Sometimes it’s hard for me to preserve my faith in humanity.

In class, we are learning how to offer suggestions and give advice in Spanish. I created a list of emotionally complicated situations and asked students to offer suggestions to their participants. One of the situations was, “Adelina cheated on Pedro. Give advice to Pedro.”

As soon as I read out this situation, a male student fired off, “He should just slap her.”

And you know what? Everybody else either smiled or looked completely comfortable with the suggestion.

This is very disturbing.

12 responses to ““Just Slap Her!””

  1. JE Avatar
    JE

    Just cut his hand off!

    Like

    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar

      This story seems to make everybody want to do violent acts.

      Like

  2. el Avatar
    el

    And stay with her after slapping?

    Like

  3. el Avatar
    el

    Wait, has he fired it off in Spanish? If yes, there is some good: even while being emotional at your lessons, he’s being so in Spanish without thinking.

    Like

    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar

      No, he said it in English. Which is adding insult to injury but I wasn’t concentrating on the linguistic aspect after this sort of comment.

      Like

  4. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    It could have been worse. If the genders in the story were reversed and somebody yelled out a violent act Im sure most people would have laughed.

    Like

    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar

      It’s good to know we always have Titfortat to say the most inappropriate thing at any given moment. That’s a talent, too!

      Like

    2. hkatz Avatar
      hkatz

      We really shouldn’t get bothered about problems we encounter or make an effort to do anything about them, because they may always be worse. I’m relieved.

      Like

    3. Evelina Anville Avatar
      Evelina Anville

      @ TfT…For me personally, what makes your comment offensive is that it seems to assume that domestic violence against women and domestic violence against men somehow occur at equal rates. Do men get abused by the wives and/or female partners? Certainly and it’s sadly underreported. But so so so so many more women are beaten than men. Domestic violence against women is _pervasive_ in our culture and across the world. And your comment makes it seem like you are somehow unaware of the very real fact that the spousal abuse of women is horribly widespread.

      Now I actually happen to think that both abuser and abused are victims of patriarchal structures. In terms of psychology, and self esteem, I actually think the abuser is more damaged than the victim. So I do believe that feminism helps men too but men and women experience different problems within the patriarchal system.

      Like

  5. Titfortat Avatar
    Titfortat

    lol, talent everywhere!

    Like

  6. Sarah Avatar

    Even as a joke it wasn’t funny.

    Like

Leave a comment

A conservative literary critic and college professor