Man busted for sex with raft

A gentleman from Hamilton, Ohio was charged with public indecency after being caught having sex with a stolen inflatable pool raft. The raft was pink. Edwin Charles Tobergta has four previous public indecency charges, including one involving an inflatable pumpkin. From WAFB:

Tobergta told police he was having sex with the raft because has a problem and needs help. He asked officers to not send him to prison, but he was taken to the Butler County Jail.

"Man accused of having sex with pool raft had also violated inflatable pumpkin" (WAFB, thanks Gil and Rick!)

"Cops: Man had sex with inflatable pool raft" (Cincinnati.com)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Bevatron Repairman

See, George Lucas, if you were to add some CGI and a new “Nooooooooooo!!!” to the victim of act of wanton cruelty,*this* would be a better place to do it.
- mellowknees
  
  points for what you did there.
mati

I’m sure the prosecution will float him a deal…
http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

Oh boy. How many puns about rocking the boat are we going to be able to handle?
Amsterdaam

Was the raft busted as well?
- Dapper Swain
  
  Yes, but it was bailed out.
lknope

From the second article:

“A male witness, who owns the raft and lives in the home near the alley, told Hamilton Police Officer William Thacker he shouted at the suspect to stop.”

If it were my raft, I would have just let him keep it.
Guest

whatever floats your boat
Waking11 .

This thread is deflating, fast.
Blunderbutt

VIOLATED an inflatable pumpkin? More like VALIDATED! That pumpkin had been crushing on him for weeks, and he finally gave it what it wanted. I mean needed.
- Guest
  
  Nice rape metaphor/narrative/whatever. /s
  
  NO. NO.
  - Blunderbutt
    
    Not sure how you get rape out of that. I think I said the pumpkin had a crush on him. I am clearly implying consensual sex. Possibly you have spoken with the pumpkin and heard a darker version of the story?
    - Guest
      
      Wow, are you soaking in privilege. That is a textbook narrative, used over and over by rapists to ‘justify’ their raping of women.
      
      http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/rape-culture-101/
      
      http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/what-is-slut-shaming/
      - Blunderbutt
        
        Consensual sex is a textbook narrative? Am I being trolled here? Seems to be in pretty poor taste if so.
      - Guest
        
        You’re the (ignorant rape apologist) troll. Read the links provided and educate yourself as to why that narrative is rape apologism, and why it might make those who have been raped trigger/feel ill. Or don’t.
      - Blunderbutt
        
        Gee, I guess it could be. But in my experience, both men and women of my own acquaintance have had crushes on people of the same or opposite sex and have experienced a rise in self-esteem when those crushes are requited and consummated.
        
        I understand some people have experienced tragedies that make those feelings hard to relate to, but I don’t think references to those positive feelings should be suppressed or that a ‘victim’ or ‘rapist’ necessarily has to exist in such a relationship.
      - http://doremifasolatio.myopenid.com/ toldyaso
        
        I, too, originally read your first comment as menacing. I’m not sure why. There’s something about the way it’s worded that reminds me of the way rapist and their apologist frame problematic behavior, i.e. blaming the victim.
        
        My interpretation may have been further colored by a primacy effect of the juxtaposition of the words violated and validated. I initially read: VIOLATED?…VALIDATED! Gave her what she needed!
        
        Looking back on it, I think I assumed you were making a pun based on a common misogynistic narrative prevalent in some cultures of our society. And I think that’s what the Doctress is pointing out—that there is an assumption, in some aspects of society, that makes it easy to validate the underlying script without being consciously aware of it, which in turn tends to propagate the original assumption.
        
        Your joke does seem menacing to me. Perhaps a better way to tell it would be in more of an egalitarian way in which one actor doesn’t give her what she needs, in which sexual pleasure isn’t something given but something created and shared between equals.
        
        I picture the sun just setting as our protagonist is having a light-hearted conversation with an inflatable pumpkin friend, there’s a meaningful look and suddenly they’re both very awkward. He caresses her plastic leaves, and she squeaks…blow me up…tighter tighter… i want to feel my nylon skin stretch with the fullness of your breath.
Chuck

>The raft was pink.

