Women Who Hit Men

Chris Norris on a relationship trend that's more common — and serious — than you think.

By Chris Norris

I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I GOT punched by a girlfriend. It was during a fight on a New York City street corner, over a subject I've long since forgotten. But the punch — thrown as I leaned in to make a point, thrown reflexively, out of unchecked rage — stayed with me. It didn't hurt that much, tagging me just below the left ear. But it caused serious damage.

I didn't hit back, cry, or scream "You monster!" But my reaction was probably not what she might have hoped for. It was not: a) She must be really angry!, b) How could I have been so insensitive?, or c) What a feisty woman I have!, but, sadly, d) This bitch crazy. And by the next morning, our future had clouded over.

According to a Penn professor who studies these things, every American man has about a 28 percent chance of being struck by a woman at some point in his life (in related news, the number of girls ages 10 to 17 arrested for aggravated assault has doubled in the last 20 years). And yet no one seems to take the phenomenon that seriously. Maybe it's because men, generally speaking, are bigger and stronger, and we assume there's a real limit to the physical damage women could actually inflict. We don't picture these scuffles resulting in bloody noses and black eyes or a trip to the station house. Furthermore, pop culture has made the idea of a pretty girl whaling on a guy a wacky comedy staple — Angelina Jolie smashing wine bottles over Brad Pitt's head in Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Cameron Diaz coldcocking Edward Burns in The Holiday were both played for laughs. But the reality of getting hit by your girlfriend isn't so sexy or hilarious.

A male friend of mine — let's call him Tom — was hit several times by his. "We'd get into these exhausting fights," he tells me. "Like, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., where nothing would turn the volume down except sex and sleep. With her, everything was fine in the morning, but I was upset for days. She actually seemed to think it was sexy. I remember her showing me finger-shaped bruises on her arms where I had restrained her from swinging at me — and she raised an eyebrow, made a saucy comment. But I was petrified. I was doing stuff like putting the knives up on the very top shelf. For me, it wasn't fun at all."