The Slap
Read on my friends and I will spin you a tale: when females were women and males were male.
Since the time of Adam and Eve men and women have had defined roles. Generally men have been the hunters, defenders, wage earners, and generally the ones who worked outside the home. Women have taken on roles that relate to the house, or cave as the case may be. This isn't likely new information, but I start with this for a reason.
Likely beginning in what is referred to as the Victorian era women were treated with great deference and men with great respect. This is a broad oversimplification of course, but it generally holds true. That relationship remained relatively stable until the 1960s. During around a 20 year period of time beginning in the aforementioned 1960s a movement known as feminism arose. The objective of this movement was to remove the barriers that kept women locked in traditional roles. The possibly unintended consequences of that movement was to blur the lines between the roles of men and women.
This brings me at last to the point and to the slap. From at least the Victorian period until the 1960s when a woman slapped a man it was the period that ended a conversation. It was the exclamation point that ended an argument. The man, having been so rebuked, could do nothing but slink away. Or in some cases grab the woman in his arms and kiss her; but that might only be in the movies.
With the coming of feminism, the slap was no longer a period or exclamation point, but might in fact simply be the first blow of a fight. Men no longer treated women with great deference and women no longer treated men with great respect. Now a slap could lead to an all out cage match. Men generally have the upper hand, but as time has demonstrated a pistol can more than even up the odds.
As time progressed from the 1960s and society became more dependent upon the government for all aspects of life, the slap as a statement has pretty much ended. A slap now might well result in the police being called and a domestic disturbance complaint filed.
The slap, at least for now, no longer serves as the ultimate female statement.
(I thought the easiest part of this little endeavor would be to find a free cartoon of a woman slapping a man. WRONG. A few of the things I learned: Royalty free doesn't mean free. There are some fetishes that involve slapping. I'll probably get weird emails from some man slapping woman offering to come over to my house. There aren't a lot of woman slapping man cartoons on the web that I could find.)