If the raft had been blue, the Phelps family would have been getting in their van right about now.
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Hamilton humper rapped in pump-up raft rape
mtdna

How can having a relationship with an inflatable woman be perfectly respectable, yet having a relationship with an inflatable raft be a cause for scorn? I think we need to be a little more open minded.
- Guest
  
  Hmm, interesting question…
  
  Answer: rape culture. It is perfectly OK to fuck an inanimate object, as long as it looks like a woman. Then it’s ‘respectable’. Cuz women, they’re for fucking, amirite, lol? /s
  - Navin_Johnson
    
    Somebody save the dildos..
  - ill lich
    
    Well, whether the raft is female or male, or whether this should be
    considered rape or not, are questions that need to be asked of the
    “gentleman from Hamilton, Ohio”– for all we know he believes the raft
    consented, and he could in fact be a homosexual, and thinks this is a
    male raft. Personally I like to think he is attracted to inflatable
    objects not because of their (supposed) gender, but for some inner
    beauty. But I’m an incurable romantic, I guess.
    - Guest
      
      He may be in love with the raft. But, it’s not his. He should get one. The whole gender thing is just over. Horse, dead and beaten. t’s a RAFT. lol
    - Navin_Johnson
      
      for all we know he believes the raft
      consented, and he could in fact be a homosexual, and thinks this is a
      male raft.
      
      You’re absolutely right, I’ve changed my initial joke to reflect.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Oliver-Schmieding/100000452523362 Oliver Schmieding
        
        no, the color is a definite clue.
        
        maybe he was cosplaying some metrosexual version of capt’n ahab for a nearby comic con?
      - Guest
        
        Now, THAT’S kinky.
      - Guest
        
        There is no joke if nobody’s laughing.
      - Blunderbutt
        
        If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, I’m pretty sure it still makes a sound.
      - Guest
        
        ‘If a rape apologist is making rape ‘jokes’ in the woods, and there is no one there to hear them, are they still super, super wrong?”
        
        http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/where-to-start/faq-i-asked-some-feminists-a-question-and-instead-of-answering-they-sent-me-here-why/
      - Blunderbutt
        
        Still not sure where I said anything about rape. Are you talking about me? Hey, wait, what if you yourself accidentally laugh at the joke? Is it still inappropriate to ever repeat it?
      - Navin_Johnson
        
        Tell me about it, all I can do is cry since my boyfriend David Buoy was taken away from me. I’m Aladdin sane.
    - Their feldspars
      
      Maybe it reminded him of George Raft.
  - Brainspore
    
    It is perfectly OK to fuck an inanimate object, as long as it looks like a woman. Then it’s ‘respectable’. Cuz women, they’re for fucking, amirite, lol?
    
    Women aren’t, but inflatable sex toys that are shaped like women (or men) are indeed for fucking. By design.
- MisterH4x0r
  
  I’m not sure what goes on in your circle of friends but, I don’t know a single soul who finds sex with ANY inflatables as “respectable”. But I suppose one can assume that the ones using a blow up doll, are more likely fantasizing about sex with another human being.
ill lich

“Tobergta told police he was having sex with the raft because has a problem and needs help”

Well, obviously. What did he expect the cops to say? “Ohhhh, you have a problem and need help, well, that changes everything! Please go home and don’t do it again.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

I’ve seen pictures of the raft. It was asking for it, what with its oarlocks in plain sight like that.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.
- Guest
  
  Another rape ‘joke’. Wow.
  - http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
    
    The “church lady” tags were intended to show that I was mocking the people who blame the victim. Sorry if that was too subtle.
Jellodyne

“He asked officers to not send him to prison, but he was taken to the Butler County Jail.”

