Clearly this was a traumatic experience for you. However, you have no idea what sort of emotional impact a swift kick in the balls provides just as I have no idea what an unwanted boob grab has on you. The simple fact remains that a boob grab and a kick in the balls aren’t physically equal, but you have every right to defend yourself if you feel threatened. I just have a problem with a kick in the balls being the go-to method for anything and everything. Maybe it’s because I just don’t get this fascination with breasts.

All in all, I’m on the side of no boob grabs and no ball kicks. I think we can all agree on that.

The emotional impact is exactly the same. It is also a physical assault. I still can feel the way that man grabbed me, and it’s been 35 frelling years since it happened! I felt physically ill after it happened. Never told my parents. Never told my boyfriend (now my husband of 30 years). It still feels incredibly nasty and I still experience that helplessness when I think about it.

So damn straight, nowadays if anyone tried to cop a feel on me I’d kick him in the balls! And I know how to do it now, too. Of course, now I’m a middle-aged woman so I wouldn’t be a typical target for this asinine behavior.

I don’t quite understand the point of just copping a feel. It’s much more fun to have a nice conversation over dinner and drinks, discover how interesting the other person is, and slowly seduce him or her so that the mere act of holding hands makes the object of your affections swoon with passion.

And then later you can dress up as Batman, she can be the damsal in distress, or Catwoman, or Robin, or Poison Ivy with plant pheromes, or …

1) The “OK buttons” were supposed to mean “You can ask if you’d like to touch my boobs”, with “No” supposed to be an “acceptable” answer, not an open announcement that anyone could walk up and grab ‘em sans asking.

2) It wasn’t just a male touching female boobs thing. Seems there were a considerable number of women relative to the whole number (what I’ve seen was on the order of 40 people out of a 1,000 person convention) involved on the touching side as well as the touched, and who were in on it from the start. No equivalent bit for touching men though.

I am a man who loves boobs and, more importantly, the women attached to them. I wrote and drew a comic about an imp that molests boobs for the express purpose of making fun of the male compulsion towards them, including my own. It’s important that we be able to joke about such things in order to defuse them though acknowledgement.

And yet even I think this is perhaps the most idiotic idea that I’ve ever heard. The lack of faculties in distinguishing a time and place for these sort of shenanigans (ie, Dragon*Con [rimshot]) only serves to reinforce negative stereotypes about comic readers, both within and without the community. A system by which the socially-awkward bypasses engaging women as individuals and instead objectifies them in a public context, almost Sim-like in its treatment of women as an “other,” speaks to a misanthropy that if it weren’t already self-defeating by nature would guarantee to perpetuate the alienation that makes it seem necessary.

In the age where everything is accepted, some folks still don’t know that certain boundaries are good to have.

I am a little too, but that’s not going to stop me from teaching it to my daughter.

“However, it is quite humorous.”

Yes. Yes, it is.

In addendum to what I said about getting kids and girls into comics before, I’d also like to point out to those who might be a bit slow to make a connection to parents that will never pick up a comic. First impressions (at a con or otherwise) will dictate what they’ll let their kids get their hands on.

I am a little bothered by the “swift kick in the balls” counter program because it’s not exactly on the same level as a boob grab. However, it is quite humorous.

Forget cons, I’m not letting the kids I know go to BLOGS anymore.

Jes’ funnin’, y’all.

I actually know one of the women who participated. She wore a red button.

I have a sneaking suspicion that had she, or Ferrett’s wife, been the person to post about it, we’d be having an entirely different discussion. Or none at all.

Oh wait - I already done that.

~

Coat

But if “Can I touch your boobs?” was swiftly followed by “Yes, if I may kick you in the balls repeatedly” I’m guessing the whole thing would sort itself out quickly.