That goes back GENERATIONS, even back to the Greatest Generation. Actually look at old entertainment, it sure as fuck didn't glorify woman-beating, and guys who did it - or even threatened it - were meant to be seen as either cads or buffoons. "Boys oughtn't hit girls" is heavy in stuff aimed at kids, though. Charles Schultz showed little girls hitting boys, precisely because it was the inverse of this trope, and seen as harmless and almost silly, as if Lucy couldn't really harm Charlie Brown (a prejudice he seemed to have kept his entire life). And women were free to face-slap men if they got "fresh" or forward .... and the man was assumed to have deserved it, if a women went so far as to BITCH-SLAP them.
That goes back GENERATIONS, even back to the Greatest Generation. Actually look at old entertainment, it sure as fuck didn't glorify woman-beating, and guys who did it - or even threatened it - were meant to be seen as either cads or buffoons. "Boys oughtn't hit girls" is heavy in stuff aimed at kids, though. Charles Schultz showed little girls hitting boys, precisely because it was the inverse of this trope, and seen as harmless and almost silly, as if Lucy couldn't really harm Charlie Brown (a prejudice he seemed to have kept his entire life). And women were free to face-slap men if they got "fresh" or forward .... and the man was assumed to have deserved it, if a women went so far as to BITCH-SLAP them.