From "FYI: Why Is It Funny When A Guy Gets Hit In The Groin?" — a 2013 Popular Science article — which I'm reading this morning after blogging about last night's "SNL" cold open which featured "Joe Manchin" punching "Chuck Schumer" in the balls. There was a lot more in that sketch, and I didn't find any of it too funny, but in the comments to my post, Meade wrote: "in this era of That's Not Funny, at least we still have male-on-male sexual assault to laugh at."
Is hitting a man in the balls a sexual assault? It depends on the meaning of "sexual." I remember the definition of "sexual behavior" used by Rachel Mitchell (the prosecutor) in questioning Brett Kavanaugh. It specified the outward behavior and excluded intent. If you were doing the behavior — e.g., rubbing your clothed genitals against another person's clothed genitals — it didn't matter if you weren't doing it for sexual gratification. It could be mere "horseplay," and it would be "sexual behavior." That's adopting a broad view of "sexual," and that was done, I think, to take the perspective of the person on the receiving end of the behavior.
What about the man on the receiving end of a hit in the balls? First, are we talking about real life or a comedy scene? Getting hit in the balls is extremely common in comedy — it has a TV Tropes article* — and that's one reason to avoid it. But let's think about whether it should be avoided because it's not taking sexual assault seriously. We don't laugh to see a woman hit in the genitals. I don't think I've ever seen that used in comedy. It's not a cliché, but why isn't it a hilarious twist on the old cliché? We know it's not. Violence against women! And now, remember the 1970s feminist ideology about rape: It's a crime of violence, not sex. Rapists are not doing something sexual. See how that fits with Rachel Mitchell's definition of "sexual behavior."
Now, let's get back to the Popular Science article:
Besides the Freudian implications of the aggressive and sexual tension in the situation, there's also the suddenness with which a blow to the 'nads can take down even an otherwise big, strapping man.... Add that to the theories already at play with physical humor—benign violations, mistaken commitments, aggression, emotional arousal....And you don't have women to tell you "That's not funny." It's male on male and the men are free to laugh fraternalistically.... until the women crack down on that too. And why wouldn't we? You're not taking sexual violence seriously. Or do you think it's not sexual? Maybe if we get you to think of it as sexual, you guys will stop laughing at other men's pain. And don't try to fend off the ire of women by purporting to take pride in man-on-man sexuality. The sexuality is on the rape continuum and therefore not funny in the Era of That's Not Funny.
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* It was all the way back in 1995, that "The Simpsons" was trying to instruct us that this form of humor is so bad that only Homer Simpson is laughing:
ADDED: A reader sends a link to this example of a woman getting kicked in the crotch:
"King of the Hill" felt it could get away with that, I suspect, because: 1. It's a cartoon, 2. The woman is portrayed as stronger than men (not having balls is a super-power).
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66 comments:
"most society's"?
""most society's"?"
Good point.
That takes the wind out of Pop Science's intellectualism.
Will add a [sic].
We must distinguish between the accidental shot to the nuts, and the intentional one. The accidental one has been a comedy mainstay forever. It always gets a laugh on America's Funniest Home Videos. The intentional one adds a bit of malice which tempers the comedy.
Doesn’t Frances McDormand’s character kick a woman in the groin in Three Billboards. .?
Or am I getting that wrong?
We don't laugh to see a woman hit in the genitals.
We don't laugh to see a man get hit in the genitals either. Hit him in the penis all you want, it would not be funny. We only laugh at him being hit in the balls.
If a woman got hit in the balls, we would laugh at that too. ( Don't go all cis-normative on me here! ) Maybe, if a woman's ovaries were dangling outside her body, we would laugh if she got hit in them too.
But the laughing about being hit in the balls is laughing about the guy's reaction to getting hit in the balls. If women reacted the same way, we would see humor in that too. ( At least if she was getting hit by another woman. )
And you don't have women to tell you "That's not funny."
That is often the funniest part.
I usually display my fear-grimace to ward off chimpanzee attacks; so far it's working pretty well.
All men love male on male assault. All males from 4 years old to 84 years will watch the Three Stooges over and over again finding vast amusement in eye pokes and face slaps. And of course the exact opposite is true of women who look at males laughing at the 3 Stooges and wonder at how stupid the Stooges and their men are.
Huh??
There is an YouTube genre of girls hitting other girls in the veejayay. Just search Vag Punch or Pussy Punch and enjoy the frivolities.
One thing you'll notice about most of these videos is that there's consent. Most cases of "ball tag" with guys lacks any sort of consent.
Crocodile Dundee had a scene where he grabbed an older lady by the groin. Earlier in the movie a cross-dresser Dundee believe was a woman had been coming into Dundee. Dundee did a cup check on the cross dresser and the older lady.
It was explained by "He is from Australia."
The older lady said something like 'I really should travel there.'
Nobody said "That's not funny" way back then.
