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Feminism: Sex & gender discussions

Bunny Boiler

6 replies

CKDexterHaven · 02/09/2014 10:45

Overwhelmingly it is men who stalk, harass, beat, rape and murder their partners and exes but there isn't a special term for them. Women get labelled as bunny boilers even if their only crime is having a few demands and expectations in a relationship.

It reminds me of the anger I felt at the sentencing of Paul Keene for the killing of Carmen Gabriela Miron Buchacra.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-21894015

A man can be recorded mercilessly killing his partner and she can still be branded the abusive one for the heinous crime of being more educated than him and expected him to spend time with his new baby instead of going on all-day benders.

The term just gets to me because I feel like it deflects from the truth. Every time I hear a man call a woman a 'bunny boiler' I just want to grab him by the lapels and say 'When women murder their partners at the same rate as men then you get to use those words'.

OP posts:
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FreudiansSlipper · 02/09/2014 16:03

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

but yet when I hear of children being killed by a parent more often it is the father because the mother may have fallen out of love and moved on or had an affair

not to say women have not killed their own children, they have but rarely out of wanting revenge

Angry

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WhatWitchcraftIsThis · 02/09/2014 16:20

No, there really isn't OP, not sure why. Especially when I hear bunny boiler used it's always for a woman wanting a man to act like a rational adult.

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Curwen · 02/09/2014 18:06

Overwhelmingly it is men who stalk, harass, beat, rape and murder their partners and exes but there isn't a special term for them.

I have seen such people referred to as stalkers, wife-beaters and murderers respectively. I don't think there can be an overarching collective name, as the crimes are so different.

I think the term bunny-boiler caught on because, in it's day, the film was shocking and thought-provoking. The Alex Forrest character was a step-change from the normal violent male protagonist. I wonder if anyone was ever referred to as a psycho before the Hitchcock film?

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CaptChaos · 02/09/2014 18:39

I wonder if anyone was ever referred to as a psycho before the Hitchcock film? I would imagine they did, Curwen, psycho is simply a shorthand for psychopath, which has been in use since.... late Victorian times at least, whereas 'bunny boiler' relates purely to a scene in a film from the 80's.

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doyouwantfrieswiththat · 02/09/2014 21:33

I use the term can stacker as the male equivalent of bunny boiler. (although it is a little unfair to those of us with non-psychotic OCD tendencies)

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TheSameBoat · 03/09/2014 08:33

That's because male violence is the default that we have come to expect. If there was a word that was commonly used to describe a male stalker (in the same way that bunny boiler has come to mean female stalker) then we would be in danger of actually naming the problem wouldn't we? And we can't have that ....

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