By J. DeVoy
An unknown assailant is tormenting the women at Ball State University by slapping two of them on the bottom. As suddenly as the attack began, the assailant would pedal away into the darkness, “no doubt while twirling his mustache and cackling maniacally.”
The fallout has been predictable, closely following the arc of PCU‘s plot.
Of course, there are folks out there who say that this is no laughing matter, and that anyone who finds humor in this whole thing is evil and should be hunted down by a lynch mob. BSU’s student paper covered their asses adequately withthis milquetoast editorialdemanding that this crime be taken seriously, and a Facebook group that opposes “MEMEBRS” of the Ball State Ass Slapper page (IT IS NOT A JOKE!!!) is a mere 328 fans strong at the time this sentence was tapped out. But the real laughs are to be had from an indignant blog post from ScienceBlogs scribbler ”Isis the Scientist” of On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess… (haha, don’t you get it? Her name is Isis, the Egyptian goddess of motherhood and fertility and her blog is called, eh heh…). You’d think a blog on a site called ScienceBlogs would be more about, y’know, SCIENCE, but Isis would rather chew up their bandwidth to show how shocked, appalled, offended she is that people would dare to find this incident funny.
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The Legal Satyricon 
Yeah, people who think that this butt slapping incident is funny are either immature or not thinking carefully.
Example: I like to swat my wife on the ass and she doesn’t mind my touching her there. But, she has balance issues so I’ve had to learn to do so “oh so gently”.
What if this were reversed (e. g., a woman swatting a guy?) Most guys wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, though what I said about there being some unintended physical consequences still applies.
By the way, it DID happen to me once. I was in a running race and was straining to beat 50 minutes at a small town 10K run (hey, I am slow and it was hot!) So I started to run all out near the finish line and I made it by a few seconds. As I went through the chute one of the female volunteers reached back and swatted me on my sweaty butt.
I walked away, looked back and thought “she’s cute..too bad I was too comatose to enjoy it”. (she didn’t know me as I was on an out of town trip at the time)
Then again, I was probably 8-10 inches taller and 70-80 pounds heavier than her too, so I didn’t exactly feel threatened.
Perhaps it all depends on context. A co-ed game of basketball or softball may have appropriate circumstances for cross-gender ass-slapping.
On the opposite end of appropriateness, I’m reminded of James Bond in Goldfinger – Bond slaps a girl on the ass while saying “Run along now, man talk.” (Note that Tucker Max famously (?) appropriated this technique at some point.)
Sane people report getting slapped on the bottom to police?
It IS technically sexual harrasment. Albeit a minor case. Really, it’s just some immature guy and it hardly deserves to be news (or even mentioned to anyone not directly involved).
Thats the problem, Sean. The McKinnon-Dworkin-Mad-At-Daddy crowd has taken ahold of this agenda and made it that a slap on the ass equals digging up Susan B. Anthony and raping her corpse.
Hey, I agree. I was just responding to previous posts about the context by defining the context (i.e. a crime as defined by the legal codes of the area).
Really what I’m saying is that I don’t particularly feel like talking about it or hearing other people talk about it either because it’s not really important. Just like sexy Halloween costumes or 3rd graders performing Scarface.
I have to disagree. I don’t think this is anywhere close to front page material. But I think it’s totally appropriate for the police to be involved. If my wife were walking alone in our neighborhood and some stranger slapped her on the ass and then ran away, I am sure she would be freaked out, as would I.
I certainly couldn’t see myself saying “Well, I’m sure he was just having a laugh, and you do have a nice ass…” and letting it go at that.
I don’t think anyone doubts that it is an assault (albeit a minor one; this isn’t getting punched by Mike Tyson) and it is sexual abuse (but on the minor end of things; it is NOT rape).
But perhaps it would have been best to let the police do their jobs and not be so sensationalist about it; sometimes “less is more”.
Marc,
The problem is that there should be a gap between what gets your ass kicked and what requires the involvement of the police. Yeah, it is legally battery. Yeah, the guy is a creep. Yeah, he should get his ass kicked. But, Ollie is right – if the cops want to be involved, fine, then look for the guy. Making this an all points bulletin that there is a psychotic spanker on the loose is just stupid.
I agree that a well placed ass kicking can solve a lot of problems. And if the guy had slapped these asses and stuck around long enough to have his ass kicked, I’d be saying that he’d probably learned his lesson and the matter should be considered settled.
As for the “severity of the act” argument… Sure, it’s only an ass slap, and some people might appreciate an ass slap from a complete stranger. The concern comes from the fact that this guy is doing something that is outside the bounds of what we would consider “normal behavior”. Today he’s slapping asses… Tomorrow is he jerking off on park benches, or groping chicks on the subway?
Again, I am *not* saying that a rash of (two) ass-slappings should be front page news, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that these girls thought it appropriate to call the cops, or that they would take the calls seriously.
I guess that I can agree that there was nothing completely unreasonable about calling the cops, nor that there was anything unreasonable about the cops investigating.
But, c’mon, is ass slapping a “gateway offense?” I don’t think that we need to get al Giuliani on this. The guy slapped a couple of chicks asses. BFD. If they catch him, they oughta let the chicks cane him.
He might like that thought.
*Though
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