In semi-defense of Fabolous’ little brother

I'm not saying it's occasionally okay to record a video of yourself slapping the shit out of a woman and ordering her to apologize to Lil Bow Wow. I'm just saying. Spare me all of the crap about how a man is not supposed to hit a woman, unless she's coming at him with a knife, and he has to putting her lights out, Suge Knight-style, to avoid getting stabbed, or he's backed into a corner, and the only way he can leave the room, and hence defuse the situation, is to clear a path by putting a shoe on her, or whatever other BS scenarios people construct for the purpose of proving it's sometimes alright to hit a woman.

It's almost as if these people secretly desire to beat up a woman, er, even more so than the average man (yes, ladies, it's true), and so they sit around and imagine scenarios in which they'd have no other choice. Just like these guys who sit around and memorize the legal age of consent, by state. Why would you even need to know some shit like that, unless there's something wrong with you, deep down inside? Speaking of which, did you know that, even though the legal age of consent (for making love) is generally thought of as being 18, it's actually not 18 in more places than it is. It's only 18 in less than half of the 50 states. 22, or something like that. (I don't remember the exact number, because it's not like I give a shit.) In a lot of places it's 16, and in other places it varies. But it's 16 in more places than you'd think. In Mexico it's only 12, though I wouldn't want to go down there and tempt fate. They don't seem to operate under the rule of law. You might not even make it to the court room, at which point you would of course use Google to pull up where it says what you did was perfectly legal. They might not even have Google.

I'm as firm an adherent to the rule that a man shouldn't hit a woman as anyone (I've never once slapped the shit out of a woman, ever), but only because I don't think it's right to hit people, period. Gender doesn't enter into it. I've been fortunate enough that it hasn't really been an issue in my life. I've heard stories about inner city high schools that are like gladiator academies, and/or "federal pound me in the ass" prison: you have to beat the shit out of someone the first day, or else people will think you're soft. Fistfights are just part of the milieu, along with shouting and the smell of Luster hair care products. Amazing. I even once heard some silly, older negro on This American Life talking about how life was better back when there were more fistfights, because it promoted a certain social order. If you crossed someone, you had to duke it out with them, then you'd shake hands and be done with it. Which was preferable to the current system, as depicted in any number of hood movies, where a drive-by shooting is the appropriate response to any perceived slight. It must not have occurred to him that the one system beget the other.

Um, newsflash: Physical violence as a means of conflict resolution, regardless of the gender of the combatants, is like spanking your children, in that only the least fortunate amongst us can even fathom it being okay, let alone customary. In fact, I'm sure you can even find where it says somewhere that the two of them are linked, the spanking being the source of the pattern of behavior that continues on into high school and then prison. Or pro sports. Whatever the case may be. If you find yourself constantly tempted to hit people, and ordering people to say things to your face so you'll have an excuse to hit them, there's a distinct possibility that you were "tampered with" in your youth, and you just don't remember it, because you've blocked out the memory as a coping mechanism. You might need to develop a suspect relationship with a male shrink that culminates in a fit of teary-eyed dry humping, like in the movie Good Will Hunting.

I'd hate to be the one to break it to you. (Nullus.)

At any rate, beating someone up doesn't prove anything other than that you're a somewhat more capable fighter than the person you beat up. Someone bigger than you could just as easily come along and put you in your place. This, more or less, is the reason why men aren't supposed to hit women. It's just not a fair fight. Ladies, don't get it twisted - pretty much any guy could beat up pretty much any woman. I don't care if it's Muhammad Ali's daughter versus the guy who played McLovin. With a few pointers, he could preserve the natural order of things. But I'm not sure how fair it is that women, along with - let's keep it real - smaller men, are granted immunity primarily on the basis of size. It'd be one thing if smaller people agreed not to provoke bigger people, if only for the purpose of self-preservation, but, as any man of a certain size who ever tried walking down a crowded sidewalk can attest, that's just not how it works. Instead, it ends up promoting this tyranny of the small, where a woman can say and do any ol' foul shit to a man, knowing good and well she's not at risk of any physical harm. Which, in turn, only causes that much more violence against women, since the rule against hitting women is like the rule against snitching, in that it's sacrosanct... except when it's not. Anyone who's not currently knee deep in a woman's asshole can sit there and espouse the platitude.

In all likelihood, there'd be less violence against women, if violence against women weren't so frowned upon. Not because women would constantly be in fear of being hit by a man (especially if they were nice people and hence didn't have anything to worry about), but because men would have that much more respect for women. Under the current system, which I believe feminists refer to as "patriarchy," women are considered different from men, and it's that much easier to be violent against someone, if you don't think of them as being the same as yourself. Racism operates under more or less the same principle. Personally, I've yet to put my shoe on a woman, and I probably won't, but it's not because I abide by some arbitrary rule about when I'm allowed to hit people, it's because I'm progressive enough to know that sometimes you have to be the bigger man - figuratively speaking, of course, but also, more often than not, literally.