Yeah, that almost never works.
- 秀平月
  
  Hey, look, a guy with a serious problem! Isn’t it funny!
Navin_Johnson

He must have really cried when he saw that cat video posted here earlier: “Noooooooo you killed it/him/her!”
- Guest
  
  Of course it was a ‘her’- all objects seem to be. I find it disturbing how many rape ‘jokes’ are showing up in this thread. The fact that he was fucking inanimate objects, and how easily rape apologism applies to it is interesting. Wonder what that’s about? Is it so easy to apply a female gender to an inflatable raft? Since it was the passive receiver, and existed in this man’s mind to be fucked? /runs off to write about it
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_sexuality
  - bcsizemo
    
    No. It was implied by the author to be in the female context by the statement: “The raft was pink.” In American society pink is equated to girls and blue to boys. Personally I don’t really care what color a child’s room is, mine was yellow and green.
    
    Also I would assume most heterosexual readers would apply a female relation to the raft if they were asked to give it a gender. This would be a natural extension of their sexual orientation. At the same time I think most sane and reasonable people would see it as an inanimate object first, ie. a raft, before thinking about in terms of a gender.
    - Guest
      
      NO, back at you.
      
      More ignorant gender binary/stereotyping BS. There are reasons for the pink/blue thing, and it’s all culturally imposed.
      
      http://www.thescavenger.net/feminism-a-pop-culture/how-the-colour-pink-lost-its-masculinity.html
      
      ‘It tells girls that if they do not like ‘traditionally’-feminine things, they are not truly female. It means that girls are put under immense pressure to conform, rather than follow their dreams. It means that girls are more easily targeted – and duped – by advertisers, as pink things now automatically catch their attention because they have been socialised to find the colour appealing.’
      
      I see a raft as an it. Not a he or a she. It’s a raft, for floating on water. A genderless object. And, my (and everybody else’s) sexual preferences are irrelevant to that. What a bizarre rationalization… so which are we, ‘sane and reasonable’ or ‘heterosexual’ (and default male, no doubt)? Can’t we be both? XD
      - Guest
        
        I agree, you see a raft as an object. You also see sex jokes as rape jokes, and constantly percieve and point out gender power imbalances in other peoples interactions, even when one of them is an inanimate object that you insist that you see as not human but by making a joke about it the other posters are making rape jokes about human women.
        
        We get it. He has a problem in his brain wiring and sees things as sex objects as opposed to women that he would rape, or that we must be assuming he is raping. We get it.
    - lknope
      
      When someone says “X object is pink” they are describing the COLOR of the object. That is it, nothing more. Pink is a COLOR.
      
      For some reason, I am extremely amused by the notion that pink describes someone’s sex. Maybe I am imagining filling out a form and having to decide whether to check Pink or Blue instead of Male or Female. I’d be all like, but green is my favorite color! Why are those the options for color!?! Damn, I guess I’ll choose blue. And I’d be wrong.
      - Guest
        
        I like PURPLE. It’s the best. And, black. But that’s technically a shade. :3
      - lknope
        
        Purple is my second favorite color! I am wearing green and purple right now! I hope purple isn’t checking green out and getting any sexy ideas.
      - Guest
        
        They look so good together… :3
Teller

“Hi, Pumpkin.”
BCaron

He thought it was a flirtation device.
- chellberty
  
  I lol’d
BCaron

Pumpkins… “so soft, so round” Night on Earth…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFnmszgzhXI
Teller

Anyway, it’s not fucking, it’s masturbating.
Adam S.

Unseen offscreen at beginning of “Cat killing Balloon Cat” video was Mr Tobergta winking at Balloon Cat. Cat spared Balloon Cat from Mr. Tobergta’s cruel affections

…and now you know… The Rest of the Story.
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

There is a fine line between making, say, a headline joke with the word rape in it, and a joke that makes fun of rape. Be mindful of your fellow readers, folks.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Oliver-Schmieding/100000452523362 Oliver Schmieding

can we please not have these gender -related puns?
lack of grammatical gender in modern english is confusing enough for non-native speakers as it stands, btw : this couldn’t have happened in germany, as “the raft” would be a neuter (and of course nobody fucks with “das boot” ) :)
- Guest
  
