your point is well taken and could be equally applied to both shirts.

i think the more disturbing aspect is how even non-potentially-violent men could find that funny. even if you think that the shirt doesn’t actually condone violence, it certainly contributes to the us-vs.-them mentality of more traditional male-female interaction. it winks at men and boys and says “i know this isn’t an appropriate way to deal with annoying women, but we all know they are annoying, and don’t we wish this were okay.”

it perpetuates the idea that the men are all in this together; that it’s our job as men to educate other men when we find something that “works” to “keep our dignity” in the face of the “onslought” of annoying or powerful women; that no matter how powerful “they” get, “we” will always have the secret brotherhood of manhood to unite us, and that if things get too bad, there’s always consolation in the fact that men are, on the average, physically larger and stronger than women.

the violence aspect is certainly not absent from this, but i find the condoning of this us-vs.-them structure to be the more damaging, since the whole t-shirt is predicated on it, and thus reinforces that this condition is so true that it need not even be mentioned to be recognizable.

i could probably write that better, but i don’t have the time just now. does that make any sense?

I’m just saying that it’s a mistake to focus on the relative fatality of the cartoon violence depicted.

I wasn’t trying to do that in isolation, but in the context of the 2 designs.

Auguste has created a modified version based on my suggestion for a third box here. I was thinking more of the visual of the children’s game hangman, but you get the gist. In this version there are consequences for the short-term solution offered by the original T-shirt.

Chris has created a version that reverses the genders and makes the violence explicit here. It is visually more disturbing, but though the method is different, the attitude is the same as in the original Problem Solved T-shirt.

Some actions should be disturbing to us when represented visually. To whitewash a real problem like violence against women so the real dynamnics of this violence has people smiling or saying, “whatever” is what should be most disturbing of all.

Then the Problem Solved T-shirt is still more disturbing because it reflects a starker reality than the Boys are Stupid T-shirt.

Yes, I agree with you about that. Men beating their wives & girlfriends is obviously a much more severe and widespread problem than boys being assaulted by gangs of girls.

I’m just saying that it’s a mistake to focus on the relative fatality of the cartoon violence depicted.

It seems to me that what makes one cartoon shirt more disquieting than another is not how damaging the violence depicted is, but how close the shirt comes to depicting reality.

Then the Problem Solved T-shirt is still more disturbing because it reflects a starker reality than the Boys are Stupid T-shirt.

The reason it might be less disturbing to some people is they either won’t acknowledge the reality behind the message of the Problem Solved T-shirt or they don’t think that reality is any worse than the reality behind the Boys Are Stupid T-shirt.

In the Road Runner cartoons it is the coyote (the violent one) who suffers because of his own violence. His intended victim, the road runner remains unharmed. The violence in the Road Runner cartoons is self inflicted and that violence becomes the outcome of stupidity.

Imagine that the “problem solved” shirt featured a first panel showing a cartoon nagging wife and a henpecked husband, and a second panel showing a pleased, happy husband and a now-silent, weeping wife with a black eye.

Compare that to a shirt showing a cartoon girl throwing a boy out of a plane, with the caption “boys are dumb, toss them out of planes.”

In that case, I’d find the first shirt much more disturbing than the second, even though the second depicts fatal violence and the first does not.

Nor is it hard for me to imagine t-shirts depicting violence against men that I’d find disturbing. For instance, an image of a shot male soldier with the caption “yay! One more down!” would disturb the hell out of me.

It seems to me that what makes one cartoon shirt more disquieting than another is not how damaging the violence depicted is, but how close the shirt comes to depicting reality.

Finally, I think you have to consider that US cartoons have a long tradition of showing over-the-top and potentially fatal violence as if it had no consequences at all; think of the Road Runner cartoons, for instance, or of Homer Simpson strangling Bart. I’m not sure that cartoons of this sort can be correctly interpreted if we assume that depictions of violence should always be read literally.

The level of violence in the “throw rocks” cartoon (attempted assault) is not equivalent to the level of violence in the “problem solved” cartoon (attempted or successful murder). That anyone will dismiss that difference is what is shameful.

Shame on you for dismissing either one.

I will not make those two equivalent acts of violence. Murder or attempted murder is not equivalent to assault. To equate the 2 is to minimize the violence represented by the Problem Solved T-shirt. To say that the Boys Are Stupid T-shirt is far worse than the Problem Solved T-shirt speaks volumes about the speakers value judgments.