Culture Lesson: Tea bagging

Disclaimer: This post is NSFW.

Have you been using the term "tea bag" without discrimination? Have you been slinging it around in insult or compliment to your peers? Do you have any idea what tea bag actually means?

If you're a right wing nut job, probably not. If you're and Old Person, probably not. Luckily you have me! When I'm done defining "tea bag" you'll never use the word without considering its use ever again.

First, obviously, a tea bag is a small pouch containing tea leaves. You dunk it in hot water to make tea. This is most literal definition of tea bag. You already know what a real tea bag is and what it does.

The second definition, the one for which Old People are using with reckless abandon, is a self-appointed term by right wing nutbags. (Please note that the right wing nutbags have yet to acknowledge the irony in the third and most significant definition.) These people (ed: whom I loathe) use the term as a reference to the Boston Tea Party, a 1773 even pre-dating the American Revolution. The colonists dumped tea (which they would have otherwise consumed) in protest of taxes. The nutbags are also protesting taxes. And immigration, and Obama, and Health Care, and a lot of other things.

The activists in this movement are starting to distance themselves with the word. (Even the ones with offensive signs!) The Washington Post chronicled the movement and the term in May.  David Wegel writes:

In some cases it was by people who did not know that "teabag" is also a sexual term.* In other cases, protesters knew that the term was sexual and hurled it at the Democrats.

Wegel, a republican himself, insists the nutjobs know the word and are having fun with it. (Though most of these people are anti-choice and oppose sex education.) I think he's covering his own ass. Anyway, he also writes:

The turning point, as The Week points out, came when MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and CNN's Anderson Cooper started making "teabag" jokes. And that was the start of tea partyers viewing the term as a snooty slur by coastal elitists. That's why I don't use it, even though "---bagger" rolls off the tongue easier than "----partyer."

Here's Rachel Maddow on the movement:





(How interesting that Rachel Maddow has a different interpretation of Wegel's photograph than Wegel does.)

So, Old People! Feel free to make savvy jokes! You're savvier now, and you wouldn't be here without a sharp brain and a sense of humor.

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The third definition is a sexual act! Again, to clarify, it seems only the Young and Knowledgeable recognize the irony here with only a few nut jobs recognizing the words' devious meaning. I'd like to provide the following paragraphs courtesy of Wikipedia, as I am a prude. I am also giggling like a third grader:

To tea bag is a slang term for the act of a man placing his scrotum in the mouth of a sexual partner. The practice resembles dipping a tea bag into a cup of tea when it is done in a repeated in-and-out motion. As a form of non-penetrative sex, it can be done for its own enjoyment or as foreplay before other activities, such as oral sex.

The practice has also been mimicked in online video games, as a practical joke, and in hazing incidents. The scrotum only touches the face or head in some of these instances, though sometimes more activity is involved. The activity has become more prominent in the media, and the term is used to ridicule the Tea Party movement or by members themselves in irony.

Wikipedia also says, "Tea bagging is not always carried out consensually such as when it is done as a practical joke." This is the most important explanation of the term as a sexual act, because that's how it's best known among the young and immature (like me!)

But wait, there's more! It's important we get sex columnist Dan Savage's commentary! In a 2009 Savage Love column he writes:

A teabagger dips sack; a teabaggee receives dipped sack. It's a little confusing, I realize, in that it's the opposite of a blowjob: The person with a dick in his or her mouth is giving the blowjob; the person being sucked is receiving the blowjob. But language is funny that way.

This is a term Young People just know. (Much in the same way we just know Facebook and the words to "Bitches Ain't Shit".)

Sorry, Mom.

Previously:
Vocabulary Lesson: NSFW

Additional Resources:
Tea bag (sexual act), Wikipedia (WARNING: INCLUDES NSFW GRAPHICS)
Hump! 5, Savage LoveA People's history of 'teabag', The Washington Post