To hear some Men’s Rightsers tell it, one of the cruellest injustices against men in our allegedly gynocentric world is that men can’t punch women without everybody getting all mad at them.
“Equal rights, Equal Fights,” is their rallying cry. If women are allowed to punch men, men should be allowed to punch them right back, even if the woman in question is half their size. More radical sorts don’t even bother claiming self-defense. “Equal Rights, Equal Lefts,” they declare, as if women should be punched for simply having the right to vote.
Never mind that the world isn’t one giant boxing ring in which everybody is punching everyone else all the time. I mean, seriously, the last time I punched someone I was in 6th grade, and it was definitely self-defense. Are the rest of you getting into fist fights on a regular basis? Did I miss a memo or something?
Oh, and never mind also that punching men isn’t actually considered ok, as the “Equal Rights Equal FIghts” crowd assert. For one thing, it’s illegal. It’s battery, and if you punch someone hard enough you could find yourself charged with a felony.
Luckily for us all, one bold anonymous Redditor has a solution for the problem: just let women punch him — again and again until he dies, thus becoming a martyr for Men’s RIghts (to punch women).
Somehow a dozen Men’s Rights Redditors found this strange and baffling proposal inspiring enough to warrant an upvote.
Men’s Rights activists are weird.
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The last time I punched someone was in 6th grade recess, and it was because he was a boy who kept following me and my friend around after repeated requests over several days not to and my repeated statements that I was going to punch him if he didn’t go away.
He got a bloody nose. I was told “don’t punch your classmates even if they deserve it”, he was told “stop pestering girls and you won’t get punched, apologize NOW, and don’t do that again”. He also got grief from the boys because he got a bloody nose from a guuuurl a good deal smaller than him. I was not harassed, other girls were not harassed, me and the boy ended up friends after that.
I have not felt the need to punch anyone since puberty. Because, ya know, it’s illegal and generally wrong and my right hook isn’t what it was. I can’t remember when was the last time I saw a fist fight among adults… definitely not this century.
I think this guy is a) looking for upvotes and b) has a secret fetish about being beaten up by women. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but don’t pretend you’re doing it for some noble cause. Just get into a BDSM group like normal people do and let some ladies (safely) punch on you, dude.
I’m sure it was unintentional, but anon517 forgot to post his real name and address.
How can I locate him?
The people like anon517 remind me of those gun nuts who dream of one day being robbed or assaulted so that they can finally have the privilege of killing someone and looking like a hero. They seem to dream of the day a woman is going to attack them violently and without provocation so that they can defend themselves and “heroically” beat that woman as a proxy for all women. Then, they get offended at the idea that people might not view such gallant defense of their rights as heroic because “men don’t hit women”. That’s like entitlement in heroic fantasy to a maximal degree. At least the above mentioned gun nut dream of killing dangerous armed men, often more numerous and stronger then them. The poor little MRA want the same prestige and recognition for basically defeating in a fist fight someone who was significantly smaller and weaker and not presenting a dangerous threat. Why can’t they, perfectly mediocre people, be perceived as heroes and martyrs all the time they ask?
If a woman punched this dude he could tell authorities and they would treat it the same way they would have if he had been the aggressor. The only difference is he might sustain fewer injuries depending on their sizes and strengths. He’s living in a dystopian fantasyland no one is trying to bring about.
Why do these dudes want to fight and punch others?
Most don’t. It’s performative bollocks for their audience. Makes it even more pathetic to my mind.
A few years ago, my husband coldcocked a guy at a club we were at because he reached under my dress and fully cupped my cunt. That guy was probably one of these types anyways. Security did get called but they were basically like
“I’m not calling the police on him because you sexually assaulted his girlfriend here. I will call them on you if she wants me to” but at that point I was underage, drunk and high and I just wanted to go home and cry.
That was the last time I was involved in a fist fight, and it was my husband doing the punches. but he was doing it as of “take your hand off of her cunt you rapist” kind of way.
Dude seriously tried to play the victim when he came too because his tooth got knocked out. Yeah buddy, you go around assaulting random girls and they may have a SO that’s more sober than they are that will kick your ass. Imagine that.
Sam Rockwell has something to say about that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiHOTBOBqkQ
But sure, have a martyr-complex along with your misogyny. Why not.
I sometimes help a friend out at her women’s self defence classes; and that does involve getting beaten up by ladies a bit. Here she wanted to demonstrate how to take down a larger attacker; and broke my nose. Still, you have to admire her commitment to realism in training.
CW: For my poor shnozz
I’ve never punched anyone but I boxed a boy’s ears once after he head-butted me in the stomach when I was nine. It was remarkably effective!
It may well be bluff and bluster but these guys do sound like the type that will interpret anything as a threat because they’re so desperate to be violent without consequences. I don’t trust any of them to interpret a threat level properly, they would 100% jump to Defcon 5 in their minds over perceived infractures. Cops and bouncers are familiar with that type of scrappy little man, usually found outside a pub after dark.
I feel like the correct assumption here is, “This is actually his sexual fetish.”
Oh, and hi again everyone. 😐 Apologies for vanishing forever, my life has been ridiculous the last few months. Just for starters I got fired from my old job, then hired for another a month later… while having an RA flareup. And my new insurance doesn’t even kick in for another month, because apparently that’s legal in the state where $newcompany is based. Yaaaaay living in a neoliberal capitalist hellscape.
@sunnysombrera:
Wouldn’t that be Defcon 1?
