Most recently, female members of Tigers Jaw and Pity Sex were kissed on stage by an unruly male fan a few nights ago. Some days later at Warped Tour, Ryan Rockwell, frontman of Mixtapes (a band I've never heard of, for the record), made a "joke" on stage in an attempt to interrupt the current conversation taking place between songs. He said something on the lines of "No, no fuck Tigers Jaw. Just kiss whoever you want." After they played their song, he said that his previous comment was stupid and obviously you shouldn't kiss someone without their consent. Of course, initial reports of his comment failed to mention his retraction of statement, one of Rockwell's biggest issues with this sudden backlash. He made an official statement about the incident on a podcast he has with friend Justin Schafer called "Big Snackers".
I listened to the first 30 minutes of the podcast because that's about how long it took to cover the incident, mainly because Justin continued to add on and on (I'd call him an instigator of sorts). I metaphorically walked into the discussion about this incident unbiased, even though I'd heard about the Tigers Jaw/Pity Sex incident. My first reaction to rumors of Rockwell's comment was "wow, that's very rude and inappropriate to say," but I wanted to hear this guy's side of the story before immediately judging him as a misogynist and whatnot- maybe someone misheard him, etc, etc.
After listening, I've come to some conclusions. Ryan Rockwell didn't really apologize during this podcast. He was more defensive than anything because no one mentioned his pseudo apology two minutes after the comment was made, which makes sense in order for him to protect his image and reputation. Everyone ganged up on him on the internet (as usual), but those directly affected didn't contact him personally to discuss the matter (besides a single tweet from Tigers Jaw in response to confirmations of his comment). He did advocate for not kissing/touching someone without consent, especially after saying that member(s) of his band have had the same experience as Tigers Jaw/Pity Sex. Yes, it was unfair for people to automatically hate him for comments they weren't witnesses to, and it was/is wrong for people to throw hateful speech at him since that's not going to get us anywhere in changing things like this. He made a mistake and hopefully he's learned from it.
Justin Schafer, on the other hand, should have kept many of his comments to himself while Rockwell made his statement. I know it's their shared podcast, but Rockwell was using this platform to make a personal statement that got lost at times with Schafer's input. If he didn't officially victim-blame, he got pretty darn close to it at points: Why did they wait until after playing a second time to address the guy? Why wasn't he thrown out of the venue the first time it happened?- these were essentially two questions he asked. Sure, they're valid questions, but he was not at that show. Do we know where that guy went after the first attempted kiss? How do we know that security didn't attempt to find him the first time? Fans in the audience may not have instinctively thought that what he did was wrong, so when he returned to the crowd (by whatever means) he probably blended in with everyone else. Also, many times you're in a state of shock that something like that even happened, especially the survivors (I don't really want to use "victim" now, as both females have spoken up and against this nonsense).
Schafer's responses stemmed from a need to defend his friend, but he could have said things more tastefully instead of turning on everyone else. Why aren't people going after the guy who kissed them, the guy who actually did something? Who's to say someone hasn't? If people can't put a name to the face (or really have a clear view of the face to begin with), it makes it bit harder to go after him, but that doesn't mean that everyone has just let that guy go without consequences. Schafer also calls out all of these people as cowards basically, saying that most of them are hiding behind their computers and wouldn't confront Rockwell personally if they had the chance. He mentions that this is part of what's wrong with the scene and how people aren't going after the real perpetrators. One of the simplest ways to help prevent inappropriate behavior is to call people out for the inappropriate comments and language that precede such behavior. The best advice of all is to not say or do inappropriate/hateful/etc things to begin with.
