Once upon a time De’Andre Johnson was on top of the world; the future of the Florida State Seminoles. In a span of a few days he was suspended from the team and then, in an unrelated incident, wound up as the new poster boy for male aggression. Here’s what went down:
Johnson was trying to get to the bar to get a drink and pushed past a girl in order to get to the empty spot next to her. This is all documented on video, so the level of alcohol involved is not fully clear. We know she was drinking something. We know he was at least attempting to get a drink. As he tried to get past the female, she became upset and shoved him with her shoulder. He pushes back with his body weight without even directly acknowledging her. She says something to him and raises her fist and starts saying something to him in an aggressive manor. He grabs her fist and pulls it down to her waist, clearly trying to keep it away from him. She quickly responds with a knee to the midsection. She follows quickly with a wild punch at his face with her free hand. He dodges and connects with a right hook. He disappears from the camera angle at that point.
Based on this evidence (see the video for yourself), Johnson was charged with misdemeanor battery. So far the authorities have declined to press charges against her, deciding that she did not attack him in any fashion. To hear it from the internet, she she be excused because she was obviously drunk, so he didn’t need to do that. I ask, if it were a man, would ‘obviously drunk’ be an acceptable excuse then?
The whole point I’m trying to make here is that there remains a very uneven set of expectations when it comes to physical retaliation. Perhaps it is the karmic balance for the devastatingly unfair way we deal with rape as a species. I think it all points to a faulty system of understanding when it comes to gender. These ideas, often wrapped in religion and history, hold us back be perpetuating falsehoods. Women are told to train to defend themselves. Often women are presented with free lethal response training as a way to prevent them from being victims. While an effective way to learn self-defense on the cheap, this only perpetuates the idea that women are victims.
This woman in the video was not a victim. She felt this man bump her and reacted the way a stereotypical drunk person (read: male) is expected to. She grew belligerent and violent. Only she wasn’t a dude, so the guy who hit back winds up on $500 bond. Such is life. Too bad Deandre Johnson’s life is officially over. With this following him around, the 18+ years of football that led him to this point aren’t going to take him anywhere into the future.
With one swing, it is time to start over. Maybe he can take up a career in boxing.
Some Thoughts:
- Though the police aren’t saying so right now, the attack on Kathryn Steinle seems anything but random. The killer’s excuse is clearly bogus. He claims he found a gun wrapped in a shirt, picked it up, and it just started firing. That is obviously a lie, but why would he be carrying a concealed weapon and open up on her like that? Questions ought to be asked.
- Since we are on the subject, I gotta say this story wouldn’t get the publicity it did if she wasn’t beautiful and there wasn’t so much footage available. Sad, but true. Obviously the political angle carries weight, but she is being billed as a beautiful, innocent, American woman murdered by a Mexican felon. For that narrative alone people aren’t asking the important questions.