An Alabama football fan and his errant ballsack rose to notoriety this month when a video of the man using the sack to teabag a passed out LSU fan's neck made the internet rounds. With some sleuthing and elbow grease, the fan's identity was revealed, he turned himself in, and now he's got himself a sexual battery charge and a mugshot to go along with his famous scrotum. This teaches us all a very important lesson about not teabagging people. But, thought experiment: what if one or both people involved in the incident had been women?
Our brother site Deadspin has been covering this incident and the fallout fairly extensively, and I'd encourage everyone to read their posts for some background on what, exactly went down. The CliffsNotes version is this: After the BCS national championship game between Alabama and LSU, a video surfaced on YouTube that showed a man wearing Alabama gear rubbing his junk on the neck of an unconscious LSU fan while bystanders cheered. Sports supremacy achieved! Just like the Spartans!
Predictably, the reaction of the outside world at large was less positive. Brian Downing, the man in the video, has reportedly lost his job and now faces charges in The Big Easy. Everyone in the world thinks he's kind of a jerk. Even his baby looks mad.
This is a great example of how stupid sports can sometimes convince people to act, and also a great example of how differently sexual aggression is interpreted depending on the gender of the aggressor.
If a woman had rubbed herself up against a strange man in a bar, for example, would the act be viewed as an insulting show of team pride? Or the sloppy actions of an out-of-control loose woman bringing shame to the nation of Alabama fans? Would the reaction be different if the woman were conventionally attractive versus unattractive? Everyone who has ever watched a teen sex comedy knows that sexually aggressive hot women are sexy, and sexually aggressive ugly women are comical.
If the victim had been a woman, would the incident have been posted to YouTube or filmed at all or taken down after uproar? Would the bystanders have cheered it on or stopped the incident? Even my cold black heart can't imagine that we live in a world where a man tea bagging an unconscious woman in public would be viewed as an act of football team pride.
And a girl-on-girl teabagging? The court of public opinion finds the defendant guilty of doing something totally hot. Up top, bro!
But, ultimately, it shouldn't matter if the people involved were men, or women, or mimes, or Disney characters in costume, or members of The Village People — it's never okay to rub yourself on someone else because they're passed out and they like a team that you don't like. Assault is assault, regardless of the gender of the victim or perpetrator.
Troll Tide [Deadspin]
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