When a man resorts to violence to “defend the honor” of his wife or girlfriend from rude comments from another man, it’s worth asking if the violence really has anything to do with the woman in question.
Immediately after Will Smith whopped Chris Rock upside his head on live television Sunday night he yelled to Rock, who had made a quick joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, to “keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.” But I don’t think the slap had much if anything to do with Rock mocking Pinkett Smiths hair — and implicitly the alopecia that led to her shaving her head in the first place.
No, I think what was really bothering Smith was the constant barrage of jokes about his admittedly complicated, and perhaps open, marriage. He was tired, I think, of being called a “cuck” because of his wife’s alleged infidelity (which may have only taken place during a time when the two were separated). After several jokes on the subject from the main stage at the Oscars, it seems he wanted to punch someone, and when Rock made his mean little joke he became that someone.
Smith wasn’t protecting his wife, who responded to the joke with an eye roll and nothing more; she didn’t tell him to do anything on her behalf. No, it looks to me like Smith was trying to assert his masculinity after having it questioned for years. Rock’s hair joke was the excuse, not the reason, for the slap. But if Smith hoped this show of “toxic masculinity” would convince people to stop calling him a “cuck” and worse, he was wrong.
Indeed, the insults flew faster than ever — especially among those who blame Pinkett Smith’s “infidelity” and Smith’s acquiescence to his alleged “cuckold” status, as the real reason for the slap. And that brings us to the Men’s Rights activists of Reddit, who came up with an explanation of events that is almost the polar opposite of mine — and in which Jada Pinkett Smith is the real villain.
Many of the commenters on the Men’s Rights subreddit took a perverse pleasure in calling Will Smith a “cuck,” a “simp” and a “punk ass bitch” who felt compelled to defend the honor of a woman who didn’t deserve either honor or a defense.
“What kind of man would try to defend his wife’s ‘honor’ when this same wife publicly cheats and humiliates him,” asked ninodelumbre.
I … think C. Rock was just trying to help W. Smith by showing him that he could do so much better then being attached to baldy the cheating wife.
“You cannot defend the honor of a woman who has none,” agreed asura227.
You accomplish nothing but making yourself look stupid. Will Smith – cuckold of the year 2022.
“I didn’t even realize they were still together,” snorted Jbr74.
I lost more respect for him staying with that sexually promiscuous, adulterating, philandering low-life piece of trash, gaslighting, narcissistic human being.
“She can take a dick but she can’t take a joke,” laughed kamenghost.
After quoting Smith, who yelled to Rock to “keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth,” TAPriceCTR declared “Man, keep other men’s cocks out of your wife’s damn mouth.”
Never mind that as far as we know, Jada had one relationship, with one man, during a time when she and Will were unofficially separated.
The cuck jokes never ended.
“Did Will get to fuck Jada last night, or only watch?” joked pushing-rope.
“Impotent cuckold rage was on full display,” added YourPillsAintWorkin.
Others argued that Smith was the real victim — of Pinkett Smith’s cuckolding.
After describing the two as “Hollywoods premier feminist couple” (?) , thread-starter NeoNotNeo declared that “Will proclaiming he was defending his family is BS. He hit a man because of his wife’s fragile ego.”
“I think Will Smith is pretty clearly in an abusive relationship.,” offered a DIY psychologist called Scrubadubdub82 in a comment that got nearly 300 upvotes.
I think this is what feminist abuse in a relationship looks like. Men being made to look foolish for the wife’s ego. Men feeling obligated to do their wife’s bidding. Being told you’re toxically masculine if you ever stand up for yourself, but told you’re not a real man if you ever let your wife have to deal with even the smallest slight herself.
One commenter wondered aloud why “a wealthy and successful male actor who has access to some of the most beautiful girls in the world [would] stay with an old bald female that cheats on him?”
“Don’t victim blame,” responded someone called Omz-bomz.”
There can be lots of reasons why.
Being in an abuse relationship doesn’t always allow you to take rational decitions, or to see how bad the situation really is. From what we know she is manipulative and abusive and gaslights him into thinking it’s his fault.
