description versus examples: Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male

But violence is often portrayed as inherently awesome in general.

It seems to me like there's two tropes here:

First, female violence against males is funny, because it violates expectations, and because it plays up the males as pathetic — males are supposed to be stronger, etc etc.

The second trope isn't really about female-on-male violence so much as it is the idea that male on female violence is never accepted. That is to say — all of the listed revenge-fantasy films and the like where a female does this awesome thing beating up males could equally be done with a male beating up male mooks. The only actual trope here is expressed in the way this page's defenders keep trying to argue for it — "nobody would accept this if it were a male beating up a female." That is the trope. Not "female on male violence is acceptable", but "male on female violence is never acceptable, even though all other forms of violence are gleefully played for humor, pathos, awesome, etc."

Well, you're right that there's no chance in hell that in any sort of fiction a man can act abusively towards a woman and get away with it now a days and thank god for that; doesn't quite mean that there aren't cases where they do try to justify women violence somehow. The only thing is that it's so rare, I could only find 2 examples that I'm certain could more or less qualify for this and play if for drama (keep in mind that I'm not familiar with a whole bunch of stuff on the trope page):

• Enough: irrespectively of anything else, the movie certainly pulls all the stops in trying to justify the main character's actions.
• Lifetime Movie of the Week: for the same reasons as above, some of them go out of their way to create these sorts of situations.

So it seems to me that although it's a trope, the justified version is a incredibly niche one that attracts a lot of misunderstood examples; the VAST majority of the current examples seem to consist of comedic stuff, where it's ambiguous on the reasons why it's funny (and we need to continue discussing to make clearer).

Note, I think the big problem here is that this is a genuine problem as per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlFAd4YdQks and http://www.mankind.org.uk/pdfs/DVGovtStatsJan08.pdf and people want to soapbox it to increase awareness, a fine goal but which isn't really the objective of TV Tropes...

On the subject of being played seriously or not, I can think of quite a few examples where two characters are having an argument, angry words are said, and one of them strikes the other. If it's the man who hits the woman expect apologies and/or the revelation that he's a total dick. If it's the woman, expect it to be portrayed as a "you go girl" moment. Don't know if that would count as abuse, but it's certainly a Double Standard.

Anyway, I was going to say that I can see why we want to split off the comedy examples, but we probably shouldn't delete the original page, as there are examples of the trope being used seriously. Question: should psychological or emotional abuse count, or should it be kept at physical?

I think splitting would be fine, but removing the Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male altogether would be a bad idea. Because it is a trope by itself and it is also Truth in Television.

Would this work as an example?

http://lipstick-feminists.org/post/8939066104/when-the-one-you-love-breaks-your-heart-by-leaving-you

That right there is why I could never get behind Ron/Hermione. She so thoroughly outclassed him that the attempt at Belligerent Sexual Tension turned into a one-sided beatdown.

I still don't get "women are better than men therefore the abuse is justified" out of it. However, if the argument is that we can support "Abuse Is Funny When It Is Female On Male" (Comedic Sociopathy), and "Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male" for reasons such as "a petite little girly couldn't be expected to seriously hurt a real man," (Unfortunate Implications) then yes, the picture is an example.

I'm not sure why this split or rename is necessary - while some examples of abuse are played for laughs, other times especially in action movies etc.. the abuse is simply more acceptable because a "powerful" woman is involved. E.g. in a movie a tough lady detective being physically abusive during an interrogation might paint her as a cool anti-hero but the reverse, a female suspect being abused by a male police officer would be an instant crossing of the moral event horizon. Also the "played for laugh" cases do often involve the "OK" part since the abusers are often not painted as sociopaths (even wacky loveable ones), but as being justified in their actions (because the man is a "pervert", he did something thoughtless, etc..) so the reader is invited not only to laugh but to agree as well.

Anyway both those cases fall very well under the: "Sometimes, female-against-male violence is accepted in fiction under circumstances where it would never be accepted if the genders were reversed." which is what the current trope describes. A split would just confuse things in my opinion.

edited 11th Oct '11 2:44:10 AM by Dauq

I feel that I should point out that many works found online consist of a woman abusing a man precisely because she is superior. But it's also inverted, by the male to female works being portrayed the same way.

Since the prominent examples of this trope being 'morally superior' getting inverted, I'd say the change to funny is justified, as long as the 'moral superiority' is left in as A reason (no longer the main one).

But it's also inverted, by the male to female works being portrayed the same way.

???

Really? When? How? Where? Could you Please elaborate?

edited 13th Oct '11 5:05:54 AM by Darkmane

Here are the impressions I've gotten from my years of partaking in media:

1) If a man hurts a woman (except in the most mild of ways, such as pinching them or flicking their foreheads) it's usually portrayed as very, very bad.

