The Man With The Screaming Brain

Well, I still haven't gotten my comics for this week yet. To alleviate boredom, I've been trolling the blogs, but avoiding reviews. Everybody and her sister seems be talking about violence against women lately.

I am nothing if not fashionable, so today I'm going to look closely at one particular instance:

Tatoya from The Man With the Screaming Brain
(I never saw the film, but there's spoilers ahead for the comic)

In one scene, Tatoya is cornered in the sewer by our protagnist. He's pretty angry, and she's out of weapons, so she falls back on an old standard.

"You would hit a woman?"

Now, I will say right off I think Tatoya's a pretty kickass villainess. When she's introduced, we see her force a sharp knife through a man's back. That's not easy to do, requires a lot of physical strength. She goes on to murder several people, violently, and show the level of reflexes and agility any marine would be proud to have.

She's a little short on common sense, though, as evidenced by the above quote.

She's asking this of a guy she's murdered (technically) twice, ran over in a car, attempted to light on fire, falsely accused of rape (I'd just like to point out that I despise this tactic in any story by any character, and move on) in order to get him beaten to death, and of course, killed his wife (also, twice).

And she has the gall to say -- "You would hit a woman?"

"You would hit a woman?"

"You would hit a woman?"!?!

!

I understand that I am an evil and bloodthirsty, and often opportunistic person. So, I should empathize with Tatoya. I should not want to see her hurt.
I further understand that violence against women is a very real problem, and is no laughing matter. I am aware that accepting it's portrayal without protest is silently condoning a very very big and disturbing problem.
I have the utmost respect for the rights of domestic violence victims, the continued secret subjugation of women in modern society, oppressed women around the world, my long-suffering foremothers, the villification of the Great Goddess, the demonization of feminity, and the difficulties still felt by women trapped in male-dominated family structures.

But, for the future of humanity, any man who would have been stopped by Tatoya's comment after this impressive demonstration of her most dangerous skills needs to be drowned in the gene pool.