Knightly Musings: Let’s Be Clear, Teabagging In Video Games Is Not Sexual Assault

When it comes to teabagging in video games, the topic comes up from time-to-time. Teabagging, the act of a player repeatedly crouching over a dead opponent is treated as clickbait fodder for shock-jock journalists, social media influencers in the space, or by developers being faux woke. Yet, every time the discussion re-emerges, it becomes more serious or given additional gravitas despite the ludicrous premise. So let’s be clear about it from the start: teabagging in video games is not sexual assault. 

Ever since co-op, LAN, and online multiplayer has been a thing, gamers have found or created ways to disrespect each other. Whether it was unloading a clip into the corpse of your opponent, talking smack, refusing to return a gesture of respect, or teabagging; these are all ways to needle and disrespect your fallen opponent or it’s just harmless fun amongst friends. Unsurprisingly, there are those who go too far that they will verbally harass in the form of violent threats and hate speech with the more psychotic ones swatting or doxxing other players. But there is a discerned difference between goading or being disrespectful and spiteful or malicious. 

Between good-natured ribbing and toxicity. 

Just like in real life, not everything is Sunshine and Marios.

It truly is a ludicrous position for someone to take for the simple fact that you are playing a game that is based on committing violence towards each other. Whether blowing their heads off in a shooter, pulling their spine out in a fighting game, or hacking their limbs off in medieval combat they have no problem with this. But the moment someone uses the crouch button to mimic a character moving up and down on their corpse, shoving a virtual rear and nonexistent ballsack onto their avatar’s broken body, they are shook (newer games have included genitalia these days).

NEWSFLASH: they are disrespecting you, not sexually assaulting you. 

As if claiming that teabagging, also referred to as corpse humping, is sexual assault was not enough, the latest round of imbecilic gum-flapping takes it even further to suggest that this is also necrophilia. Because the digital avatar is dead at the time that this villainous sexual assault is occurring. Even though that same avatar is brought back to life over and over again. If that were the case, these so-called virtual victims would want to remove themselves from such games. Or they could, since they are in a game, get their revenge by beating their opponent. Something they wouldn’t do in real life or would have to rely on law enforcement, or someone else, to take care of it for them.

Yet, that is not what these people want. They want the act banned, the players who do it banned, and that the majority should kowtow to their whims and supercilious feelings. Rather than remove themselves from a space that makes them feel uncomfortable. 

Obviously, this doesn’t include the argument that they might have been the victim of a real sexual assault.

When it comes to real victims of sexual assault, a different argument could be made. Even so, the majority are not obligated to change their behaviors for that person. Just like a comedian can not account for every person who might be affected or insulted by the jokes they tell, the same argument could be made for gamers. 

Does that mean people with a legitimate reason to be affected by the act of teabagging have no options? Absolutely not. They have several options. The first is to stop playing multiplayer games, which have a crouching action, to avoid the possibility of running into that situation. The second is to run their own private servers where they can ban teabagging. An option that, for a long time, developers no longer wanted gamers to have as they removed dedicated servers as an option for gamers who wanted to create wholesome gaming communities (RIP HomeLAN Federation & Alliance).

The final option is to not allow a game to have such an effect on you. Because it is a game. 

Just like some people who have arachnophobia and want spiders banned from video games, doesn’t mean that the developer needs to acquiesce to what they want. Spiders are a staple in many games and certainly in horror games. Especially for games targeted towards younger kids such as Jak and Daxter, Mario, and others. When you look at the monstrosities you face in games such as the Silent Hill, Dead Space, and Resident Evil franchises it’s hard to take the argument seriously when spiders are tame compared to what is created for those games.

The same goes for real victims of sexual violence. You can’t expect people to stop doing what they do with a product that they purchased. 

For those who aren’t victims, but are just uncomfortable by the act, you especially have no right to dictate how people should play. You can, like previously stated, create your own servers and your own rules. As for those complaining to just complain about something in an attempt to get faux woke points or faux clout…

Get bent.

While teabagging is not sexual assault, one can argue that it is unsportsmanlike behavior. But that is the whole point of teabagging, unloading a clip into your fallen enemy’s body, etc. It’s about showing disrespect to those you defeat, which happens all the time in real life when it comes to competition. But it can also be just harmless fun because most people won’t take the act seriously.

Unsportsmanlike conduct is something we see all the time in sports competitions. Whether spitting in each other’s faces, throwing punches, biting, throwing bats, headbutts, and even grinding your butt on someone’s helmet. These are things that have happened in real life. But that is real life where physical harm is a thing. 

But we are talking about video games. Not real life. 

Unless you are going to take the argument to its logical conclusion in which everyone should be arrested for first degree murder.

For a long time, gamers and video game journalists fought against the mainstream media and politicians who tried to demonize the video game industry. “Video games cause violence” was the motto echoed by these entities that gamers and the industry fought against to say that this wasn’t true. Eventually, studies showed that video games didn’t cause violence and even served as an outlet for violence. 

But video game journalism shifted and turned into the very thing it fought against. These journalists and established outlets have made themselves the censors and the arbiters of what can or can’t be in a game. What is and isn’t moral. What is and isn’t appropriate. 

Teabagging in video games is not sexual assault. No matter how much a grifting journalist or clout-chasing SJW says it is. If you can not make a distinction between real life and fantasy then you need therapy. Gamers declaring that teabagging is sexual assault in video games are taking away from real sexual assault victims. It’s a mockery of the real crime that happens in real life to real people. 

So go touch grass.

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