Why is this funny?

Mary Robinette Kowal recently had nasal surgery to correct a medical problem. Being who she is (a writer, and therefore professionally interested in just about everything under the sun), she’s been posting pictures of her recovery.

She also posted this.

Here’s the thing. Remember when I fell down the stairs? (It was just three days ago; surely you haven’t forgotten.) Afterward, several friends of ours made similar jokes, about my husband pushing me down the stairs.

Why is it that, any time we hear about or see a woman injured, our minds go immediately to domestic abuse?

And why is it funny?

As Mary says, part (maybe all) of the humor comes from the absurdity of the idea: my husband would never push me down the stairs; her husband would never hit her. Anybody who knows us knows this. But at the same time . . . is it really that absurd? How many instances are there of women being abused by their husbands, when all the friends and neighbors would never dream of him doing such a thing?

It isn’t funny, because it isn’t absurd. Not nearly as much as it should be. It’s reality for far too many women. And making jokes about it — that normalizes the idea. Used to be that you got cartoons about drunk driving, the bartender pouring his customer into his car when he’s had a few too many and waving him off homeward with a cheery grin. Because that was normal. You don’t see those cartoons anymore, do you? We don’t think it’s normal to drive when you’re sauced, and we don’t think it’s funny.

We need the same to be true of domestic abuse.

By all means, joke about me falling down the stairs. Remind me that I can’t fly. Say that however much I don’t want to carry boxes, I should stop at hurling them to the bottom, and not hurl myself with them. That’s fine by me; humor is a good way to deal with a really annoying and painful situation.

But don’t joke about my husband pushing me, or Mary’s husband hitting her.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Catching up on Dice Tales

Traveling and moving house and so forth have kept me so busy, I’ve neglected to link to my recent Dice Tales posts. (Fortunately I had the foresight and organization to get them written and scheduled well ahead of time, which is why the posts themselves have continued unabated.)

So now you get a threefer! The first post, Coping with Failure, talks about what happens when the dice say “nope, not happening,” and how you keep that from derailing the story/turn it into a narratively positive thing. So You Want to Be a . . . begins our discussion of character creation, and Decisions, Decisions goes through the choices you have to make when creating a PC for a game.

As usual, comment over there!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

the actions of the few

I do not blame the many for the actions of the one.

Therefore I do not blame all Americans just because Omar Mateen was an American.

I do not blame the many for the actions of the one.

Therefore I do not blame all Christians just because Dylann Roof is a Christian.

I do not blame the many for the actions of the one.

Therefore I do not blame all men just because Adam Lanza was a man.

It’s a damn good thing I don’t blame the many for the actions of the one, because if I did, I would be blaming white men a hundred times over. But if I can see that my husband and my father and my brother are not to blame for the actions of the white men who commit the majority of hate crimes, then I can see that Muslims (who, globally, are the overwhelming majority of terrorism’s victims) are not to blame for the actions of a few Muslim murderers.

I blame the murderers.

And I blame, here in America, the lawmakers who put on Very Serious Faces every time a mass shooting happens and offer their thoughts and prayers to the injured and the bereaved, but do nothing to change the fact that U.S. homicide rates are seven times higher than those in comparable nations, driven by a gun homicide rate that is more than twenty-five times higher.

Do not comment here to tell me that the majority of gun owners are law-abiding; that does nothing to prevent the accidental deaths. Do not tell me we need to arm more people to kill the bad guys when they show up, because this isn’t the fucking Wild West and we can damned well resort to law before counter-murder. Do not immediately leap to the extreme conclusion and equate “we need gun control” with “we’re going to take away every single gun.”

I want a change in our gun culture, that makes it more responsible owners with locked cases and less cowboys waving their pieces around to feel strong. I want the ban on assault rifles renewed. I want getting your gun license in Texas to require more in the way of training and certification than becoming a fucking manicurist, rather than the other way around.

I want us to agree that the level of gun violence we have in this country is unacceptable, and then actually do something about it.

And until we do, I am damn well going to blame my government for letting the bloodshed continue.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.