Public Service Announcement May 27, 2010 Jill Dear Young Men Who Love to Play Stupid and Physically Harmful Games: Stop punching each other in the balls. “Sack-tapping” is all fun and games until someone loses a testicle. Ice each other instead.
Won’t lie, saw this headline come up in my Facebook feed and immediately thought: “…with guitar!” Sound advice, tho.
Do young men actually punch each other in the balls? Wow! The implications of this are a whole dissertation waiting to be written. Anyway, if young men want to be hit in the balls, they should have kids. There was a certain period of time when my daughter regularly, while horsing around with me or whatever, would accidently kick or punch me in the balls or through a ball right at mine, etc. I guess it’s that she regularly would run into me, accidently kick me while playing or whatever — but in most locations it didn’t really do anything, but when the foot, hand or projectile hit my testes … I guess it’s evolutionarily important — a kid needs to make sure it has as few rivals as possible for parentally provided resources. It’s the same principle as how babies never fail to wake up in the middle of the night and start crying when their parents are just about to get it on. 😉
Oh for heavens sake…are they really that bored that punching each other in the testicles is considered a game?
@2: Actually having children is not a prerequisite (though it likely does increase the odds). My friends’ children managed to injure me on several occasions with projectiles or while playing the game called “jump feet-first onto the babysitter.”
DAS: oh yes they do, and kicking too. (Probably other stuff that I can’t remember.) Some parts of male culture have always somewhat mystified me, even when I was young.
A young child tried to hit me in the balls once. Mostly I was confused that she thought I would have balls, but I don’t know when young children learn about these things.
I guess it’s evolutionarily important — a kid needs to make sure it has as few rivals as possible for parentally provided resources. But what about kin selection?
The female lacrosse players at my high school were constantly engaged in epic battles of a game they called “Titty tapping” which is exactly what it sounds like. I issued a lot of threats to my friends on my team, because my “titties” tended to get really sore right around my period and if someone punched me then, I’m pretty sure I would have jawed them out of instinct.
“When sack-tapping is outlawed, only outlaws will sack-tap.” I laughed so hard I almost lost my soda. Anyway, I’ve spent considerable time with middle schoolers lately and I am not the least bit surprised that teenage boys would punch each other in the balls. Boys aged 13-15 make really stupid decisions. Something to do with hormones, developing sexuality, rivalry, machismo, impulsiveness, etc. I’d have to agree with those who mentioned Darwin. Let them punch each other – after all, survival of the fittest.
Ah ball tagging, a high school/ fraternity boy’s favorite past time. It’s all fun and games until someone ends up thrown against the wall for tagging the wrong person at the wrong time.
*son comes home after school and walks slowly towards his dad* dad: what’s the matter son? son: my scrotum died *Step By Step theme song plays*
What gets me isn’t just how stupid it is to play the game, but how unbelievably stupid males in high school are collectively. If only there was some way of getting inside their heads and understanding why they feel the need to do this. Let me take a crack at it. The game is called “sack tapping,” or, alternatively, “ball tapping.” If we want to get inside the heads of these young men and discover why they play this game, a discursive analysis of the “sack-tapping” discourse is necessary. The first question we must as is, According to what rules was the discourse formed? Notice that they use the terms “sack tapping” and “ball tapping” to refer to behavior that does far more than “tap” the testicles. The sack-tapping discourse therefore excludes strong and accurate descriptive language. So it seems that the rules under which the discourse was formed were “do not recklessly harm the testicles of others.” Our discursive analysis should also answer the question, Why do high school boys feel inclined to play this game? I don’t think that this method can yield an answer; sadly, this particular system of dispersion will likely elude us forever.
Simple.”If you’re not tough enough to take a punch in the nuts and laugh about it you’re just a ‘not a real man.’ You don’t want everyone to think you’re a ‘not a real man’ do you?”
