Not Funny

"I can pee clearly now, Lorena's gone..."

No, she's been reincarnated as Catherine Kieu Becker. Now, as then, the predominant reaction among both genders (after the males are done cringing) is some kind of dark hilarity. "She cut his weenie off, hahahahahaha."

Why is this funny?

Let's switch up the genders here: if a man mutilates a woman's genitals, is that funny? "He threw her itty bitty clitty in the garbage disposal, hahahahaha." No, that's not funny. That's monstrous. So why the double standard?

"Payback's a bitch", Eva said in response to that question. I'm pretty sure she was mostly joking herself. But statistics show women are pretty much just as likely to be perpetrators as victims Moreover, men are actually slightly more likely to be seriously injured or killed, probably because women tend to compensate for their lack of body strength by various means. Becker, for instance, used drugs to incapacitate her husband before the knife came out.

This is not something we're supposed to talk about. There's an interesting, if hideous dynamic in play here, similar to the common reaction that rape victims "had it coming" because of their prior sexual history or the manner in which they were dressed. Male victims of spousal assault "had it coming" because, well, obviously, they must have deserved it. Men are scum, right? If he wasn't abusing her himself, he was probably cheating on her, and every woman knows that aggravated assault is the only sane and just reaction to being cheated on...right?

And just as women often refrain from reporting rape because they're ashamed that they "let themselves be raped", men tend to avoid reporting being abused because men are supposed to be able to take care of themselves, physically. Which goes against the four-word dictum most of us guys learn in childhood (NEVER HIT A WOMAN). I still remember asking but what if she deserves it?

Doesn't matter, was the reply. Which is another way of saying she doesn't deserve it. And that's true. No matter what the provokation, it's never okay to assault a woman. Her miniskirt is not an invitation to rape.

But that knife cuts both ways, or at least it should. And nobody should laugh when that knife touches skin and starts sawing. It's just not funny.