I mean, Lilli is a pain in the ass. She really is. So, serves her right to experience something like that for herself. Literally.

Yes, but Fred is a pain in the ass, too, and yet he is never demeaned with a spanking or even made to seem to be in the wrong–even though he frequently is–nor made to humble himself at the end in a subservient way. Fred’s dalliances and everything–oh that’s okay because he’s a man.
It’s just not equal treatment, even in comedy.

Monique, which book was that? I first thought Michael Moorcock's GLORIANA but it doesn't seem quite right. What you're saying does seem to ring a bell, though…

The book is one of the 3 from Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I believe it occurs in the first book, Lord Foul’s Bane.

1. I think we're confusing the issue when we talk about domestic violence in the context of this discussion. Yes, there is an undeniable relation, but just as smoking pot doesn't mean you necessarily become a crack addict (look at the current President-elect for one), slapping your partner doesn't automatically constitute domestic violence. Equating the two demeans the seriousness of real domestic violence.

I agree with you that hitting a woman in retaliation for a hit and battering (DV) are not the same thing; if I wasn’t clear enough when I said that in previous posts, let me say it again: one hit does not equal battering.

That said, I do not think that it demeans DV or is inappropriate to discuss it in this context, because we are, in fact, discussing physical aggression between intimates. Before I spent some time studying DV, I probably would be more cavalier in my responses here, but having spent only the limited amount of time I have on the various issues associated with DV, I am much more cautious about okaying physical violence in any RL intimate relationship (I’ll get to books and movies, etc. in a minute). But from a male to female direction I’m going to apply an even higher level of scrutiny to any instance of smacking, hitting, pushing, etc., *because* of the overwhelming statistics on DV (in the US, estimates are now at 1/3 and expected to go to 1/2 of ALL women expected to face DV at some point). With the prospect of 50% of women dealing with some form of DV (and it doesn’t even have to be physical), I just can’t be so okay with physical aggression between intimates no matter who initiates or retaliates. But in the case of male to female hitting, just one hit would concern me if a friend came to me and told me her boyfriend/husband struck her, even if it was in retaliation for something she did. If that’s a double standard, I’m comfortable with it for now.

As for books, movies, television, etc. I can be much more accepting, because I think there’s often another narrative going on. In kick-ass UF, paranormal, RS heroines, for example, there is often a secondary narrative around justice that makes the aggression more symbolic than realistic. Sometimes there’s the “women can be just as strong as men” vibe at work, or a revenge fantasy for some kind of violation perpetrated against the heroine or someone she loves(d). Sex play has a whole different set of things going on, which can make the physical contact work on a different level, too. So my responses to fictionalized violence are often quite different.

That said, I *hated* the scene where Ricky spanks Lucy in ILL, because to me it was a paternalistic show of authority over an infantalized wife, a means of punishing Lucy for transgressing boundaries her husband set for her, boundaries not necessarily any more rational than her defiance of them. IMO there was a world of masculine domination in that spanking, and I cannot watch it without cringing and feeling creeped out. OTOH, I think the scene between Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Adam’s Rib, where he slaps her and she kicks him, was very well done, because it directly and overtly addressed the issues of authority and the male-female power struggle between the characters and the law (vis a vis the case they were trying on opposite sides).

In a representative medium, it’s all about context for me, while in RL, I am warier of context as a means to justify physical aggression. That doesn’t mean I think anyone who strikes another is horrible or that they are on their way to battering. I am just less able to see it as normalized or as expected within an emotionally and/or physically intimate relationship.

I generally hate spanking in novels, even in kink. There it worked because, as Moth says, he's not disciplining her or acting as her parent, but basically sinking down to her level by retaliating the way he did. They're both behaving like two toddlers with crushes on each other who express it by shoving each other into the sand bank.

Thank you. That was the point I was trying to make with my example. And, actually, it would probably be pretty funny if Lilli spanked Fred. *shrug* I’m not for spanking children and in a more seriously-themed story I would probably have a problem with spanking, (or if the heroine were not behaving as badly as Lilli does) but I can’t get that upset over it when used for comedic effect like in KMK. I mean, Lilli is a pain in the ass. She really is. So, serves her right to experience something like that for herself. Literally.