  NO, NO NOT DAS BOOOOOTTTTTT!!!! XD
  
  Now, I am thinking about Zork for some reason. Wasn’t there an inflatable raft in it? A text-based one? I wonder if it was a boy or a girl raft? lol
Halloween Jack

This guy could turn his paraphilia into a heck of a balloon animal act.
Sawgrass Man

Wait– maybe he’s one of those uh–varieties* that take their necessary pleasure thru popping balloons and such. I forget the name of this particular “flavor”, but it’s out there. Maybe he’s just a particularly aggressive “balloonist” (I’ll be corrected in a subsequent comment, trust me.) Maybe he was refused by his inflatable sex doll. Then again, this may be the first case of aerosol-rape, or something. Anyway, the atmospheric envelope is now being stretched, and the verb “blow/to blow” is now no longer exclusively part of the het/homo blowcabulary.
( * I was going to say “deviants,” but that’s SO not bizarre-sex positive)
knoxblox

Somebody explain to me how sex with an inanimate object like an inflatable raft is rape and sex with an inanimate object like a dildo is not?

I think the important issue is that it was happening in public, and the raft was stolen.
John_Wilmot

I can’t really see any equivalent between the raft and rape, and this is probably why it was so very easy to call the fellow a pervert and haul him off to jail. If the pink raft had been a non-consenting woman, I am sure the apologists would be rolling in as they do, calling her a harlot or a tease. A raft though, that’s just nasty! Me, I’d prefer to see an increase in ecstasy by raft and a decrease in power by rape. Let that raft have it, gentlemen!
- Guest
  
  Me neither. The issue here is that it wasn’t his. If he has objectophilia, and likes rafts, he should go to Rutabaga and spring for one. Not steal the neighbors’ raft. Shit.
irksome

Have you SEEN inflatable devices these days? The way their comport themselves, they’re just begging for it.
mtdna

I’m with doctressjulia. There is nothing at all funny about a crazy guy having sex with inflatable rafts and pumpkins, then being hauled off by the cops as he pleads that he’s not at fault because he’s addicted. Nothing at all.
irksome

Sorry folks but none of your rape/non-rape arguments hold air.
Paul Bryden

So yesterday it was burning Caddy at a gas station in Hamilton
County Tennessee, and today it’s a man having his way with a pink raft in Hamilton
Ohio. Hamilton Ontario, it’s your
turn to complete the strange news trifecta. We’re all watching and waiting…
- Guest
  
  And, I’ve been watching Florida so intently!
abstract_reg

So uh… where does one get a pink life raft anyway?
irksome

If you can’t laugh at jokes about rape, cancer and Thalidomide babies, what CAN you laugh at?
- Teller
  
  “They can kill the Kennedys. Why can’t they make a cup of coffee that tastes good?”
  - Mike Swartzwelder
http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

Hmmm….wankers aweigh?
- Guest
  
  I think we have a winner, folks.
Moriarty

It’s not female because it’s pink, it’s female because it’s a ship.
Guest

My OB/GYN recommends cucumbers and zucchini.

Oh course, she’s divorced.
http://twitter.com/endlesshistory Endless History

I also find it hilarious that people are arguing over whether or not it’s wrong to call a raft a ‘she,’ when it’s been tradition for many many years to call any sort of craft or vehicle by female pronouns. I imagine it includes anything from rowboats, to tall ships, to cruise ships, to cars, to buses, to spacecraft.

And before people start throwing the privileged BS around at me, I am a woman. I’ve been targetted for sexual harassment and everything. What I don’t do is let that rule my life beyond it. While it may not have been a GOOD thing, it still happened, and I’ve done what I can do about it and just move on.

And I’m also kind of stunned that people are so sensitive to call “rape culture” on a joke that wasn’t even about rape in the first place. :/
- lknope
  
  Ah, tradition! One could argue for almost anything with it. Paying women less than men? Tradition! Treating homosexuality as a mental illness? Tradition! Working 12 hours in a factory 6 and half days a week for minimal pay? Tradition! Slavery? Tradition! Tell us why something is harmful or not on its own merits instead of saying that something was around for many many years and therefore can’t be wrong. There’s no logic in that argument.
  
