Here is a key question, ‘Is joking about rape funny?’
No doubt for someone who has been raped it probably isn’t. Or in a more tautological sense someone who doesn’t think rape jokes are funny will not find them funny. This may seem obvious for even the densest reader; however it is something I have needed to clarify again and again to feminists and other activists. That something is this: Humor is subjective.
If there is something which these aforementioned feminists love to rant about, it’s about how awful rape jokes (and rape in general) are. By mentioning rape in anything other than a negative context you are supporting rape culture and sometimes even the patriarchy. Even many moderate feminists claim that rape jokes are never funny, ever, in any context, any place or any time. By joking about rape you have no positive regard to women, you are a misogynist. To the more radical feminists, rape jokes aren’t just a horrific psychological and physical act perpetuated by someone evil. No. Rape is the worst thing in the world.
Now, it may seem initially apparent that rape / rape jokes are not funny. However, many people will disagree. Comedians frequently use rape for shock value, and it is responded to positively by both men and women.[1] This is what not just feminists, but any activist who claims something isn’t funny doesn’t understand. Humor is not objective. Humor is subjective.
It’s important to clarify a point here. I do not necessary apply my criticisms to people who casually say: ‘Their music is shit’ or ‘Their work is crap’. I appreciate that these everyday conversations don’t actually try and invoke objectivity. This standard that intellectual honesty demands is one which applies to activist statements. That is, statements which are in clear defense of an ideology or tenet.
People have subjective humor. I’ve seen people laugh at the holocaust, I’ve seen people laugh at rape, and I’ve seen people laugh at the torture of terrorists. At assault, at death, at hunger and black people. Does this make it morally okay to commit genocide, rape or torture? Does it make it okay to assault black people or commit racist acts? No, of course not, but it is damn funny to some people and those people will laugh. Most people aren’t actually racist, but we will happily joke that when a house gets broken into that “It must have been a black guy.” Most people aren’t actually sexist, but we will happily throw out stereotypes of women drivers when we’re out with the lads. Most people aren’t actually homophobic, but homophobic statements are used in comedy. [2]
I’ve seen the more extreme feminists try and label rape jokes as not just sexist and misogynistic but racist and homophobic. What? How do you arrive at a hatred or fear of homosexuals from a rape joke? It’s nothing more than an attempt to shut down a debate before it’s even started: “You support rape jokes? You homophobic fuck!” Racism falls under the same shaky foundations. How does a rape joke suggest discrimination by race?
I find even when we examine whether rape jokes are sexist or not you have difficulty justifying it. Every one of my friends, male and female, who joke about rape do not hold any kind of view which discriminates based on sex. It is an injustice to intellectual integrity to say rape jokes are sexist. It’s pathetic. It’s a sad attempt to victimize themselves, and others so they can imagine another phantom of oppression.
The most common insult when someone makes a rape joke is ‘misogynist.’ Feminists have warped the meaning of ‘misogynist’ to mean ‘Anyone who disagrees with my particular version of feminism.’ In fact, I have never seen any feminist ever use the word to mean what it actually means: Hatred / dislike / aversion to women.
Even if someone is laughing at rape jokes, or calling their male friend a stud for sleeping with ten women, and their female friend a slut for sleeping with five, this does not mean someone actually dislikes / hates / has an aversion to women. All it shows is the existence of gender roles, but it doesn’t say anything for actual misogyny. For misogyny to manifest there has to be unequivocal, intentional hatred. I do not think that speaking in gender roles is evidence of misogyny by virtue of the gender role itself. It is how the gender role or the rape joke is said that determines whether actual misogyny is taking place. It is the context which is important – not wishful thinking. Feminists try to build bridges to make connections which aren’t there; these bridges aren’t made of empirical, objective brick-and-mortar, but rather subjective, fallacious sludge.
I am not convinced when feminists say gender roles / rape jokes and so on encourage and trivialize misogyny (and rape culture and patriarchy etc.) – while you can make a case for the worst gender roles (women have to stay at home doing all the work) actually having a negative effect, the vast majority of the common, pervasive gender roles simply don’t lead to the hatred of women. Something like that only works when you make the word ‘misogyny’ incredibly semantically loose (which is what feminism has achieved so successfully). In fact, words like ‘sexist’, ‘racist’ and ‘bigot’ have had their semantic meanings abused violently by the feminists which use them so gleefully.
When the twin towers ignited, there came a plethora of ‘sick’ jokes.
Thousands of people enjoyed these jokes and retold them to many people, including me. Do you think the family of one of the victims would have found it funny? No, probably not. They would find it very offensive and upsetting that someone can find humor in an event or situation that caused them so much suffering. For an activist to say ‘that X joke is not funny’ is worthless. It means nothing. It is illogical. Saying ‘I don’t find X funny’ is a perfectly acceptable statement. It is announcing your subjective opinion on the humor value of something. To try and invoke these pseudo-objective activist statements when there are plenty of people who will happily laugh at X is intellectually dishonest and a coward’s way to defend or protest an ideology.
I know plenty of people who have been raped, or have lost a family member in 9/11. Yet they tolerate jokes about rape or the towers. Yet they sometimes tell these jokes themselves. Why? These people are not ‘rape joke apologists’ or ’9/11 joke apologists’ they only want to defend the human right to offend and in return, be offended.
