Why is this funny?
Mary Robinette Kowal recently had nasal surgery to correct a medical problem. Being who she is (a writer, and therefore professionally interested in just about everything under the sun), she’s been posting pictures of her recovery.
Here’s the thing. Remember when I fell down the stairs? (It was just three days ago; surely you haven’t forgotten.) Afterward, several friends of ours made similar jokes, about my husband pushing me down the stairs.
Why is it that, any time we hear about or see a woman injured, our minds go immediately to domestic abuse?
And why is it funny?
As Mary says, part (maybe all) of the humor comes from the absurdity of the idea: my husband would never push me down the stairs; her husband would never hit her. Anybody who knows us knows this. But at the same time . . . is it really that absurd? How many instances are there of women being abused by their husbands, when all the friends and neighbors would never dream of him doing such a thing?
It isn’t funny, because it isn’t absurd. Not nearly as much as it should be. It’s reality for far too many women. And making jokes about it — that normalizes the idea. Used to be that you got cartoons about drunk driving, the bartender pouring his customer into his car when he’s had a few too many and waving him off homeward with a cheery grin. Because that was normal. You don’t see those cartoons anymore, do you? We don’t think it’s normal to drive when you’re sauced, and we don’t think it’s funny.
We need the same to be true of domestic abuse.
By all means, joke about me falling down the stairs. Remind me that I can’t fly. Say that however much I don’t want to carry boxes, I should stop at hurling them to the bottom, and not hurl myself with them. That’s fine by me; humor is a good way to deal with a really annoying and painful situation.
But don’t joke about my husband pushing me, or Mary’s husband hitting her.
Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.
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I remember a man walking into the butcher shop/food mart and talking to the owner, "I can't stay long. I got THE wife in the car." That one grated as did the demeaning terms of comparing women to various forms of fruit. This was a culture - wrong of course, but nonetheless how we older generations were raised. In a gentle sort of way, "Mona :Lisa Smile" brings a part of this culture out. Your writer friend is right to call a halt to such humor and what I've written here is meant to remind us all where we came from - not whether such was good or not. Anyway, ...