2) If a woman hurts a man through punches and slaps (and possibly kicks), it's usually portrayed as no big deal (in large part because the man almost never has any signs of injury after the attack is over).

3) If a man hurts a man or a woman hurts a woman, whether it's portrayed as bad or good depends entirely on context.

4) If a woman hurts a man in more extreme ways (stabbing, shooting, immolating) it's usually portrayed with the same severity as if she was doing it to another woman (though not always with the same severity as if it were a man doing it to a woman).

Can we all more or less agree on these points?

If we can, then I'd like to throw my support behind the OP. While there's a Double Standard about how mild violence between men and women is treated, I think the trope description is off-base about why the Double Standard exists.

I agree with that Evaluation and also agree that the Trope should be renamed Abuse is Funny when it's Female on Male, since majority of the examples are "Played for Laughs" cases.

That was very well said.

I agree too.

@34- rape porn.

• Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male is fine how it is

• Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male should be worked on so that the description and examples don't presume all instances of female-on-male violence are about supposed female superiority

• Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male should be split and Comedic Sociopathy examples can go to Abuse Is Funny When It Is Female On Male

• Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male should be renamed to Abuse Is Funny When It Is Female On Male

How are those for crowner options?

I'd suggest an combination of rename and reworking the description as well.

So, I'm guessing this trope was written by a dude. Just to point out, this would be sort of allowed karmic abuse, directly proportional to the opposite gender abuse in romantic fiction when the guy playing girls (some times many at a time) is labelled a Winner, but when the girl does it, she's a slut.

Plus, it can be played as one is the result of the second (female retribution for being humiliated is a punch in the gut, since screwing other men will not have the desire effect and only harm her social status). Balance, my man.

Ergo: women are allowed to savagely hit man, and get away with it, because they are women; men are allowed to emotionally abuse women by being unfaithful or humiliate them, because he's a man. All is good. In fiction, of course.

(That's not to say the trope is always played correctly. Some Female-Hit-On-Male abuse is simply bad taste. (Good example: Ron and Hermione) And yeah, the 'it's justified' explanation is included, but not because 'it's always justified' but because 'there's no other way to react to this'.)

Also, I agree with what somebody else said: There's a notion that is rare for women to use real physical violence or have a stronger sense of morality, so having them send people flying off balconies never seems to grow old. The double standard is also part of the charm of the trope. You can add to that the 'female can't do real harm', but that's actually a more sexist approach that, undoubtedly, must exist, but is not always the case nor is a valid justification for the "abuse is okay".

In short: I don't think it's bad to use "Abuse If Okay When It Is Female On Male", but I think the author is taking the "okay" part way too seriously. I would re-write the content, not the title.

edited 4th Nov '11 3:32:41 PM by TailofaModernWoman

"Plus, it can be played as one is the result of the second (female retribution for being humiliated is a punch in the gut, since screwing other men will not have the desire effect and only harm her social status). Balance, my man."

Generally this trope holds when it comes to humiliation and emotional/verbal abuse as well. There are more situations where we find it acceptable for a woman to yell at a man, emotionally abuse him or cheat on him where the reverse would not be viewed as acceptable.

The idea that if a woman hits a man, she's usually justified in doing so is definitely a trope.

The trope isn't concerned with the wherefores and whys in real life. The trope is about how it's used in fiction. And in fiction, it's ok for a woman to hit, berate, belittle, or otherwise abuse a man — to the point that it's often used as comedy. The definition does not need to be rewritten.

I still think Tyoria's crowner sounds like a good idea, though.

I'd suggest yet another option for the crowner:

• Split Abuse Is Okay When It’s Female on Male should be split into Abuse Is Funny When Its Female On Male and Abuse Is Harmless When Its Female On Male

How is that different from

this proposal, exactly?

Splitting would be a bad idea, but I agree on renaming Abuse is Harmless when it is Female On Male. The "harmless" part would really improve and refine this trope because:

a) it enfolds examples where the woman is portrayed as wrong but the abuse is not as big a deal as it would be in cases when a man abuses a woman, so it can be played for laughs all the time even when the woman in question is a total jerkass.

b) it focuses more importance on the misogynistic aspect of this trope: namely, the idea that women are ineffectual and helpless and can't really hurt anyone (rather than just focusing on the idea that woman are morally superior), which should help deter idiots who might post examples or word things in ways that would steer this page into woman-bashing or hypocritical whining.

We could list examples where a woman inflicts real, effective, violence on men but is still seen as heroic as subversions, especially in instances where the man in question is mocked or portrayed as weak because he got harmed by a woman (also emphasizes the misogynistic aspects of this trope's usage).

I like that idea

Abuse is Harmless when it is Female On Male is way better as a name for this trope. There is no single example that shows the abuse as really "ok", and all I can see is soapboxing of "oh, men are so much more discriminated that women, woe is me". Maybe with rename this can be a bit more neutral...