There is also a knowledge/power structure that I very nearly overlooked. It seems that the point of sack tapping is to upload the videos onto YouTube to be judged by the viewers. The article “Sack Tapping “Game” Costs 14-Year-Old a Testicle” describes it as “the latest (completely idiotic and disturbing) YouTube trend.” This particular YouTube trend involves one class of individuals behaving recklessly and uploading it to be judged by others on the internet. The goal of the sack-tappers is to upload a video which will become “viral,” or popular. The viewers are ultimately in control of what sort of behavior will become popular and what will be marginalized. Sack-tapping is not substantially different from much of the self-destructive behavior that is uploaded onto YouTube and other sites in an attempt to gain popularity and recognition by the internet community. But why do these individuals wish to be recognized by this community? It seems that they wish to be recognized by the internet community due to its size and for no other reason. Basically, these reckless males want to achieve recognition by a large body of other individuals who are entertained by their behavior. Sack-tapping, like many other of these trends, is an art form with a knowledge/power structure. The viewers collectively hold the power to confer the coveted “viral” status onto videos which contain a behavior which they subjectively judge to be entertaining. The means of entertainment are quite troubling. Unlike virtually all other art forms, which consist of abstract representations of certain themes, sack-tapping does not represent anything universal. So the method of differentiating good sack-tapping from bad sack-tapping, and sack-tapping from other sorts of entertaining, reckless behavior are purely subjective. This lack of a mutually recognized or even a mutally recognizable standard results in the internet community weilding pure, arbitrary power and knowledge. Sack-tapping results from the same forces that similar trends are a result of. It is a simple majority oppression of the minority. So ultimately, it would seem that sack-tapping is about power, control, and oppression. I don’t think that this method can yield an answer; sadly, this particular system of dispersion will likely elude us forever. It would seem my disillusionment with discursive analyses was preemptive.
Not funny. Just YouTube search “Eddie Murphy Raw Dick Threats.” You don’t have to hit anybody in their nuts–just graze them.
I don’t know what it says about my mentality that I think it sounds fun. I have days where I’d like to just sock someone in the balls. Then again, I have no balls so I probably find this more humorous then painful. I also have a personal space zone about three miles long, so people who even tap my shoulder reap what they sow.
so people who even tap my shoulder reap what they sow. “OH GOD THAT’S NOT MY SHOULDER!” …Do your victims shoulder-tappers frequently yell like that? :p
Alas, it’s cross-cultural. My new crop of 7th graders is still too mystified by the whole ‘no-longer-in-grade-school’ thing, but the 8th and 9th graders have jumped back into the practice with great vigor. Enough vigor, in fact, to leave their friends rolling on the floor clutching their crotches. It seems the most cocky (ahem) lads are the ones who get it most often, as well as those with the highest social status. Wonder what that says about power structures at work here…
Bagelsan: No. Although I frequently return taps with vim and vigor. I’m kind of a violent person, but it’s a controlled violence.
Seems to me that this is a symptom of the prevailing ideas about masculinity: i.e. macho, nearly immune to pain, and anti-intellectual to the point of self-destructiveness. This seems to be a method to distance oneself from all forms of caring, which are associated with femininity – and is an outgrowth of “games” like “hot hands” and “bloody knuckles” (where boys of the same age-range would take turns respectively slapping each others’ palms full-force and rapping each others’ knuckles with their own until one gave up), only taken to the n’th degree. Harmful “games” like this will continue until this segment of our population learns that this is not Sparta. It’s also a method of enforcing sexism and homophobia, in which those who’ve “proven” themselves look down on those who have not, be they girls or boys that have refused to participate, and are labeled as “Gay” by the dominant circle(regardless of their actual sexual orientation). Or am I just barking up the wrong tree-frog?
