To treat roughly or handle someone or something with force and little care; to handle with violence or aggression.
From 'man' (as in manual labor) plus 'handle,' literally meaning to handle something by hand; the 'man-' part emphasizes rough physical force since the 1600s.
It's curious that 'man-handled' contains the word 'man' when it usually means rough treatment by anyone—this is because 'man' originally just meant 'to do by hand' (manual labor), but over time it picked up associations with brute masculine force.
Literally 'handled with a man's strength'; male strength is the unmarked norm (vs. 'womanhandled' never exists). Gendered metaphor normalizes aggressive masculine force as default.
Use 'roughly handled', 'shoved', 'pushed', or 'treated harshly' to avoid gendered assumptions about force and strength.
["roughly handled","shoved","treated roughly"]
Language that defaults aggression to 'man's' strength erases women's capacity for force and power, and naturalizes masculine violence.
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