  Neither being a woman nor suffering from sexual inequality exempts anyone from being sexist. See: Sarah Palin.
  - bcsizemo
    
    Women getting half in a divorce, tradition. Women expecting men to pay for their meals and buy them nice things, tradition. Women getting custody of children regardless of their parenting capabilities, tradition.
    
    Equality, means it goes both ways equally. You and the Doctress can point out all the problems that women have in the world and someone else can point out a counter example.
    
    Having the law work fairly is what it means to be equals. And society does have a long way to go before things are truly equal, but don’t pretend that everything is automatically geared toward keeping women down.
http://orbitnet.com JIMWICh

A chap was once caught with his thingy
Assaulting a pink blown up dinghy
He’d also had humpkins
With inflated pumpkins
To this kink he seemed very clingy
Antinous / Moderator

I’m disappointed that I can’t find a video of Laura Petrie and the self-inflating raft.
mkultra

Hrm, I intended to post the same thing about the implied gender of the violated vessel. Ships/boats have been “she” in our culture as far back as we have records.

I can’t really speak as to the appropriateness of Blunderbutt’s joke. I’ll admit I thought it was funny when I first read it, but I wasn’t really viewing it from the perspective of a victim of sexual violence. The way I read it, it was really about the implication that this sexual act (consensual) was the end product of a long, torrid unrequited crush and subsequent storybook (teen romance) ending. You know, and not the random act of perversion that it appears to be at first blush.Seen from that perspective, it’s a funny, absurdist little joke. See from the other perspective (the one where it’s more of a post-rape victim blaming), yeah that’s not funny at all and is pretty offensive.See, I’m semi sure that BB meant it the first way, and it got taken as the second way. But you know, I could be completely wrong and BB could be a horrible rape apologist.
- Blunderbutt
  
  Definitely the first way. The only way the pumpkin was a victim is in giving its affections to a person incapable of the fidelity that a pumpkin needs to feel secure. But in the first blush of romance, all was well.
Drabula

Can we please steer this away from ‘rape’ and talk about Hamilton instead? I was forced to move to Hamiltucky when I was 9 years old and am still in recovery. Please, help me heal by trash talking Butler County instead!
Navin_Johnson

Pumpkins are racist anyway:

“Pumpkin segregation forever!”
Blunderbutt

SHE?! Since when is this pumpkin female? I definitely never implied that!
dxx

Oddly enough, some victims choose to exercise their trauma through humor about the very thing that caused the trauma. It’s not very uncommon. I’m not suggesting that Blunderbutt is one of these people, but you might save your rape-apologism lectures until you make sure the would be lecturee isn’t using humor as a, and excuse me for this joke, “flotation device”.

Learning to laugh and not take the world so seriously never hurt anyone. Just look at the Dalai Lama.
Blunderbutt

Did somebody try to do that? If they did, they failed, we’re all still talking here.
BunnyShank

“I’d call trying to silence and shut down a discourse about rape, misogyny and rape culture pretty disrespectful.”

It is. But, can shutting it down make a difference for the root of it? I am all for it if it can, I just think that if people put it out there, then it’s there to be looked at, addressed and understood. Could calling for a ban on it, take away an opportunity to make a change? This is a sincere question.
Moriarty

“I’d call trying to silence and shut down a discourse about rape, misogyny and rape culture pretty disrespectful.”

What, in any context? If the clown I hire for my kid’s birthday party starts talking about rape, I’m not allowed to “shut it down?”
John_Wilmot

I dunno…I am inclined to think that this particular fetish is both humorous and innocuous. It is unfortunate that he had to steal the inflatables to fully achieve his fantasy, but as far as these crimes of public indecency go a little air-filled love beats the heck out of jerking off while peering through windows or bushes, or date rape, or spousal abuse, or sexual harassment. I’m an idealist, I confess, but I really think the world would be more full of humor and grace if more people got their kicks off through minor theft followed by some hanky panky with the goods.

Edit: was in response to mtdna. Faulty mouse.