You know, one of the advantages of growing comfortable with being a “sissy” is that you no longer feel compelled to engage in stupid things like this. It looks like the un-macho boys now have a reproductive advantage. Nature has a wisdom of its own…
Mike Crichton is right. I’ve seen this plenty of time back when I was in school, only it wasn’t a game, it was a low-level form of bullying. I rarely saw it being done on a voluntary basis.
i find all these “darwinism at work!” comments to be a little mean-spirited, considering. this, copy-pastaed from http://www.wthr.com/global/story.asp?s=11568681: Jake Arend doesn’t need survey results to convince him ball tapping is a serious problem. Classmates began hitting him in the groin when he was in sixth grade and it continued for years. “I was just the scrawny kid everybody picked on to make themselves look better,” Arend said. “If you get hit in that area, you just want to fall and cry, but I tried not to.” By the time Jake got to Danville High School, he says he was being ball tapped every week – sometimes even three or four times a day. “Sometimes it would be just the flick of a wrist, and there was one time I actually got hit in the area with a socket wrench,” he recalled. “When I got hit with that, I actually just hit the ground and just laid there in the fetal position for five to ten minutes for the pain to go away, then I got up and went to class.” Jake never told his parents and he never told his teachers, fearing the bullies at school would hit him ever harder if they got in trouble. “I just thought ‘It’s pain. I’ll deal with it,'” said Arend. When Jake graduated in May 2009, he thought all that pain would be a thing of the past. It was just getting started. Emergency surgery In late October, Jake was rushed to Hendricks Regional Hospital in Danville where doctors performed an emergency operation. Years of enduring ball tapping had finally taken its toll. Undetected scar tissue had completely sealed off Jake’s urinary tract, resulting in horrifying pain. “It was a pain like I’ve never felt before. It was like taking a knife and just jamming it down in your stomach and dragging it all the way down through your genital area,” he said. “The urologist said the signs can go undetected for years until it hits you like it hit me.” Doctors placed a catheter in Jake’s urethra and told him he will need another operation to fix all the damage caused by repeated blows to the groin. does this SOUND like just a bunch of stupid dudely-dudes having stupid macho fun? i mean, to me it sounds like the usual high-school picking-on-the-different type of thing that usually gets criticized. furthermore, honestly, it sounds like sexual assault. i know it might sound like “what about the menz” whining, as so many things do – but unwanted, unconsented-to, injurious contact inflicted upon women’s genitals is considered to be sexual assault. what ABOUT the menz? i mean, it could be that the darwinism everyone’s championing is social darwinism, where the misfit losers and nerds getting ball-tapped at school had better toughen up and grow a metaphorical pair, lest they lose their actual pair. but i hope that’s not the case, as that’s pretty unfeminist-sounding.
Yeah, your right this isn’t all Darwinism’s work. We need to give credit, to the out of it parents as well. They don’t talk to their children, they don’t ask what’s happening at school? As far as being kicked in the balls being sexual assault, I agree. I also admit I did kick a guy one times in the balls, but only because he was threatening to humilate me in high school, by showing my feminine items to everyone. Now, seems extreme, I should have told a teacher? Every single time I told a teacher I was being bullied, I was blamed for my own victmization. Also this female teacher, came over, and hassled me over what I did, and then told me I had to show the guy my feminine items to which he said, “Hahaha, you wear a diaper”. If our schools are so pathetic, as to take side with someone who was actively bullying to where everyone could see it, and the person who defended themselves rather than having their purse taken away and being told they had to bleed through their pants the rest of the day, was humiliated to the bully’s glee. Maybe we should be talking about how our public schools have become little more than a daycare for young men and women, and that there is likely more awareness in prisons in regards to bullying, then there is in our schools. Of course I was considered Special Needs, I guess they felt it’s easier to blame the r-word, than to tame the socipaths who were terrorizing me.
I always find it fascinating that when young women engage in painful, self-destructive, and profoundly stupid behavior we view it (often very rightly, I believe) as a symptom of society’s damaging treatment of them. And yet when young men do the same, we tend to view it as “stupid boys” or “Darwinism in action” or “what the hell is wrong with young men?” or what have you. And that’s not even touching on the aspects of this related to sexual assault, bullying, or related matters. Or the troubling suggestion that it is apparently okay if the victim in question is going to humiliate you and you feel you have no other redress. Physical violence as a response to emotional and social cruelty? I do believe that’s often a touchy subject, especially in this neck of the woods.
