“See, I made a joke about hitting my husband, and you all laughed. Men can’t say things like that. If my husband said he hit me, you would all walk out.”

I was at a dinner party a few weeks ago when I was whammed in the head with – ah – specific logic. The hostess brought up the idea that there is hypocrisy in the fact that women can make certain jokes that men can’t. 

She presented this as some sort of inequality for men, as though women have an upper advantage in this verbal (and even physical) area.

I could have bulked up on the painstaking research, endless answers, and perfectly articulated reasoning. 

But who likes rational responses in a hefty debate? That’s right, no one. 

So instead I shifted gears, and asked them a question: “Do you support men in women’s sports?”

Of course, the answer was an unequal “NO!” So I followed up with a “Why not?”

It’s because men are stronger, they said. They have larger lung capacities, bulkier muscle, higher speed levels…and the athletic woman who works out at the gym 3x weekly will barely brush the strength  of your average male high schooler. 

To which I responded, “Exactly.” 

Exactly why women can joke about domestic violence and men cannot.

It’s why when a woman calls you and tells you her husband is hitting her, you ask her if her life is in danger; and if a man calls and tells you his wife hit him, you say, “Yikes, buddy, how can we get you out of there?” (Notice that I said: how can we get you out of there? Anyone who is in a relationship with someone who hit them should get out. [There will be male abusers who use this to argue against women who hit them in self defense. That is not what this article is speaking of. And as for a man who hits and then uses that to claim he needs to leave his wife: his wife is better off without him.] No one should be involved in a relationship with someone who is hitting them. That is not the argument.)

The argument here is that when a man hits a woman once, there’s a good chance she will end up in the ER. And when a woman hits a man once, there’s a good chance he will end up in temporary discomfort. 

And while both are not okay, I think we can equivocally say that a threat to survival is vastly different than discomfort or even pain. (And it doesn’t have to be a hard hit to be a threat to survival. When something that could threaten your survival physically threatens in any way, the body kicks off into fight or flight mode.) If a tiger brushes past you, you freeze, even if it just tapped you with its paw. The reality is, that a threatening man (even with a poke) can put a woman into survival mode. A threatening woman can often be warded off.

Before you make assertions, answer this: how many women end up in the ER every year because their male partner hurt them? Give me the number – before you form an opinion on any of this – give me a number? 

And answer this, too: how many men ended up in the ER this past year because their female partner hurt them?

Women require emergency care for intimate partner violence at roughly four times the rate that men do. 

Women coming to the ER for this issue suffer higher rates of more severe trauma, including strangulation, internal organ damage, severe facial or skull fractures, and pregnancy complications.

Women who come to the ER for domestic violence are likely to be repeat patients, coming at 4x the rate of non abused populations.

When men come to the ER because of injuries from a female partner, a significant portion of those are from mutual combat or the woman acting in self defense against an abuser. In other words, a lot of those men coming are the abusers themselves who are seeking treatment after they beat their female partner. 

Now answer me this: how many women were killed or survived an attempted murder by their boyfriends or husband? 

Now how many men were killed by their girlfriends or wives? 

A woman has a 467% higher chance, or is 5.7 times more likely, to be murdered by a partner than a man is. 

Men commit 70% of all partner murders.

Men kill partners at 1.6x the rate women do. 

Moreover, peer reviewed research indicates that when men kill a partner, there is a long and documented history of him being the long term, primary physical abuser and he often kills when she tries to leave, file for divorce, or break up. And 25% – 30% of these cases are homicide – suicides, where he kills himself right after killing her.

And when she kills, there is often the same! – a long and severe history of domestic abuse where the man is the primary batterer. 

Moreover, she often does this during an active violent assault, as self defense, or after years of physical terror where she sees no other escape.

It is not when he tries to leave.

(If it really was about escape, he wouldn’t do it when she tried to leave. If he’s a victim – why do it then? That is just about control – and not only do we not see that with women, we see far more abused women and far less women standing up for themselves.)

And less than 1% of those women commit suicide post the homicide.

The greatest killer of women ages 18 – 44 is men.

At this point, I certainly hope you’re seeing what I’m seeing.

And culturally, unequivocally, and assuredly I can say: this is why women can make jokes about domestic violence, and men cannot.