Two points:

1. I think we’re confusing the issue when we talk about domestic violence in the context of this discussion. Yes, there is an undeniable relation, but just as smoking pot doesn’t mean you necessarily become a crack addict (look at the current President-elect for one), slapping your partner doesn’t automatically constitute domestic violence. Equating the two demeans the seriousness of real domestic violence.

2. I am generally against men retaliating, whatever the provocation and I don’t see it as a double standard at all. I agree that slapping a guy for being an arsehole is probably not the most healthy reaction to a relationship crisis, but men generally have more physical power so have more of a responsibility to control it. If a woman was a martial arts expert, she should not slap or hit her partner even if his behaviour REALLY deserved it – I would not respect her at all if she did. If a cyclist behaves badly on the road and rams into you, you don’t retaliate the same way if you happen to be in a car – you have the responsibility to control yourself more.

3. If both are combatants and feel the need to work out their differences with a fist fight then, though I could question the healthiness of their relationship, it’s not an issue for me. I had many issues with the Buffy/Angel relationship but none about the physical violence. The Buffy/Spike bothered me more when Spike physically couldn’t hit back.

To me, this scene is acceptable because it totally fits with their interactions with each other. Also, I think Fred himself knows he wasn't doing it for her own good, he was sinking to Lilli's level.

Same here – I loved that scene. I generally hate spanking in novels, even in kink. There it worked because, as Moth says, he’s not disciplining her or acting as her parent, but basically sinking down to her level by retaliating the way he did. They’re both behaving like two toddlers with crushes on each other who express it by shoving each other into the sand bank.

On the subject, another TAMING OF THE SHREW that works really well, and is actually pretty romantic to boot (I swear!) is the recent BBC Shakespeare Retold with the very very very hot Rufus Sewell and the fantastic Shirley Henderson. Here’s a clip. It works for the same reasons – two very disfunctional people with the combined maturity of a ten year old but crazy about each other. They actually kept the last scene but made it work really well.

Frankly, the only rape I was ever comfortable with (and that took a while) was in a fantasy novel where the entire book was an allegory. Therefore, the woman was really an aspect of the man who raped her and it was really a figurative rape of a part of himself.

Monique, which book was that? I first thought Michael Moorcock’s GLORIANA but it doesn’t seem quite right. What you’re saying does seem to ring a bell, though…

One thing I do wonder about, though, is how readers feel toward more physically aggressive women in UF, paranormals, Rom Sus and other areas of Romance where the heroines have taken on a more “kick-ass” physicality. Are the rules the same as applied, are they different, are the characters constructed differently because they're women, etc. In other words, do readers respond differently to physically aggressive heroines than they do physically aggressive heroes?

You’re describing a genre that probably has a world following very different rules, so yes, I respond differently. If the fictional world is one with fundamentally *and systemically* different mores, all bets are off for what I’ll accept. E.g. I thought Kit Whitfield’s Benighted made a strong case justifying the heroine’s physical violence and general misanthropy; both men and women, and both weres and nons, were affected by the world they lived in. Even more notably, men and women were *similarly* affected; I think that’s unusual in romance.

In contrast, if the fictional world appears to tweak only *some* mores–e.g. expectations of the hero’s behavior–but not others, I may not be convinced that the world is thoughtfully and systemically different from reality, and I judge the interactions much as I would in a contemporary. As you point out, in historical romance often certain elements are retrograde while others are modernized:

I get frustrated by the historical justifications for violence against Romance heroines. … in most historical Romance I've read, the author takes all sorts of liberties with history and social context

That doesn’t convince me that those behaviors are *necessitated* by the fictional world; it looks more like the author is using the world as a flimsy excuse for the behavior. Similarly, I’ve read quite a few paranormal romances in which the fictional world seems to make men larger than life and women lesser (as if personality’s a zero-sum game and developing one sex detracts from the other). Those setups sometimes seem facile in a manner that makes me suspect the world was tweaked only enough to justify the author’s preferred male/female power dynamics.

