Pro-Groping Canadians?

Have you ever read something and had to actually go back and read it again, just because you can’t believe your eyes? Well today, I had that experience as I perused the Eye Weekly, a Canadian mag that I had admittedly never seen before, but that according to their advertising material (.pdf file), has 332,000 weekly readers in the Toronto area.

So what are our Canadian neighbors to the North advocating today you ask? Free hockey sticks for kids? Cheap igloos for the disadvantaged? Actually spending some money on their military (har, har, har)? No, the op-ed I ran across, was suggesting legalizing GROPING. Yes, you read me right, some perv named Bert Archer thinks it should be legal to grab the goodies of any hot Canadian woman you run across on the street. Just take a look at this…

“…Being touched, even if it is on our Janet-Jacksons, is a very small matter and shouldn’t be against the law. We get touched all the time, on the subway, in streetcars, along busy streets, while trying to go out a door at the same time someone else is going in through it. And on these occasions, we frequently get our boobs, bums and crotches brushed or poked, and unless we are very fragile little flowers indeed, we think nothing of it. But for most of us, if that same brush or poke were not an accident but demonstrably the result of a desire on the part of the brusher or poker to brush, poke, or otherwise manhandle that particular part of us, we would be outraged. “Our bodies, our selves!” we would cry, at least to ourselves, in our justification for this outrage. “Consent!” we might also cry. “This is non-consensual sexual touching! We have a right not to be touched!” Except, of course, when we’re on the subway or streetcar or in a doorway or narrow stairwell or on an elevator or in a closely packed aisle in a grocery store or an airplane gangway….

…I’m not saying it’s necessarily pleasant to be groped (and I consider anything involving physical restraint to be a separate issue entirely). It could very well be quite upsetting, even frightening. It could ruin your day, in fact. But so could someone stopping in front of you on the sidewalk and yelling incoherently at you for five seconds. But walking up to someone on the sidewalk and screaming at them incoherently for five seconds should not be illegal, and we should not be purveying notions that there are such things as serial incoherent screamers on the loose that warrant calling the police about.

A general distaste for someone who gets their jollies touching strangers is perfectly understandable (though I’d argue there’s nothing inherently sexually unhealthy about it), as is not wanting to be one of the touched.

…The criminalization of harmless sexual acts (and there is no credible study anywhere to link either ogling or groping to any more invasive sexual crime) in a culture as sexually diffident as ours, which considers the sight of certain body parts inherently harmful to children, is a step in the wrong direction. As are fastidious notions about groping and the laws that bolster them.”

If you honestly believe there’s “nothing inherently sexually unhealthy about” say grabbing some woman’s left ta-ta as you walk by her on the street, then take it from a psych major, you need to be laying on a couch somewhere talking out your issues with a psychologist. Because let me tell you, not only is it “inherently sexually unhealthy” to grope a stranger on the street, it’s physically unhealthy to do it as well. As far I’m concerned, putting your hands all over some woman on the street is nothing but an invitation to get maced, punched in the mouth, or maybe even put in the hospital for a few weeks if she happens to be walking with a man who’s big enough or mean enough to get the job done.

“Keep your hands to yourself” is something that most kids should pick up by the time they’re in kindergarten and the only thing more disturbing than reading a column written by some degenerate adult who doesn’t understand that, is knowing that a Canadian mag with over a quarter of a million readers would actually run his “pro-groping” editorial.

What a bunch of freaks, eh?

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