Cops often are that type. Bouncers maybe somewhat less so, since it could be bad for business.
@Surplus
Ooop, you’re right. I should have said Defcon 1. You’re right about (US) cops, though I had UK police in mind when I wrote that.
Battering Lamb:
What if the blind guy trying to put-out the remaining eye of the last guy with any is the one featured in this snippet from an old documentary:
…? For that matter, it ignores the possibility of simultaneous eye-putting-out, which romantics claim is the best kind.
At my old school, no-one was ever punished for punching anyone else, to my knowledge. I gather they wanted to prepare us for a world run by bullies, continually and at all levels.
I have never punched anyone. I’m a woman. In fact, I sort of could use some self defense lessons. My assumption is that this guy, like most of the MRA weirdos, just wants to beat up a woman and can’t figure out how to do it without going to prison. Ya know, the manly thing to do here would be to assault a female and do the time (sarc). Oh, wait. As I understand it, assaulting women does not put you high on the totem pole in prison. Instead, other inmates beat YOU up.
Yeah UK police can be a picture of calm compared to US police (notwithstanding the many “rotten apples”. Me and my friends had a dog set on us by a off-duty policeman for commiting the unforgivable crime of *sitting near his beach hut*. He was famous locally for being an utter bellend though).
Surprisingly given their silly hats and status as a tourist attraction its the Queens Guard who use ridiculously disproportionate force and aggression.
@Gerald: Touche. I was mostly impressed with the ‘he could hide behind a bush or something’ part of his argument. What film is that hat-swinging guy from? Because that’s the kind of nonsense I look for in ‘bad’ films.
As for bouncers: At least in the clubs/bars I worked they were very focused on deescalation. Not to say they couldn’t fight, or didn’t. But I never saw any of them initiate violence. I have seen them very efficiently work an unruly customer out of a side door, come back to pick up the customers coat and toss that out after them. Fighting was considered bad for business.
Don’t know what the standards in different countries are, though.
The only person I’ve ever punched was the CEO of our company.
(We were in a boxing ring, as a result of a Christmas raffle.)
The problem with guys like this is that their idea of “defending themselves” involves disproportionate violence. A woman standing up for herself is the equivalent of the Holocaust in their minds, so they feel justified in using physical assault to even the score and show her who’s boss. She pushes his arm away, he responds with a slap or a punch. She says she thinks Dostoevsky is a better writer, he stabs her. They’re defending their egos, not their bodies.
Legally, he would in fact be considered the aggressor if he escalated against non-deadly force with deadly violence. In order to claim self defense, you have to show you made reasonable efforts to get away/defuse the situation. That’s not going to happen with a guy who’s constantly looking for any excuse to hit women.
@ buttercup
That seems to be related to that phenomenon of treating any and all uses of force as equivalent.
So they can argue women commit more assaults on men than the other way around. But of course that’s because, under that model, a women who pushes a man away twice is seen as the worst perpetrator than the man who stabs her once.
There’s a similar thing with traffic accidents. Statistically women are involved in more accidents than men. But women’s accidents tend to be more of the “That’ll come out with a bit of T-Cut” variety, and guys go for “Police expect the motorway to remain closed for the next three days…”
But that’s why women’s car insurance used to be cheaper. Before the EU said that was unlawful discrimination.
@Battering Lamb:
What film is that hat-swinging guy from? Because that’s the kind of nonsense I look for in ‘bad’ films.
That’s from Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976), starring Chin Kang as the title character; he’s hunting the legendary One-Armed Boxer (Jimmy Wang Yu) for having killed some lamas from his sect in the original movie—it was a franchise (https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-flying-guillotine-series-in-all-its-weird-glory/). He’s on a serial-killing spree against any one-armed men he encounters, hoping that eventually he’ll snag the one he’s after.
Episode S11 E5 of Mythbusters tested the workability of such a weapon; here’s a synopsis: https://mythresults.com/flying-guillotine
@ full metal ox
Considering he decapitated a chicken for practice, I find his stance on animal rights inconsistent.
Anything absolutely anything to be seen as the victims and not the oppressors
@ Cyborgette
Ha! I read that title and thought: Oh great. One of them found a way to try and confuse his masochism with martyrdom…
@ Alan
At first I thought that’s not necessarily correct because in many cases women get attacked just for “provoking” someone. It’s not a numbers game. But then this made me think of the interviews and the documentary I saw yesterday about Jan. 6th. In this one interview this historian said that Trump’s followers are fueled by their anger and fear about loosing power and indeed, what several of these people mentioned along the way was “respect”.
Just the feeling of being “disrespected” by people they deem worth less than themselves* is enough for them to lash out with deadly force. The thing is: disrespect is a feeling. It’s an idea and cultural construct just like “honor” is. It’s innumerable. And it’s not going away not matter how often you punch that opponent in the face. You have to extinguish that opponent, because that’s the only way how to extinguish the disrespect(=dishonor) done to you. And that’s the kind of violence these assholes are actually talking about in my view.
Btw this is a general thing I’ve been thinking about these days… the meaning behind the meaning. Like with this false analogy of wanting to punch women, the same is true for those trumpists. When those people talk about “elites” it doesn’t make sense to point out to them that Trump is the definition of “elite” cause that’s not what they mean. I assume they don’t even really care about the political elite. What they really mean is *”city people”. Intelectual, woke, young, feminist, minority, artist, progressive, LGBTQ+ people. And killing their votes and the politicians they voted for is good enough. For now.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Ogden Nash to the rescue!