The two of them are over the top, crazy people and even the spanking doesn't slow Lilli down. She milks it for the next act. (And Fred acts like she's crippled him for life). They're both drama queens and, for me, him spanking her was fairplay.

If its something like this, I have no problem with the spanking. Am I alone in this?

I don’t know if you’re alone, but that particular scene in the movie I found offensive (despite knowing the mentality regarding gender relationships in the 50′s) and though I love that movie, I generally skip that scene whenever I watch it again. I also don’t like the ending, where (spoiler!)…

she finally yields as Kate but also as Lily, going on about her duty to serve and obey her man. Lily and Fred realize their love, but it isn’t a coming together of equals. She has to submit to her “lord”, for it to be acceptable.

I know both the play and the movie should be viewed in their time periods in regard to their attitude toward women, but it causes a modern gut reaction in me so strong, I don’t even like to watch it play out in fiction. It reminds me of I Love Lucy, some episode where Ricky spanked her. Comedy, yeah. But something in me just didn’t find it all that funny. I squirm every time I see it.
So do I just need to lighten up? I don’t know. But that was my reaction.

I’m curious, if Lilli had put him over her knee and spanked him to humiliate him instead of elbowing him, would you have figured that was okay? Or would that have completely emasculated him in your eyes? And if so, why would the same action that reduces Lilli from a woman to a child be okay?

I know I won’t change your mind and I’m not trying to (much :). I’m just really curious about how other people’s minds arrive at their feelings.

One thing I do wonder about, though, is how readers feel toward more physically aggressive women in UF, paranormals, Rom Sus and other areas of Romance where the heroines have taken on a more “kick-ass” physicality.

Interesting questions. I don’t read TOO much UF and the romantic suspenses I’ve read the heroine is usually the D.I.D.-type. My frame of reference is mostly Buffy and how her and Angel had a few dust-ups before they had ironed out he was a good guy. I don’t have a problem with something like that. Where they accidentally beat-up the guy, if it continued once they were in a relationship that would be an issue for me. I think with a kick-ass heroine I wouldn’t have a problem with the slap for a slap idea because she knows how to take a hit, she’s tough. It’s hard to articulate this but to me the hero might be acknowledging her strength in some way by hitting her back.

I don’t know. I think I’ll let others hash that out… so onto my thoughts on spanking…

Ok, my take was the spanking is ok in cerain situations. In my earlier comment I gave the example of Kiss Me Kate. Fred and Lilli are actors, divorced and each with hot tempers and oversized personalities. Prior to the spanking scene Lilli has elbowed Fred in the ribs, mistreated him, humiliated him and thrown a tantrum on stage in front of a Broadway audience. She’s a pill. Fred snaps and takes her over his knee. He spanks her in front of the cast, the audience and all. Painful and humiliating, yes. But she’d been putting him through much of the same already. To me, this scene is acceptable because it totally fits with their interactions with each other. Also, I think Fred himself knows he wasn’t doing it for her own good, he was sinking to Lilli’s level.

The two of them are over the top, crazy people and even the spanking doesn’t slow Lilli down. She milks it for the next act. (And Fred acts like she’s crippled him for life). They’re both drama queens and, for me, him spanking her was fairplay.

If its something like this, I have no problem with the spanking. Am I alone in this?

I am just using your post as a jumping off point for the rest of this so it is not aimed at you specifically. I feel that the issue of domestic violence and abuse is not the issue that was originally brought up by the question or the examples from the books read, but a single slap and a single retaliation. Therefore, it is not the real issue here. It is a separate issue that keeps ending up in the discussion. IMO, the issue is simple: Does a man have the right to slap a woman back if she hits him? I think yes and I also think that this does not make him an abusive husband or a anything like that. I also do not think that accepting violence in romance novels makes a woman more likely to be accepting of an abusive relationship, if that is a fear. I am more concerned that my husband and I can joke about the “Boy rapes girl, boy gets girl” plot that was once so prevalent because that seems worse to me than a single slap or even a spanking. I have worked hard to come to grips with events that were near rapes in some of the books I have read. Frankly, the only rape I was ever comfortable with (and that took a while) was in a fantasy novel where the entire book was an allegory. Therefore, the woman was really an aspect of the man who raped her and it was really a figurative rape of a part of himself.

