You want to know who rules? There’s no one question to ask. It depends on the era, the culture.

One good question is “Who can strike who?” In ancient Rome, the ruler’s guards traditionally carried a long bludgeoning weapon with them so that they might strike and kill with impunity those who dared touch the ruler. And we hear of men striking women, almost exclusively. Does this represent the reality of our culture, or the spin our culture gives that reality based on its own prejudices? In terms of contemporary society, demonstrably the latter. Real experience overthrows the experts with their agenda and skewed data from skewed questions, from women’s comparative eagerness to report domestic violence compared to men. Experience the cops coming to someone’s door on a domestic violence call sometime: they uniformly suspect the man, ignore any evidence of her striking him, and oust the man from their living space in cases of demonstrable joint abuse.

Someone has to leave, and it’s going to be the man. Hell, he can tough it. He’s disposable. Men can sleep on the streets and don’t mind. They’re like the poor that way. They’re like the Jews, the gypsies, and the homosexuals that way. Besides, any man should be able to take being hit by a woman and not hit back.

Right.

And if we said the reverse, we’d be horrible sexists. Imagine it: “Real women can take being hit. Real women don’t complain about it or hit back. They have a duty to protect their lovers. A slap’s no big deal, not to a real woman. When a man hits a woman, it’s best to evict her onto the streets.” Not going to fly. Yet this is exactly how we treat men.

Sometimes, because it’s supposed to represent reality as it is lived, fiction teaches us better than what we’re taught is the overarching reality. Look at the movies or TV when a man is hit by a woman. Sometimes repeatedly. Perhaps he raises his hand but stops himself. Because the thought of hitting a woman, of what he was about to do, is a horrible thing, programmed into him as such from early childhood. Perhaps he takes a seat and looks stressed -- assuming the position of the subject put into his place by the lord. He’s been taught his limits, and he can’t bring himself to hit back.

The other image we get is that of abusive men just hauling out and striking women, sometimes provoked by their angry bitching (“I liked fucking your friend -- at least he’s a man! Not like you... .”), but often for almost no reason. And often enough, yes, this happens in real life. But it’s still a stereotype. And though it’s condemnable, that fact doesn’t mean that women slapping or hitting men isn’t, or that police should treat men with a double standard, not only presuming female innocence in domestic violence calls, but not caring even when that innocence is demonstrably absent.

I don’t condone domestic violence. Violence ought, in the main, to be preserved for stopping violence and for resisting systemic structures when other forms of resistance are ineffective. If there is a systemic structure to domestic abuse, it is the state-enforced double standard, the cultural structure that sees hitting men as okay, as part of boys growing up, and hitting women as unfathomably evil. Boys learn this growing up, beaten up by other kids, fighting regularly in our public schools, told to be tough -- and told that “you should never ever -- ever -- hit a woman.” And cops -- especially male cops, indoctrinated by the same system of oppression -- were raised with the same sexist values.

So who rules who? Who has the power of the state enforcing their superiority, demonstrated by their right to hit their male inferiors?

Open your eyes to the Matriarchy you’re breathing.

NOTES

This essay was first published as Apollonian Bacchanalia #44 on persiancaesar.com on 3 February 2003, where it was described as being "on contemporary domestic violence and gender."