I was having a conversation with J after having watched this Feminist Frequency video about the Bechdel Test of movies [1: Does the movie have more than one female character in the primary cast? 2: Do the two female characters talk to each other? 3: Do the female characters talk about something other than a guy?]

His response was, "Name a movie that has a romance scene where the girl slaps the guy and it's not okay". And you know, he was right, Princess Leia slaps Han and it's no biggie. And this has negative consequences in the way our culture at large perceives domestic violence against men. Of course it's based on the assumption that women are weak and non-threatening which works against us in the long run, but it has negative implications for the men as well. And, when violence against women is portrayed either obviously or subtly, it's more likely to get a dialogue than women perpetrating violence against men. (I feel the need to mention that that's probably because women make up the vast majority of domestic abuse victims, but that doesn't make it fair to male inter-partner violence.)

However, what I couldn't seem to put into words during the actual conversation is that it's not shallow perspective of women alone that makes this infuriating. It's the fact that women are so under-represented in the first place that when they do get to move a plot point, it is only ever in an extremely limited way. It's not the fact that women are represented as secondary players, but that they are only shown in that light. Unless, of course, the movie is marketed specifically toward women.

This is never about whether it's more objectionable to show women physically acting out against men as acceptable or show women through their relationship to male characters; it's about reinforcing the primary false perceptions of difference to make different kinds of treatment acceptable for people based on gender.