The acceptance of it in the real world is too alive and well.
I know a bright, sweet young woman who recently graduated from college. She’s been dating a guy for over a year now. In all that time, he’s been losing his temper and hitting her. She broke up with him once, then got back together when he promised to get therapy.

For the time being, he’s still hitting her. They’re going to get married next month. Her friends have tried long and hard to talk her out of it. No good.

Understand I’m not blaming novels alone for this. Society’s created and perpetuates this problem. But why contribute to it overall with a heroine (or hero) who tolerates abuse?

I’m only going to address the question of “kick-ass” ladies in romance here because I need some time to think about the other things you’ve said. Personally, I love the kick-ass ladies. I don’t think I respond differently to a kick-ass woman than I do to a “kick-ass” hero, though I do think that such a woman needs a man who is alpha to match her. Two strong personalities and bodies coming together is great!! I think of Marlena and Stash or Amber and Hawk in Into Danger and The Hunter, respectively, by Gennita Low. I also think the rules are very different there. Retaliation in kind or some other way is expected and the norm. And when a guy doesn’t retaliate physically, you know that it’s gonna happen some other way, like probably in bed or up against a wall or on a table. But then, I come from a fantasy/sci-fi background and tend to be more used to kick-ass ladies as a result. In fact, I do not like at all girly-girl types or fashionista types. That probably has a lot to do with why I rarely read contemps and avoid chick lit at all costs.

But yes, I think there are very different expectations in the Rom Sus, urban fantasy, and other subgenres where the woman is tougher physically.

Again, my caveat is I don’t know that I’ve read about this happen from the “new” breed of authors. I just know I’ve read this in the past even if I can’t put my finger on a book or author. I’m certainly NOT condoning any kind of violence even the kink sex violence of spanking. It boggles my mind how people who would not consider striking someone can do it with sex involved as if that justifies the behavior.

In nearly twenty years, my husband has never struck me although once in the early, early part of our relationship, I gave him reason to. I was such a bitch and frankly, I would have deserved a slap. But he didn’t. Because he’d been taught by his father that striking a woman just isn’t done. Ever. No matter the reason. Does that make him less a man? Nope. Would it have made him less of man if he had? Nope. I would have deserved it – I was immature and childish and so, so wrong (and no, we weren’t married by then). But, he doesn’t believe in violence (even as a member of NRA and having been a military cop) and never against a woman. To him, that’s unforgiveable. Double standard or not, he believes his job is to take care of and cherish me. Even when I don’t deserve it.

I lived my entire childhood life unable to retaliate against those who hurt me (my peers, this was *not* child abuse) because I was taught that it was unacceptable to retaliate and that I should just “ignore it and it will go away”. As an adult, I am painfully aware that had I retaliated just once, it would most likely have stopped. This informs my opinion here at least partly.

To me, though, this is a very different situation than the kind we have been discussing in this thread. The situation you describe is closer to the situation in which a battered woman ends up killing her batterer and then winds up jailed for homicide if her actions don’t fall into the traditional self-defense elements. Your example, in other words, seems to fall more into the area of what we think of as self-defense, even if it doesn’t line up that way legally. And I’m not sure I’d advocate the “ignore it” position as a particularly effective response, either, at least not if the point is to end the violence (which is another reason I can’t embrace the slap for a slap logic between a couple, either).

