When a Tampa woman was beaten after rebuffing the sexual advances of an intoxicated man, she waited for him to sober up, and then offered him a choice: either he’d face arrest, or be forced to stand by the side of a road holding a sign that read “I BEAT WOMEN. HONK IF I’M A SCUMBAG.” Guess which he picked?
All of this went down earlier this month, according to ABC, when 20-year-old Alisha Hessler went out clubbing with two male friends, who brought along a third man. After a night of revelry, the third man attempted to reach up Hessler’s skirt and was greeted with a slap. He responded by beating Hessler so badly that she suffered a concussion and a broken nose.
Hessler went to the hospital and filed a police report, but before she filed formal charges, she reached out to the man on Facebook and told him that if he didn’t want to get arrested, he’d have to stand at a busy Tampa intersection in a dunce cap holding a sign that reads “I BEAT WOMEN. HONK IF I’M A SCUMBAG.” for 8 hours.
Unsurprisingly, the stunt was met with mixed reviews. On one hand, any guy who gets drunk and beats women is a deluxe model scum dumpster. But on the other, domestic violence advocacy groups point out that the dunce cap, pointing-and-laughing thing treats the serious crime of domestic violence like it’s all part of a big, hilarious one-upsmanship contest (aghast advocates should be glad to hear, then, that what Hessler really wanted was for her assailant to sign a waiver allowing her to beat him for 10 minutes, but backed down when her friends told her that beating people is illegal in most circumstances, even with a “But He Beat Me First” Waiver).
If Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote a musical called FLORIDA!, this would be the showstopper.