They called it “fight night” and “smackdown in Las Vegas”, but this was no usual primetime American sporting event. It was the exciting spectacle of a couple of guys ganging together to beat up a girl.

As the mud continued to fly yesterday in the 2008 presidental race, this is the image that remains firmly in the public consciousness: Hillary Clinton being rounded upon and bullied by her male Democratic rivals in Thursday's televised debate. It was ungallant, unedifying... and utterly compelling.

Violence against women, although in this case entirely conducted through political metaphor, has the thrill of any great taboo, where our conscious disapproval vies with our unconscious fascination.

When our screens show women being hit below the belt, we say: “That's terrible. Quick, get the popcorn!” It is unclear whether the latest allegation - that Mrs Clinton may be secretly preparing for a “dirty war” against Barack Obama - is true, or a deliberate anti-Clinton smear by a Republican.

Whatever: the new, nasty tactics of Mrs Clinton's opponents are the best thing that ever happened to her. It is but the latest example of how, even though we don't allow women into combat, we enjoy watching them under fire. We love to watch women suffer. Being women, they, naturally, do it so beautifully.

In their earlier showdown two weeks ago, the boys Obama and John Edwards cornered Mrs Clinton and kicked her political shins. In last week's rematch she was ready for the onslaught, ending the evening triumphantly, having run out of knees to stick in groins. It's a good job her troubles aren't over this week: we'd like to see the ice queen sizzle even more in the pan.

There are two remaining gender bars in America: there has never been a woman in the White House nor in actual frontline fighting. This is why something of Mrs Clinton's battle reminds me of the film G.I. Jane, in which Demi Moore struggles to qualify as the first woman in an elite combat force. It is one of the most transgressive works in the Hollywood mainstream: an unrelenting piece of sado-masochism. The narrative tension consists of how much brutality the voluptuous heroine can endure, culminating in her being beaten senseless by a man in a bare-knuckle fight.

G.I. Jane is but an extreme version of the template for so many films and books. Jodie Foster, whose air of cold, buttoned-up intelligence would surely make her a shoo-in for the role of Mrs Clinton in a biopic, has made her entire career out of being the outnumbered female victim of male attack. She guarantees blockbusters because she so ruthlessly exploits our appetite for this material, from The Accused to The Silence of the Lambs to Panic Room.

And these fictional depictions are but the projection of our feelings toward the suffering of real live - or dead - women. James Ellroy, a brilliant crime novelist, knows from personal experience that our cultural preoccupation with the untimely, tormented ends of women is shared between news and noir.

As Ellroy wrote: “Dead white women always stirred things up”; and he became obsessed, as did many a reporter, novelist, and film director, with the case of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed “The Black Dahlia” by the tabloids, a lovely 1940s starlet who was tortured for days before she was murdered.

Ellroy has good reason to fixate. He confesses in his memoir, My Dark Places, that the Black Dahlia was an emotional stand-in for his own mother, who was murdered when Ellroy was 10 years old. As a man he could feel a confusing mix of desire to love and protect and kill women.

His mother and the Black Dahlia spawned “my lifelong dialogue on misogyny”. Note to Ellroy: your mother does not need to have been strangled in order for you to feel this way. I had a look at the top searches on the Times website at the end of last week. It was evenly matched between Madeleine McCann and Meredith Kercher, reflecting their prominence in the British news (along with, currently, the story about the recovered bodies of teenagers Dinah McNicol and Vicky Hamilton). Madeleine and Meredith make for a dolorous pair: an abducted girl, and an attractive, murdered young woman. In the McCann case the theme of benighted femininity is only amplified by the public anguish of Kate McCann, who, for the past half year has served as our beautiful, empty-handed pietà.

If you want to see this effect in action in more commonplace parts of life, how about the supermarket magazine rack? Here you see row upon row of gossip rags trading on the “fresh heartache” of a female celebrity, their latest divorce or miscarriage. We're happy to let male stars alone in well-fed contentment, but women pay the price of their success through a ritual display of their wounds - each time their agony is racheted up a notch, we crane our necks with interest in its effect on the lovely victim.

One of the best cases of this is Paula Radcliffe. We don't really warm to her: for a woman, she's too ambitious, determined and happy with her wealth and family to be endearing. But we forgive her because, through her sport, she gives such good-value suffering. For a whole two hours we can tune in to see how much more punishment her ethereal frame can take, always just a step away from tears, collapse or, er, squatting. The best bit is the last mile, when her head begins its trademark donkey lollop, betraying serious pain.

So, my advice to Mrs Clinton in her race is: don't worry that you're having a hard time. You said last week that you were not playing “the gender card”, but your audience certainly will be, and, as a woman in trouble, you will have your most attentive fan base.

Relish it, because as soon as you get an easy ride, they'll lose interest.

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