We know nothing of the sort. We know that their relationship is complicated, and that it has sometimes been bad. And that’s about it. But calling her all these things is classic Men’s Rights “activism” at its worst. Leave it to the MRAs to blame the only person in this triangular standoff who didn’t do anything wrong — just because she’s a woman with her own ideas how relationships should work.
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@Surplus to Requirements:
Venus and Serena? As in, the tennis players? Or someone else? How are they involved in this? There was no mention of their involvement in David’s article.
Will Smith received his Best Actor Oscar for the title role in King Richard, the story of how Richard Williams coached his daughters to tennis superstardom—making it necessarily Venus and Serena’s story as well.
@ Alan Robertshaw
What about proportional use of force? A large number of people are in prison in the US because they felt disrespect justified violence. I believe I read an article at one point finding most on death row or maximum security joints were there because of exactly that. I realize you aren’t exactly saying “He called me names so I shot him” is fine, but your statement still seems a little odd to me.
Speaking of the Scottish Play, in my uni days I hung out with theatre majors, mostly the techies. They absolutely respected the tradition of not saying the “M” name on stage, and if anybody violated the custom, the uni had its own tradition of response. Once the “M” word was used, you had to go outside the theatre, turn around 3 times, and whistle. In some troupes I understand you swear instead of whistle.
@ .45
That is true. A response should be proportionate. Of course there’s a difference between the legal and moral positions.
Legally, provocation isn’t
However it’s a cliche that law and justice aren’t synonymous. So sometimes illegal acts can be justified, or at least understandable.
And whilst there’s all the very reasonable points that can be made as to the danger of people taking matters into one’s own hands, in this particular circumstance I’m not going to condemn Smith out of hand. I’d need to know what Jada thought of it before coming to any sort of definitive conclusion.
@ Vicky P
As you probably know, whistling is also considered bad luck in theatres; which is presumably why they have to go outside to do it.
There is a practical reason for that. Stage managers used to use whistles to direct the stage hands as to scenery changes.
Those flats though weigh a lot and drop down from the flies at speed. So you don’t want to be underneath one when someone hears an errant whistle and plonks two tons of backdrop on your head.
(As an aside, Kabuki theatres have a really cool way of changing scenery that a friend adopted for rock bands)
In any case, it certainly isn’t Jada’s fault in any way. Also, she looked amazing.
@Vicky P: All the troupes I’ve been in, you have to go outside, turn around 3 times, and spit.
One (outside, newbie) director I worked with refused to go along with this age-old tradition when the sound effects guy said the M word during a rehearsal.
A week or less later, sound guy was out with chicken pox. As an adult, and after the vaccine was widely available — I know because I’d had mine.
Us older folk quietly muttered “mmm-hmm, told you so”.
@FM Ox: Brilliant!
Okay, so I’m guessing this is where the “Alopecia isn’t a real disease, it’s an aesthetic choice / mental disorder” thing I saw a few times recently indirectly came from.
For the love of Katie, the Great Feminist Goddess, it’s Acid Kritana.
Why can’t we attract a higher caliber of trolls?
@Snowberry:
Probably. It would certainly explain why some creep who took it upon themself to harass me on Twitter yesterday decided to comment—in between the death threats—with something along the lines of “it’s not ableist; it’s not a disability!” (It should be noted that Ms. Smith is reportedly losing her hair to an autoimmune condition.)
Also? I just love it when they play the “diversity of opinion” card as if they don’t expect their spaces to be complete echo chambers.
@Quack:
Project much?
@FMO
Waitaminnit — Venus Williams and Serena Williams are princesses? I certainly did not know that.
@Surplus: The film is called King Richard. Though I don’t know where he got the nickname.
@ Alan Robertshaw
This subject is actually one I have been musing about for some time. I have been involved in a few situations in my life where I either escalated things or failed to keep them from escalating. One situation in particular could have involved lethal force in the name of protecting someone from much less.
That last incident concerns me because it brought home to me that even a minor argument could result in serious injury or death, and I would certainly not feel legally or morally right if I did escalate a situation in someone’s defense and indirectly caused such things when it all went south.