Hobbes is talking about humor deployed as social control: whose gods may be safely mocked, indeed, must be mocked if you are not to be perceived as disloyal to the ruling group. All of us have the radar for this kind of humor, it is part of the survival kit since tribes began conquering each other in the agrarian age growth of empires. It is deployed by both boys and girls, from junior and high school on. SNL, and the other night talk shows are primarily about this kind of humor. People tune in to know what the cool kids are openly mocking.
Of course, there is also humor that reconciles human beings to the tragic or absurd nature of individual existence. The ability to laugh at ourselves, at our tendency to be caught up in the high seriousness of our life missions is foolish, the opening to wisdom.
Ann, like another "academic" Peterson you too full of yourself.
You are out of your league on this one. Play golf.
Unless they meant "violates most" - awkward formulation though
A sick idea of moral order is our current predicament.
because i'm brain damaged, i was surprised that in the SNL skit, one of the evil white republican males didn't reach from behind, and group the 'reporter's' breast will she was talking. There wasn't even an ass pinch. ALL WOMEN (all 3 of them ) in the skit were Off Limits. I'm assuming that was because there would have needed to be a trigger warning.
If you think about it, it would have been funny (in a Thomas Hobbes way), if the evil white republican men had been groping the women; gradually escalating (a lot), as the reporter said:
"Oh well, now that Brett is on the court; All Women are Objects, We'd better get used to it!"
That would be something that we would NOT have to worry about seeing, EVER
When I was a surgery resident at County Hospital we had a guy come in, it might have been New Years Eve, with a gunshot wound of the penis. The interesting thing was that the bullet was still in his penis. There was a good deal of humorous speculation about the state of the penis when the bullet arrived and we were all impressed that it could stop a bullet.
The power of the penis, so powerful it can stop a bullet.
That's some funny stuff right there.
A hit in the balls if funny because it's painful in a vulnerable male-specific way. There's no female equivalent.
In 'The Longest Yard' there's scene where Burt Reynolds repeatedly hits one of the Guardsmen players in the the nuts with the football until the guy is carried off the field. It's funny.
I think Blazing Saddles scripted one specifically for its humor, as the most glorious kick in the balls ever or some such stage direction.
My mother loved the Three Stooges. She was Irish, God rest her.
"Comedy being of the realm and influence of vulgar persons. The mimesis of which is that pleasure can be derived from vulgar persons, and the taking pleasure in their defects and foibles."
- Aristotle, Poetics
Birkel said...
Crocodile Dundee had a scene where he grabbed an older lady by the groin...It was explained by "He is from Australia." The older lady said something like 'I really should travel there.'
Trump thought it was because Crocodile Dundee was "famous".
Earlier in the movie a cross-dresser Dundee believe was a woman had been coming into Dundee.
Are you sure you weren't watching one of those porno movie parodies?
In comedy you wind up married; in tragedy you wind up dead. - Stranger than Fiction (2006)
The Three Stooges, unlike most comedy, travelled well across cultures.
There's no rules in a knife fight
Morally, it's never funny. Ethically, the violence lose its charm in the second, third, and sometimes fourth trimester.
Two people walk into a bar and one has balls and the other has a pussy, and the bartender says "What can I do for you folks?" and the one with the balls says "We'd like to sit at the bar while we wait for somebody" and the one with the pussy says "Well, I'd rather sit and wait in a booth", so the one with the balls says "Help yourself, Honey Pie - it's a phone booth!" and then everyone displays their fear grimaces and makes choking noises caused by their breathing spasms, even the bartender, who is wishing he were someplace else and smoking a cigarette.
Blogger rhhardin said...
A hit in the balls if funny because it's painful in a vulnerable male-specific way. There's no female equivalent.
There is a movie, I can't remember the title, in which Jill St John, who has pretty big boobs, walks into a glass door and her boobs get squashed before her face hits the glass. That's pretty funny and was memorable since I can't remember the movie but remember the scene.
But not in Latvia.
EDH,
You can watch Crocodile Dundee II almost any time. There's probably a copy at your local library. Get back to me.
The hit to the groin is merely a subset of slapstick.
And while people may laugh when they see in on the screen, when it happens in real life, they typically do not.
The board to the head always made me laugh. That's a Laurel and Hardy staple. I never really got the joke of the eye-poking, nose-twisting antics of the three stooges. The oblivious board to the head always seemed much funnier than the slapstick temper tantrum.
Crocodile Dundee had a scene where he grabbed an older lady by the groin. Earlier in the movie a cross-dresser Dundee believe was a woman had been coming into Dundee. Dundee did a cup check on the cross dresser and the older lady.
It was explained by "He is from Australia."
The older lady said something like 'I really should travel there.'
Dude, that "older lady" was a cross-dressing gay man, just like the person in the bar was a man.
Same-sex, violence, and comedy on the transgender spectrum.
Mark,
No. The older lady was in fact an older lady. Dundee confirmed with the crotch grab.
