http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24769014-29277,00.html?from=public_rss
Wow. I feel sympathy for the guy but a tiny tiny bit of me is wondering what (or who)he did to incur her wrath.
Y’know, my first thoughts were exactly the same…that he must have been a real arsehole for her to do something so horribly drastic.
But then I reversed the roles, and wondered what I would have thought had it been the male partner setting fire to his wife… and I WOULD have assumed that he was just a maniacally jealous or whatever psycho and that her behaviour had no bearing on his actions.
Could make for an interesting GD really!
So much for hot sex.
See my post above: would you be game enough to post that if the victim had been a female who had been set alight by her male partner Muffin? This is not a challenge to you or your character in any way BTW…my very first reaction was to come up with a one-liner too.
It’s just interesting that we automatically assume that the bloke did something really bad to deserve such punishment, whereas I’d imagine that we wouldn’t necessarily assume the same if a woman was the victim.
Just sayin’.
Glad you said that. I really hate how “funny” it is when a man gets mutilated by his wife and how appalling it is when the roles are reversed.
Very Christmassy! His nuts roasting from a woman’s ire.
It’s not something for hating ASAKMOTSD, it’s more an interesting sociological phenomenon, and one that deserves more reflection and investigation.
I’m a woman, and the AUTOMATIC response was that the designated victim was not the victim at all, and that the perpetrator was only repaying the real perp for crimes past and done.
And I’m guessing that most males would assume the same thing: for a woman to set out to seriously hurt her partner, especially in such a painful and ‘meaningful’ way via burning his dick, it reeks of payback.
It’s certainly within the realms of possibility for a woman to be stupid and possessive and moronic enough to just hurt her partner for shits and giggles, but according to the stats, it’s so unlikely as to be down in the negative-realm for analytic purposes: IOW, apart from psychotic female serial killers, the reason the vast majority of women kill is in self defence, either from real or perceived threats to theirs or their childrens’ safety
I’ll bet Lindsey Lohan is relieved.
Actually, yes, I would have, but I think your point is on target.
Given that the fellow was sleeping, that she set his nuts on fire rather than some less odd form or attack, and that she had her back to the court, my guess is that she is bat shit crazy. Whether he was an abuser or not I don’t know. Spousal abuse is often very complicated.
If you dig about in Statistics Canada’s annual reports on family violence http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/Statcan/85-224-X/85-224-XIE.html (for the specific cite, fix the SDMB search function – I’ve pinpointed it a couple of times in the past) you’ll come across figures that indicate that both sexes are violent to each other at about the same rate, but the severity of the violence is greatly disproportionate (men hit women and women hit men at about the same rate, but the severity of physical injury caused when men hit women is far greater). (The exception to this is the rate of murder by aboriginal women against aboriginal men, which is way up there.)
From my own experience as someone who deals with domestic violence on a daily basis through my job, I say that the Stats Can figures hold true.
The hard part is figuring out whether it is one party or the other who is the sole abuser, or if both are disfunctional to the degree that they chew on each other’s shins.
Meanwhile, Q.E.D. wins:
Yeah, it’s a riot. :rolleyes:
And, because we know women aren’t violent, we immediately want to know what he did to deserve it. If he’d hit her (never mind burn her genitals), the last question we’d be asking would be “What did she do to deserve it?”. Because, of course, men are violent just because they are that way inclined; women are violent only for a reason. :dubious:
Interesting…what do you attribute this to?
I imagine it’s shades of the Lorena Bobbitt story. Men reflexively cringe at the very thought, but,
A) The dude probably did something, perhaps repeatedly, to piss her off to such a degree,
B) Such situations are rare enough as to be newsworthy when they happen, and
C) Wieners are inherently funny.
I suspect there may be a humour-as-a-coping-tool aspect in there somewhere, too. Yes, the idea of genital mutilation at the hands of an ostensibly spurned lover is horrifying no matter who did what to whom, and if I think about it too much my nards will try to convince my willy to join them in seeking refuge in the safety of my pelvis. In order to prevent that, I joke.
Having said that: WIENER ROAST!
Yes, but if the genders were reversed, I doubt that provocation, no matter how egregious, would enter into the discussion. If a woman slept with her husband’s best friend, crashed his truck, left his tools out to rust, and turned his dog against him, and he set fire to her, we’d probably all say he was overreacting.
Given the choice on a multiple guess test, always guess C).
I understand the dilemma people have in looking at these types of situations-- make jokes because the bastard probably “deserved” it vs. realizing that someone just attacked and mutilated another human being.
So, what type of behavior justifies such a response from a woman:
- Severe physical abuse
- Physical abuse
- Sexual abuse
- Emotional/physchogical abuse
- Repeated betrayal
- One-time betrayal
- Vile criminality on his part (murder, rape, child molestation, etc)
- Run-of-the-mill criminality on his part (repeated stealing, B&E, assault, destruction of property, etc.)
- Announcement that he’s leaving
- Nothing justifies it
- Some combo of the above.
Would anything in the above list justify a man setting fire to a woman’s breasts or genitalia?
ETA: I’m not trying to make any kind of point here; just asking a questions (or two) for the sake of discussion.
Granted – and again, I stress that it doesn’t matter who it happens to; underneath any veneer of humour one might try to varnish the story with, it’s horrifying. But given option C) in my last response, the reason there tends to be humour found in it when it happens to a man should be clear: Women do not have wieners.
A corollary to C) above then would be that neither boobs nor hoo-hahs are inherently funny save for the euphemisms we assign to them, therefore there is nothing with which to make jokes. Plus, however you choose to view the human race as having made strides towards gender equality, there is still the wide perception of females being the weaker gender in need of protection, therefore we manly men who can take a paltry burning of the crotch would find it horrifying to hear of a woman’s genitals being similarly scorched.
(I do not mean to imply that this perception has any validity, only that it is a subconcious male reaction)
None of the above. One could argue that 1-3 provide mitigating circumstances, but they are certainly not a full justification. That is why we have a judicial system and do not rely on vigilante “justice.”
So, should i break out the rape jokes?
Seriously? Just an “interesting sociological phenomenon”? :dubious:
Let’s all reflect on violence & mutilation now. :smack:
Well, so much for my “Doc, it burns when I pee” line. 
Quite. We all know that a man’s appropriate reaction to such provocation is to write country music. 