In this example, let’s say Chris fought back. Will, by strength, skill, luck, or all of the above, puts him down with broken bones. End result: The court sentences Will to X amount of years in prison. Chris spends time in the hospital and may have an injury that impacts him the rest of his life. Jada loses contact with her husband while he is in prison, possibly for a defense of her she never wanted in the first place. Nobody really wins here, unless, as you suggest, Will wants to claim a moral victory.
Of course, to return to me in particular, if I pull the pacifist card, I certainly wouldn’t measure up to Tiffany Haddish’s standards, or anyone like her, so maybe I’m just making excuses for being afraid to hurt people.
Eh, I can keep going in circles here, it probably won’t change what goes down the next time something happens to me or people around me.
I give pretty much zero fucks about awards shows or celebrity things unless it’s one of the handful I actually like, so I’ve only heard a little about this. I don’t pay attention to Chris Rock and I haven’t watched a Will Smith movie since probably the late 90s/early 2000s, so I have no real opinion about either of them.
What I do think is that Will definitely overreacted and he should not have slapped Chris over his stupid “joke”, period. But I think that however dumb the “joke” was (that’s basically one step up from “yo
mamawife wears army boots”), it was tasteless and unnecessary. Not to mention even worse to spew that out when the target of said “joke” and her spouse are right there in the audience. So Chris is being an asshole, but getting defended because Will overreacted with disproportionate retribution, but if anyone criticizes Chris for the insult, people trip over themselves to say how “He’s a comedian, he can say whatever he wants!”, “Waaah, cancel culture!!”, “Freeze peach!!!”, etc.And naturally, the internet douchebag brigade is right there to blame this all on the woman who got insulted. Because of course they are. I’m actually surprised they didn’t throw a bunch of racism in the mix, but maybe David just left that out of the examples. (I would say their eternal obsession with the word “cuck” would be slightly racist, but they use that goddamn word so often now it’s lost all meaning.)
PS: Could somebody elaborate on Jada’s condition so I can have a better understanding? When I skimmed wikipedia for the term earlier, it just lead me to believe it was generic hair loss, but then some other people are saying it’s a health related issue, so I’m a little confused.
@Alan
Oh, yes – there was no whistling in our uni’s theatre. Unless someone was doing it in character for a show.
@GSS ex-noob
Somehow or another, our uni had hired a theatre professor WHO DID NOT KNOW the tradition. She was a bit of a dingbat in other respects. Hopefully she grew out of it after I graduated. Anyway, this junior prof was in the actual theatre space when someone used the phrase “the Scottish tragedy” and she said, “You mean Macbeth?” Cue the students going out and performing the ritual. She said it a few more times before she caught on. As I said, a bit of a dingbat.
Note also that a lot of Black people go bald from overexposure to processing chemicals—one result of the hair Nature gave them, and the hairstyles that accommodate Afro-textured hair, being considered less than respectable. (In a weird bit of retrospective irony, guess who produced a documentary on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hair)
@Queen of the Harpies
It’s an autoimmune disease, in which the immune system attacks the hair follicles.
In addition to the cosmetic and social problems, it’s more disabling than you might think. No eyebrows means sweat can drip right into your eyes very easily. No nose hairs means worse allergies, more vulnerability to colds, and more sneezing/irritation in general. No body hair at all, not even vellus hair, means more chafing. Plus like any autoimmune condition, no matter how mild, it creates intrinsic stress on the body from inflammation. And, like any autoimmune disease, it increases your risk of comorbid autoimmune diseases.
… And, like any autoimmune disease, it’s much more common in women and AFAB people.
(You can probably see where my initial hot take on this came from.)
Within minutes of the slap itself, I saw dozens of people who seemed to be adult men tweeting sexually explicit tweets about Will and Jada’s open relationship… At their son Jaden?
How do people rationalise tweeting at someone about their mother’s sex life?
@Squack
I’m curious to know what makes unexamined theories superior to examined theories, why an MRA disagreement isn’t a petty squabble, and what the diversity of opinion is behind these grand unified MRA theories. Is it that women are bad AND evil? I can see where it would be a challenge to accommodate those two ideas at once.