Sex is a dominance act. Hence rape as normal and expected part of warfare in the Mediterranean civilizations. Feminists second that view that sex is male dominance, when done right. Ask a Patriarch near you.
The pie in the face is always funny.
Even with women
With women its not violence that's funny, but the ass pinch and boob grab are always worth a chuckle.
See Benny Hill.
<a href="https://www.bing.com/search?pc=AUWI&form=AMZNS2&q=ow+my+balls+show+idiocracy
>Ow! My balls!</a>
I played catcher in high school and college. Getting hit in the privates was part of the game. Although we wear cups the pain is still there. When it would happen the umpire, who had similar risk, would laugh nervously, "Are you OK?". All the other players would also laugh, but for the umpire and the catcher there was a kind of fraternity.
I disagree strongly with the iron law that states "Rape is not about sex, it's about violence/dominance." There's generally a lot of truth about that, but I think it goes too far as an absolute. Instead, I think that rape can be about sex, in the sense that robbery is about theft. The motivation would be, I WANT something (sex, money) and I am willing to use power and violence to get it.
The accidental hit in the balls is funny to most men because everyone one of us, men, has experienced it and know exactly how it feels.
The cold opening where "Manchin punches Schumer" in the gonads wasn't particularly funny to me because it sort of implies that Manchin screwed Schumer over and confirmed Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh was really confirmed by the decisions of Collins and Flake. If it had required Manchin's vote, then I would have snorted my beer in laughter.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=wAg1r6zw7Bg
I consider this entire post a sexual assault. I'm gonna make a sign, and do some yelling.
Blogger rcocean said...
The pie in the face is always funny.
Even with women
"Singin' in the Rain." Jean Hagen did a great job in that role.
English comic and director Jonathan Lynn ("My Cousin Vinny") said on Gilbert Gottfried's podcast that a joke was in bad taste only if it wasn't funny.
I can agree with that.
" I meant to kick your phone "
said the beta SJW 'male',
after kicking a pro-life woman in the face recently.
Funny. 'Funny' as in 'peculiar', that there was no condemnation from the Lefties
Invading armies today get sex by offering career advancement to the local women.
Blogger Ray said... but for the umpire and the catcher there was a kind of fraternity.
Yeah, after the catcher gets nailed, the Umpire does everything he can to stall the game while the player collects himself. It's one of those small baseball things that makes it the most human of games.
the Umpire does everything he can to stall the game
It's the least he can do after hours of his bad breath.
Men tend to like "The Three Stooges," women not so much. Though there are no kicks to the balls in "The Three Stooges," just lumber or steel to the side of the head in one form or another
Eighth graders would try to hit or kick incoming seventh graders in the balls. Or punch them in the face or stomach as an initiation to jr. high.
Maybe just a local thing at my school.
I once saw the Stooges in person. Their knockabout shtick was nowhere near as funny without the sound effects.
It's always fun listening to smug, unreasoning liberals trying to be funny in a way that only smug, unreasoning liberals understand.
The Deplorables just don't get it.
You might ask why their ratings are not up 50 points.
Watched a recent Dave Chappelle special (on Netflix, I think) where "So I kicked her in the pussy" was the punchline to an extended bit.
It was a bit of meta humor, because he gave us the line earlier, in the context of discussing how sometimes he comes up with a punchline and then tries to write the joke that leads up to it. Later on, after the audience had forgotten about the earlier mention, he tells the joke that ends with it.
"I told you I was gonna do it, and it still made you laugh!"
"the Umpire does everything he can to stall the game
It's the least he can do after hours of his bad breath."
It's real fun when one of you had Mexican the night before.
which featured "Joe Manchin" punching "Chuck Schumer" in the balls.
Jesum Crowe! Did the Democrats report this as an "in-kind" contribution to Manchin? Could he have come up with a better ad for his re-election in WV? Un fucking believable. What a weasel Manchin is.
The whole knock on Manchin is that he's a puppet of Schumer, and he didn't "decide" how to vote until he figured out how Collins was going to vote, which became so obvious from her speech that the announcement was anti-climax, and once it was a done deal, he "announced" his vote. Probably seconds after getting the OK from Schumer.
"Joe Manchin. He's always there when you don't need him." Howie Carr says Pat Buchanan said that.
Manchin says he "wasn't influenced by Collins" Like Mickey Kaus said, "It's a good thing it's not illegal to lie to CNN!"
The old kick in the nuts. I've never found it to be funny. It's always been a staple of the Funniest Home Video type shows. I guess I'm an oddball (no pun intended) but what's funny about it? I don't find it any funnier than watching a woman get her teeth punched out. Laughing at someone else's pain is pretty lame.
Bobby Hill... that boy aint right.
When I took karate, I was told that a kick in the balls can be "shaken off" for about 60 seconds. To disable someone in a fight, instead make a blow to the abdomen which will "knock the wind out" of them.
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