someone’s jaw. You need to differentiate the two, as most reasonable people do.
So, if the guy gets tired of getting slapped around and fights back, is that within the “limits and nature of physicality”?
One of the main problems with female-on-male battery is the fact that the man cannot defend himself in any way. Suppose the man is getting slapped, and gets fed up with it, and strikes back and gives her a bruise. When the police are called out to the house, who do you think is going to be the one being led away in handcuffs? These women know this quite well, and this, along with the guilt that a man would feel admitting it (look at the jokes about Chuck Finley, for example), is what enables the assaults to go on.
The point you seem to be missing is that violent behaviour has very little to do with the amount of physical damage done to someone else, and everything to do with how the victim feels.
I had an ex-boyfriend who never laid a finger on me, but threw things around me in anger. I was afraid of him and his uncontrolled, unpredictable anger. According to your standards, he did nothing wrong, so why was I so afraid of him? I’ll tell you why - because he was acting extremely aggressively to me, and it frightened me like it does most people.
For the record, as the OP I’d like to clarify that I am by no means certain my brother is in a physically abusive relationship. I think it’s well-established (within my family at any rate) that she is verbally abusive and generally just angry, yelling and verbally abusing him, but the striking is what prompted me to start this thread.
I do not know, as I stated, that she has ever struck him before. I do suspect it of being a frequent, common behavior precisely because she was willing to do it in front of a (hostile) witness.
I do know that my brother’s method of dealing with any unpleasant behavior is to act like it isn’t happening. She yells, he is passive. He is not a confrontationist. I also do know that people can be beaten down psychologically after years of abuse, even if they never show it…but that it will make them more and more willing to go along allowing the mistreatment, and perhaps even believing it’s deserved or normal - and less psychologically prepared to bring and end to the relationship. It’s all very fine to say ‘when he’s tired enough of it, he’ll make it stop’ but there are plenty of examples of people who never found it in themselves to make it stop, and wound up underground.
I am not assuming that brother’s wife will ever go so far. But on the other hand, an open-handed cuff to the head (not slap to the face, not closed-fist punch) is still pretty poor behavior, and hard to justify as punishment for the “infraction” of not taking enough pictures of somebody at a party. It makes me wonder what other “infractions” are considered worthy of physical punishment. And why. And how far it might go. And all that.
Chotii, this is generally how physical abuse starts. As mental/emotional abuse. By the time the physical abuse starts, the victim is usally under the impression that they deserve the physical abuse, that it’s warranted.
The physical healing takes much, much less time than the emotional and mental healing.
Encourage your brother to get some help. Even if he won’t admit to being hit by your SIL (and he probably won’t), he needs to stop thinking that everything that goes wrong is his fault.
The only reason I did not recommend that you talk to him directly about what you’ve been told, is because you are not known for liking his wife. It’s not productive to speak out against the person who’s doing the abuse, to the person who is being abused. This will just cause a rift between you and them, and make them deny what is going on more vehemently, and cling to the abuser more, defending their honor the whole while. This is why I suggested that you make yourself available to your brother more.
Take the “subtle” delicate approach to this. Don’t bring it up directly, just be there for him, and maybe it will come tumbling out. I think maybe this is the wisdom your father was trying to impart. (If it wasn’t it dovetails nicely with what I can see.) Make yourself available to him emotionally, and let him know you back him. Start giving him support, and maybe he’ll find the courage to talk about it, and then take action to get it out of his life.
Even people who HATE confrontation have epiphanys and act on them after all. What he needs right now, is to know he’s got support, someone backing him who believes in his abillity to make the correct decisions for himself, and carry them through. Good Luck.
No, I didn’t miss your point. In fact I agreed with it in my first response to you way upthread. I said “Of course you’re correct that in many/most cases when women hit men, it is not done with serious intent to injure the man.”
But you seem to have extrapolated that idea into thinking that when women hit men, it doesn’t tend to hurt or damage them. That woman-on-man violence isn’t as “serious” as man-woman-violence.
I’m arguing that it is not only the same thing morally and ethically, but that you’re flat out wrong that a woman probably won’t really be able to hurt a man.
You said
But why are you assuming that the woman will use a face slap and a man will use a roundhouse punch?
I’ll bet that the vast majority of spousal violence, in either direction, consists of face slapping and the equivalent. And I’ll bet in most cases, it doesn’t escalate beyond that. But we can’t just sit back and say that it’s no big deal, because we all know from hard experience that a face-slapper so often becomes a puncher. The face-slapping woman could easily become a punching woman.
I have to wonder why you’re using these ad hominem attacks against me. You suggest that I “have a chip on my shoulder,” I’m “in a tizzy,” and that I’m an unreasonable sort who doesn’t know the difference between a slap and a punch. Furthermore, as I said before, you’re the one who is is bringing up things like the “domestic abuse cavalry.” It’s the oldest trick in the book–if you’re losing ground to a woman, call her hysterical and invalidate what she’s saying. I can’t say that I’ve noticed you doing that before.
I’m not sure why you are continuing to cling to the notion that women hitting men is no big deal. Maybe you’ve just unthinkingly accepted that notion up until now, partially because of your belief that men can easily hurt women but the converse is not true. But the converse is true and you know it. So why do you keep saying that it’s okay for women to hit men?
Chotii, ask yourself, If she did this at a party, in front of other people, for what I think everybody here agrees is a minor event, what is she capable of in private over a major problem?
If one of my sisters thought my wife was abusing me, I’d like them to ask me about. That way, I could either explain it away (if it wasn’t happening) or it would be a chance to get it off my chest (if it was). But remember, he’s your brother but it’s not your problem. Be there for him but don’t force the issue.
astro, while I agree with you that there are (societal) differences between male and female physical interactions, there shouldn’t be and we should be trying to change that. You seem to be focusing on the physical damage done rather then the overall issues that causes it to happen. A woman who strikes a man has the same control/anger issues a man has. Anybody who can’t express his or her feelings without violence, regardless of the damage done with said violence, has a problem. An isolated situation might be understandable (but never condonable) from either sex but any kind of pattern is a problem.
Pardon me if Imisstated your opinion, but that’s how I read it.
Peace - DESK
Guys, not all head slaps are the same. I, personally, am completely comfortable slapping my boyfriend and two other male friends of mine in public because IT ISN’T MEANT TO CONTROL, INTIMIDATE, OR OTHERWISE HUMILIATE THEM.
mischievous I was overlooking the idea that grownups rough house too. Rough housing is one thing, but as you said, intimidating, humiliating etc is NOT COOL.