@107: If you think anyone should agree to marry someone who beats them, you need to rethink some priorities.

I totally believe you have never in your life played a practical joke and are thus totally undeserving of the hospitalizing beating you would warrant if you had. I am also totally not sarcastic by nature.

Neither is funny. But the 2nd one is aggravated assault.

Bingo 124. Classless jokes aren't against the law, and he clearly thought she could handle crude humor. Given that he's been dating her for 5 years, he knows her better than all the rest of us put together, so if he was that wrong, I don't see why anyone here thinks they know better. There's sure a whole lot of victim blaming here that would never fly with women (and shouldn't with the men!) if a woman had been on the receiving end of the beating. Time to take a step back and examine your double standards.

Did you genuinely just ask to explain why people are less appalled by mean, dumb jokes than they are by hospitalization-necessitating physical brutality? Do you genuinely think these things are equivalent - or worse, that the former is worse?

The difference is "Go make me a sammich" is a joke in which no one will be physically injured. Hitting someone with a rolling pin and putting him in the hospital is quite different. In fact, no woman is being put in her place when a man tells her to get in the kitchen and make him a sandwich. She can say no. She can ignore him. She can call him name. She can even play along. This guy gave his girlfriend a rolling pin as a gag gift on their anniversary and she hit him with it and put him in the hospital. Do you see the difference now?

Implying that all women belong in the kitchen is wrong, however, there's nothing wrong with a person belonging there. Its the kitchen. There's food there. You need food to live. As for the violence, that is wrong. You can't just send someone to the hospital like that! Sure, trying to force someone into a gender stereotype is very wrong, but physically hurting someone until they need to be hospitalized is much worse.

Definitely the OP should reconsider. He might end up in an abusive relationship if he sticks around. No one deserves to get beat up by the person they love. I definitely understand why the woman was upset, but sending him to the hospital is not okay. Responding to stereotypes with violence is ridiculous.