@ .45
It’s a topic I’ve thought about a lot too; because of the self defence stuff. And it’s another one of those subjects that I simultaneously hold totally contradictory opinions on.
In practical terms I’m a huge fan of de-escalation. Especially for blokes. A lot of M-M violence is performative. Some experts refer to it as ‘the monkey dance’. But it’s all about ‘posture and submission’. The conflict will usually end when one party acknowledges the supremacy of the other. Whether that’s through physical defeat or merely capitulating. So really it’s all about overcoming one’s ego and backing down. But there’s that pressure not to lose face.
Very few things are worth the risk though. Same with street crime. Just hand over your wallet. It might be demoralising; but if you were lying in the street bleeding to death how much would you pay not to be? More than the contents of your wallet I suspect.
There’s nothing new here of course. You know the adage “Better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6”? That’s now a slogan of 2nd Amendmenters. But there is some evidence that it was originally meant as a warning to utilise the legal system rathe than try to take matters into your own hand.
So generally, for both practical reasons, and just as a matter of personality, I’m a big fan of letting things go. I’m a big Aurelius fan; so I’m pretty (large S) stoic about ‘insults’ or other forms of non physical attack. Not that I actually get any; which some may find surprising. But I generally think violence should be reserved for when it is necessary to save life or limb. If the threat no longer remains, then it’s just revenge and thus pointless.
But having said all that, I have a few red rag to a bull issues. So hurt a child or an animal and I’m all for bringing back outlawry.
@Alan
My sifu used to teach a self-defense class at the university, and he’d always start his first lesson by telling the class we was going to teach them the only effective defense against an attacker with a gun. He’d assume a casual stance, emphasizing “feet shoulder width apart,” going a little bit into the physics of bending your knees – but not too much! – and when everyone was paying close attention, he’d slowly move his hand to his back pocket, pull out his wallet, throw it about 10 feet in front of him, and then say “any questions?”
@Alan Robertshaw
I’ve heard that if you can’t run away and the aggressor is purely being aggressive (rather than mugging you or whatever) that the trick is punching them as hard as you can while they are still in the “squaring up” phase and taking them by surprise. And then running away. Wouldn’t work for me, unfortunately, as I am pathetically weak.
@Rachim:
How do people rationalise tweeting at someone about their mother’s sex life?
Simple: it’s Yo Mama, expressed in 21st-century technology (and from a distance, and frequently anonymously.)
@ gaebolga
A philosophy shared by the irrepressible Master Wong…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMObHRmVF9E&t=146s
@ lollypop
Physical strength isn’t that important in self defence. 95% of self defence is non physical anyway. It’s all stuff like avoiding or evading danger, or de-escalating if that’s not possible.
But if you do have to go kinetic then it’s about technique. Basically how to target weak spots. As a military combatives/Krav Maga fan then that’s usually groin, throat, or joints.
Compliance is good; it lowers the assailant’s response times and more importantly ‘interrupts their script’. Or if you want to be technical, ‘disrupts the OODA loop’.
But basically, if you are going to act, firstly get them to process a thought. A good way is to ask a question. That could be within the scenario. So maybe “Is it ok if I reach for my wallet?” or some people recommend a non sequitur “What’s your favourite cheese?” or similar. But processing an input takes around 0.2 seconds; and that’s the time you use to kick them in the nads, stomp on their ankle, then leg it.
As an aside, Gal Gadot used to be a Krav Maga instructor. Like this lass…
Yeah, the first bit of this is a really cringey white feminist take on the part of Mr. Futrelle and I’m really disappointed he hasn’t bothered to check in with any Black feminists about this.
@Kat
I don’t know who that person is, or why you’re comparing them to me.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
At this very moment, one of the world’s most prominent and successful feminists is being charged with bigotry against transgender people, and her work is championed by the likes of Vladimir Putin. It’ll be a cold day in hell before you ever see MRA’s tear down their own, because we understand that any publicity and visibility among us is good – we know that people are unfairly biased against us, and it’s fruitless to try and enforce purity among our ranks.