If Your Man Knew What to Say, Here’s What He Might Say If He Knew You Feared His Potential For Violence...

Excerpted from Warren Farrell's Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say.

(Permission to reprint granted by Warren Farrell.)
See www.warrenfarrell.com and www.warrenfarrell.info.

 

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If Men Are Battered More, Why Do They Report It Less?

Item. Men rarely report being battered until their wives have attempted to kill them with a knife or a gun.25

Item. The film is Love at Large, with Tom Berenger. The TV promo features a woman slugging Tom. The punch knocks him back, but his response is one of gratitude, “[Wow,] that’s the first time we've touched.”

A man is fearful of reporting being battered to the police because a man being hurt provokes laughter....

Why does a promo of a man being hurt show the man laughing, or in Berenger’s case, show gratitude, while a promo for a woman being slugged in which a woman was laughing or expressing gratitude to the man for slugging her would provoke outrage? It tickles our funny bone because we love the “weaker” underdog defeating the “stronger” man; because of our anger at men, and in part because of our unconscious understanding of how men reframe abuse and call it love.