Why Does Everyone Think I'm Going to Punch Them?

A memory:
 
Comedies when I was young that had a consistent trope: a guy approaches a girl to ask her to dance or on a date, and instead of just saying no, she slaps him or dumps water on his head or something semi-violent or humiliating.
 
(It's worth noting that usually these guys were not being inappropriate or creepy, they simply gave an offer that was not reciprocated.)

Another memory:

It was about a week after my sixteenth or seventeenth birthday. One of my guy friends, who had come to my party, made a comment that he almost bought me some kind of perfume as my birthday gift, but he didn't know if I would like it and "didn't want to get punched."

Something current:

This post from one of my fave Instagram accounts, Not a Wolf:

An image of a tweet with the text "probably a good idea not to comment on anyone's post-pandemic appearance unless you want to get acquainted with their pre-pandemic ability to bite down at 1200psi"

What do all these situations have in common?

MEN!
 
Men used to almost exclusively write for TV and movies, and they featured women responding aggressively to unwanted male attention.

Then, a boy I knew watched those shows all growing up and got it into his head that if he gave me a gift I didn't like I might... PUNCH him???

Finally, a grown adult man today makes a joke that the reason you shouldn't comment on other people's bodies isn't because of human decency but because of the violence they may inflict on you in return.

I get that the first and last things here are JOKES and the whole point is that they are exaggerated FOR THE COMEDY.
 
The question still stands: how much of men's understanding of how women should behave do you think is filtered through the things a bunch of dudes in the 90s thought would be funny?


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