Alright, let me try to state a case rather than making it piecemeal.
When Ray Rice beat the shit out of his girlfriend, it wasn’t just horrific because he was clearly attempting to injure her, but because it suggested a pattern of behavior. He likely intimidated and controlled her through threats and actual physical violence. That is horrific.
The Kareem Hunt situation is basically the opposite of that. It’s clear that at least two of the women from that group of women were the instigators of whatever was being argued about in that video. It’s obvious by the body language, and they follow the men even as they attempt to de-escalate by retreating.
Among young men, particularly testosterone-laden athletes, it would be very atypical to simply completely stand down and retreat when confronted with what are reported to be racial slurs directed at them. There’s some posturing involved in these incidents. Men are supposed to hold each other back, demonstrating that while the person who is being verbally attacked isn’t backing down, he’s taking his friends advice to let it get the better of him and let it escalate. I’m sure you’ve seen these “hold me back” behaviors as part of posturing dozens of times in your life. No-one there could actually restrain Kareem Hunt. He is, given his skill set and physique, one of the least restrainable people on Earth. A collective effort by 3 or 4 people may have restrained him, but that’s not what we see, and it’s clear that the restraining is of the “save face/appeal to better nature/give him a reason not to escalate” posturing sort.
He did initiate physical contact with the woman. He pushed her back after she got into his personal space to say something to him. This is a pretty normal response to someone literally stepping into the area just inches from your face in an attempt to instigate/intimidate. He didn’t try to knock her over, or strike her, he was asserting his own personal space, which she had invaded. If I were on a jury, I would not convict for assault for that level of touching, given that she made the physically aggressive move towards him.
His friend tries to intervene, and he pushes his friend away. This is less defensible, since it’s a reaction of his that’s genuinely pissed off and not just playing into the “hold me back bro!” posturing I mentioned above. But he’s not trying to hurt his friend, obviously.
The woman then takes another step towards Kareem, and punches him in the face. We all saw that, right? I would say not responding to this by striking her back shows at least an average level of self-restraint. Yes, he’s a big strong man, and she’s a dainty little woman, but you shouldn’t be fucking approaching people and punching them in the face. To him, punching back would be an almost automatic reaction, but he doesn’t, because he’s not looking for an opportunity to harm her.
At this point, Hunt allows himself to be dragged to the bedroom - this is posturing, again, because no one guy there is going to be able to contain Hunt if he didn’t want to allow it - and a woman from the group follows him into his hotel room.
His friend had to drag the woman out of the hotel room to try to break it up. In the process, she ran into his other friend, who was holding another woman back from entering the hotel room too. It very well may have looked to Kareem like the woman who was being forced out of the room assaulted his friend, who was knocked over. Seeing the video, that’s not the case - they bumped into each other’s back - but that clearly flared back up the confrontation, so it’s entirely plausible that at that point Kareem thought his friend had just been assaulted.
At this point a woman attempts to restrain Kareem and keep him away from the girl who’d knocked his friend over and then fallen. Again, she could not have possibly have actually restrained him - if he was interested in inflicting harm, he would’ve.
He then kicks the squatting woman who knocked down his friend - squatting, not prone - with almost no force at all. It’s really more of a leg shove than a kick.There was clearly no intent to injure. Why did he do it? I don’t know, a face saving move? Frustration? Maybe he thought of kicking her for real, but caught himself mid-kick and dialed the force back to almost nothing. The end result is almost no force was actually exerted onto her. This is the egregious part, I guess, but can anyone look at that kick and seriously be outraged?
Now imagine for a moment that it was another group of young men doing the same thing these women did. The moment that the other group of men called Hunt or his friends niggers, Hunt’s group would’ve been justified in kicking the shit out of them, right? And if not at that point, certainly after the point where the instigator punches him in the face - that would trigger a severe beatdown that I don’t think many people would complain about.
So why the difference? Because a man, under no circumstances, should ever be able to shove a woman, even after she’s called him a nigger and punched him in the face? Because whenever a man lays a hand on a woman, for any reason, it’s morally equivalent to what Ray Rice did?
This was nothing like what Rice did. The woman could’ve left at any time. Hunt was not controlling her or abusing her. She was the instigator. She threw a full on punch to his face, and he never responded by using even a tiny fraction of the force he could’ve responded with. He actually allowed himself to be dragged back into his room to retreat from the situaton, but they followed him in there, and then (seemingly) followed him in there and knocked his friend over. All while possibly screaming racial slurs.
This is why I called it virtue signalling. People who want to engage in virtue signalling will often act like any physical contact a man gives to a woman, even if she’s in the fucking middle of punching him in the face and calling him a nigger, very loudly and visibly attempt to judge him. They even engage in hyperbole - like, say, the team that hired him should lose all their games indefinitely because what they did was so unthinkable - because the louder and more severe your condemnation of it, the greater the virtue signalling.
I have a very difficult time believing that someone watched that video and took away from it “oh man, that Kareem hunt is out of control. What he did was so unforgivable his career should be over, and any team that would have it should lose perpetually for hiring such concentrated evil.” sincerely, and so any such over the top condemnations are more about virtue signalling than a serious analysis of what happened.
I would seriously contend that he acted with above average restraint in this instance, that the level of provocation directed at him would’ve justified more force on his part, and that if it were men, instead of women, no one would ever think twice of it. It might even be brought up as some sort of Justice Served Justified Beatdown story.
And I sincerely think that, given how fucking strong, agile, and athletic Hunt is, that it really doesn’t matter that much whether this was a man or a woman - he would easily wipe floor with either. If the whole reason we’d treat this differently if it was a man punching Hunt in the face and yelling nigger at him differently is the disparity in physical strength - the difference between Hunt and the average dude is probably about as wide a gap as the average man and the average woman.
He would’ve never showed that much restraint to a man, though, and would’ve destroyed him as easily as he could’ve destroyed that woman.
I think that by pretending that this incident is anything even remotely like a man controlling a woman through violence, pain, and intimidation, like Ray Rice or other domestic violence incidents, only serves to cheapen our reactions to the latter. For fucks sake, this is a trashy, instigating woman doing her best to escalate the situation the whole time, shouting racial slurs, and punching him in the fucking face, and we think he’s irredeemably evil because he made restrained, almost token contact with her.
I have no idea why I even wrote this out. This is fucking stupid. She is so obviously in the wrong in this situation, so obviously provoking him, and clearly assaulting him (her punch to his face was way more egregious than his shove-kick) that the only reason I can think of that other people aren’t seeing this obviously is because we’re all trying to compete to show how much we hate evil toxic men and want to protect innocent women even though it’s totally misplaced. Hence, I thought the hyperbolic reaction (A POX TO ANY TEAM THAT WOULD HAVE HIM!) was more virtue signalling than a genuine reaction to what happened. I’m actually offended that we’re treating this incident with equal or more outrage with incidents that actually involve men committing violence against women with intent to harm and control.
Omni accuses me of being dishonest in my assessment of what happened. I literally do not even understand how. I gave a second by second analysis of what the video shows, and no one seems to actually disagree with what I said, but are still treating it like some unspeakable crime happened and I’m just covering it up with lies.