Whenever I need a laugh, I just commit sexual assault

This story makes me want to throw something very heavy at the heads of those directly involved: two men were arrested for sexual assault after holding a woman down and cutting off her underwear in a bar. The most enraging part? The 39 and 40-year-old men who committed the assault called it a “joke.”

The woman was in the Dam Bar when she ran into Puhalla and Baumgardner, whom she considered friends. As they talked, the two men joked about what kind of underwear she was wearing.

She told them it was none of their business, and Baumgardner said he was going to cut off her underwear. She replied: “You’re not man enough for that.”

The two men walk over to the woman, seated at the bar, and Baumgardner pulled out a pocketknife, while Puhalla held her down on the bar by her wrists and forearms.

Baumgardner walked around her from the back, reached in her pants and cut each side of her underwear. At this time, she said, another man came up to her, poked at her chest, and said they should cut that off next. She believed the third man was referring to her bra.

She yelled for help several times and asked for the bartender to intervene, but he said, “I can’t or they will make things worse for me.” She said there were up to six other men in the bar at the time, and none of them came to her aid either.

During the altercation she lost her shoes. Eventually, she ran barefoot into the bathroom, attempting to hold up her pants.

The men had her shoes, and Puhalla said she could have them only in return for her underwear. Wanting to leave the bar, she gave in to his demand.

Police, when meeting with the woman, detected bruises on her arms and an abrasion in her groin area.

Puhalla, when questioned by police, said that he and Baumgardner were joking around when the topic of underwear came up. Puhalla, referring to the incident, said it was time for the woman “to take one for the team.”

Baumgardner, in his statement to police, said he has participated in similar acts in the past as a joke. He said everyone in the bar was watching and laughing at the time. He said he tried to apologize to the woman, but she would not talk to him.

I can’t decide which is worse:

The assault itself, or the way that Puhalla and Baumgarder tried to justify it. “Take one for the team?” A joke? Yeah, fucking hilarious.

The assault itself, or the fact that Baumgardner admitted to doing it before.

That everyone watched and did nothing, or that some of the witnesses may have laughed.

At Feministing, there are several asshole male commenters who are, of course, trying to justify the attack as something other than sexual assault. Personally, I’m not really sure how else you could describe holding a woman down, forcefully reaching into her pants and cutting off her clothes. I’d also like to see how these men would react if someone attacked them in the groin with a knife. Not so sure that they’d still consider it “horseplay.” But hey, penises are serious things. A woman waving a knife around a man’s genitals (even in self-defense) would be instantly declared a “man-hater.” But we’re talking about vaginas here, and this bitch just like to complain. It’s not like women are sexually assaulted every day, or like many horrible things have been done to female genitals with knives.

Some are also justifying the attacker’s actions by the victim’s remarks that they weren’t “man enough” to follow through on the threat. The sane among us are pointing out that insulting a sexual harasser isn’t justification for a sexual assault. I’d also like to add that the victim had considered her attackers to be friends; not only were her remarks potentially an idle dare, she may in fact have thought that her friends were joking and following that lead, been making a joke herself.

After the victim ran away in terror, Puhalla still didn’t think that the attack had gone far enough. Proving that their intent was humiliation and dominance, he forced her to hand over her underwear in exchange for the right to leave the bar. He and Baumgarder still had the nerve to call it a joke. And Baumgarder seems to think that an apology would have negated the sexual assault and to be completely bemused by woman’s refusal to speak to him.

When people ask if feminism is still relevant, it’s stories like this that prove it is. It’s the fact that so many are willing to justify these actions that makes me dread the kind of world we’re living in.