Battering, bullying, and the like can be perpetrated by men or women, and I don’t think it makes women more of a victim to suggest that men should not hit them back, any more than I think it makes men more of a victim to say that women should not hit them back (excluding self-defense). I *do*, absolutely, believe that men have a higher bar to meet, not only because they might be labeled as batterers, but also because IMO our society is way too tolerant of violence exhibited by men in all contexts. I was struck by the recent study indicating that war deployments can contribute to childhood aggression (the vast majority of these kids involved fathers in war). That’s one of those “whoa” moments for me, especially given the way we IMO often romanticize certain types of nationally-sanctioned violence and connect it to a certain type of masculine authority.

Now research on girls is showing that they are becoming much more physically violent, too, and that our gender norms are in the process of changing in that respect. I don’t, of course, see that as a step toward equality for the reasons I gave in my earlier post, but I do think it will change the way we see these issues over the next generation. Maybe if the proportionate exchange of violence between men and women was more even, this discussion would be different, but I don’t know. As I said, I don’t condone physical aggression shown by either gender. That doesn’t mean I see men or women who have hit someone else as horrible or undisciplined or even necessarily as batterers, but I also can’t go to the point where I see the answer to that aggression as more aggression.

One thing I do wonder about, though, is how readers feel toward more physically aggressive women in UF, paranormals, Rom Sus and other areas of Romance where the heroines have taken on a more “kick-ass” physicality. Are the rules the same as applied, are they different, are the characters constructed differently because they’re women, etc. In other words, do readers respond differently to physically aggressive heroines than they do physically aggressive heroes?

I lived my entire childhood life unable to retaliate against those who hurt me (my peers, this was *not* child abuse) because I was taught that it was unacceptable to retaliate and that I should just “ignore it and it will go away”. As an adult, I am painfully aware that had I retaliated just once, it would most likely have stopped. This informs my opinion here at least partly.

I understand that the issue of domestic violence is important to you here. I think one of the reasons we seem to disagree is because I am not associating a retaliatory slap from a man as domestic violence. At the very least, both could be charged with domestic battery here so this is not a case of continued abuse on the part of one spouse. Nor do I feel that because DV is an issue in society, that all men should be more careful (as it seemed that you were suggesting in an earlier posting; I could be wrong.) for fear that they could be called abusers.

This discussion in general, not specific to you in any way, just happens to have touched a hot button issue with me, which is the general demonization of men as violent predators and the suggestion that women and children are perpetual victims of said men. My own personal experience tells me that when we allow ourselves to be drawn into that way of thinking, we also take power away from women by making them victims. In my opinion, a woman being slapped by a man she slapped is not a victim – not even of domestic abuse as she is the one who began the violence.

I think the most important thing here for me is that the man has the right to retaliate but does not have to make the choice to retaliate. It is the right to do so, not the act of doing so, that is the most important thing to me here. He can always choose not to, but he should always have the right to do so.

What struck me more about the poll though were the people who thought it was okay for the guy to spank a women as a punishment. That just blows my mind.

If I get slapped in the face I’m still at least considered an adult. If a guy puts me over his knee and spanks me for my own good or because he thinks I’m childish, he’s taken my status as an adult away and I’d consider that totally and utterly relationship ending (the slap in the face would be, too, but the spanking would be worse because it would relegate me to a person with no rights aka a child).

Books that are predicated on that concept hit the wall (anybody want to remember the bad old days of Lindsey? I recently found out that she perpetrated a 3rd abomination in that series that was all about spanking and withholding sexual release to women for their own good and in punishment for perceived childish behavior of the females).

As for The Burning Point, I never made it past the first few pages, because the concept of a woman going back to the guy who abused her because she cannot get her daddy’s company otherwise, just made me so mad I wanted to spit. I have two issues with the premise a) any woman who would allow herself to be manipulated like that by her father does not engender any kind of respect, especially since she was an expert in her field and could have found a job right away or founded her own company and b) the idea that an abuser could just turn himself around.

I’m all for redemption, but my deep visceral reaction to that idea was to think ‘just imagine a woman in a shelter reading this book and believing that her abusive husband will change, too, and going back and getting herself and her kids killed…’

To further the double standard, I may have been able to read this if it had been a historical, but in a contemporary? No way.