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It's just slapstick and it works well because such hits tend to cause a lot of pain (the bread and butter of slapstick) without any lasting injury. And the reason why it is funny for a woman to hit a man but not for a man to hit a woman is that in the real world, men send women to the hospital but the reverse is rarely true unless the woman picks up a weapon. Women really get hurt when men hit them.

Women really get hurt when men hit them.

So, if wimpy effeminate Michael Jackson were to b!tchslap Lucy Lawless, the really buff actress who played Xena, who could supposedly take it without serious injury, that would be funny?

My mother-in-law, a passive-agressive lady who's husband is a recovering alcoholic (30-years dry, but she's not forgiving nothing) simply LOVES the Funniest Home Videos where a guy gets a brick right in the "meat and two veg". You don't have to be Freud to get that one.

In my experience, it's nothing but taking a cheap shot by promoting a cheap laugh by using a cheap gag. Some things ought to be off limits. No one would think of getting a laugh today in the movies by showing a black person doing a minstrel show, a stingy Jew, or "playfully" slapping a woman around "because it is funny." If we are going to "respect" people, then it should be everybody, and I don't care if the Left drags out the "its funny because men are evil bastards and deserve it" excuse. It is no more funny than "America deserved what it got on 9-11".

Dunno about that "no lasting injury" thing - a ruptured testicle will put you down for quite awhile. Saw that happen to a major league pitcher who refused to wear a cup - he caught a hard-hit ball in the ball, so to speak. The guy jogged off the field, but he isn't pitching anymore.

It's also a potentially lethal blow if it's hard enough.