So, I was watching a ball game the other night and switching to the Comedy channel during commercials. Pretty soon South Park Episode 1209 popped up. In it, one of the little girls in the elementary school gives a report to the class on her pet issue, breast cancer.

Eric Cartman can’t resist and makes a number of tasteless (as only South Park can be tasteless) jokes about breast cancer. That makes the little girl, Wendy, mad and she challenges Eric to a fight. But her parents intervene and angrily tell her she will “do no such thing, young lady.” We don’t solve our problems with fighting or violence, they explain. But Eric keeps on taunting her and at school the next day, the principal calls Wendy into her office.

It seems the principal once had breast cancer herself and she tells Wendy, using none-too-subtly coded language, that it’s OK with her if she fights Eric. So she does and of course beats the stuffing out of him. At one point she pounds his head repeatedly against a playground jungle gym until he is bloody and both eyes are black.

The moral: Female violence against males is acceptable and even an affirmative good. It doesn’t matter that all Eric did was make obnoxious remarks or that he posed no physical threat. If you’re female and angry, violence toward men is appropriate.

Of course to regular consumers of popular culture, that comes as no surprise, but this South Park episode is more didactic than most. Wendy’s parents specifically state to her the non-violent approach and that is specifically rejected by the principal. Violence is not only acceptable, it’s better than the alternative - as long as it’s female-on-male violence.

If you want to view the scene, click here and go to minute 18:30.

And while we’re on one of MY pet peeves, I’d like to know if anyone has ever seen an ad, commercial, sitcom, drama, movie, etc. in which male-on-female violence was depicted in a good light. I’d swear I’ve never seen one, but I could be wrong.

How about it? Has anyone out there ever seen a bit of pop culture showing a man to be so right and/or the woman to be so wrong, that violence by him against her was depicted as appropriate?

Let me know.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Domestic Violence/DV System, Misandry, Advertising, TV, Movies & Gender. You can trackback from your own site.