[1] Louis CK’s rape joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4hNaFkbZYU
[2] ‘Louie’ poker scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-55wC5dEnc
1 Posts in Total
donations either one-time or on a monthly subscription basis.
If you don't have paypal, check out the other options.
If you want to get some merchandise and sponsor us at the same time, consider the AVfM store.
robertcrayle:
typhonblue:
Suzanne McCarley:
yourlesbianfriend:
One of my biggest problems with the rampant rape jokes that run around this culture is that I hardly know any and when I ask almost no one I know can come up with more than a tiny handful–at least, if you take out any and all jokes about the rape of men, which are common and perfectly acceptable in polite company and even on prime-time network TV (for anyone who still watches that anyway).
Where are all the damn rape jokes? I have to admit that Philosoraptor one on this article was one I hadn’t heard, so that leaves me up to knowing maybe 4 rape jokes that aren’t about men and/or completely sex neutral.
(My favorite sex-neutral rape joke: “9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape.”)
Where are they indeed!
I highly suspect it is like much of their group think claims they make; statistics are not required, merely a feminist spewing rhetoric makes it fact.
Calling Susan Brown-Miller’s 2% statistic; come in 2% false rape statistic.
Just the fact I said it here would probably be quoted as evidence now. The egalitarian in me hates to say it; but aside from our women here like GWW, Wooly BumbleBee, and others; they are my guiding hope and light that women think logically.
Cause most don’t;
!
Here’s one: If you rape a man in a society where nobody really cares about it, does it make a sound?
Answers on the back of an envelope.
As you are no doubt aware the 2% myth was debunked many years ago, but like the claim that only men are violent and kill their children, it survives due to the persitent lying of feminists, a biased and controlled media and the ignorance of the gullible.
ha! 9 out of 10… ah… that’s good.
http://www.quickmeme.com/Philosoraptor/
He’s a goldmine, I swear.
The other day on an episode of “Fashion Police” (yes, I watch it. Don’t judge me.) Joan Rivers commented on one particularly ugly outfit: “In that dress you’ll never get raped”. (The quote is approximate; I think it was the 2012 year-end summary show.)
You sure have to look for them.
I do remember a professor telling one. Something about a gorilla raping a woman, and then the woman complains that the gorilla never calls.
Why do men sometimes cry during sex? Mace
9 out of 10 people find entertainment in a gang beating
A little different take, just as unfunny.
Well there’s the thing isn’t it? I’ve been savagely assaulted, yet, violence can be hilarious. In fact I’d really like someone to explain to me sometimes why being raped is worse than any other form of violent assault, since violent assault can lead to a lifetime of emotional, post-traumatic stress.
This is one of the funniest moments in the history of one of my favorite shows:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/50394
Yes, violent. And… funny as fuck. At least to me.
My best rape joke?
A man is in the tundra hunting polar bears. He sees the bear he wants but misses the shot. The bear attacks him and rapes him and keeps his favourite gun. The man is determined to get his gun back but fails the next year with him getting attacked and raped by the Polar Bear. This scenario played out a few years in a row until the man went out to hunt the bear and felt a tap on his shoulder.
It was the Polar Bear who winked at him and said, “This isn’t about the gun anymore is it?”
GREAT ARTICLE, that photo made me laugh; I would say shop lifting my self!
In actuality PC Culture is not a culture; unless you consider Nazi Germany an sort of ethnic German. Personally I just call any one with Nazi Tendencies an a-hole. For all my supposed misogynistic and racist tendencies; I guess I can laugh a lot.
I especially love how PC can turn a blind eye when it goes the other way. The South Park movie fore example: http://youtu.be/Nrh5YOQHvFw
You see, they joke that white men hid behind black men in all our battles. Yet it is not until recently (Vietnam I think?) that they even broke double digits in war dead. Even still, white men make up 85% of war dead in our wars; before it was much closer to a hundred percent.
Dude I think you better read up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_African_Americans_in_the_American_Civil_War
Seriously.
Dark humor is a perfectly normal human trait, where we attempt to deal with something that scares us, or are so horrible, that we’d have no other choice than to break down and cry.
It is basically a selfdefense mechanism on par with crying or laughing, and linking it to concepts of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ is completely out of order. It is just something we do as humans, that makes us unique as a specie.
Most ‘normal’ people wouldn’t tell the kind of jokes mentioned in the article to victims of such incidences, if they were aware of it, and quite understandably it would be an entirely different matter.
But how many people walks up to a woman or man and asks: ‘Have you been raped, ’cause I just heard a really funny joke I’d like to tell?”
I don’t.
I wouldn’t dare.
First, welcome Mr. Keene, and thank you for the great piece.
I will never forget that a week after I buried my father, who died of Alzheimer’s Disease which I assure you is a horrific way to die, I heard someone tell an Alzheimer’s joke.
I remember it hurting. I was very raw from the loss. My knee jerk reaction was that it was unfair and cruel, and that people should be more thoughtful.
And in about a minute I realized that this was the world. People all had their own problems and they generally went about dealing with them in the best way they knew how. And that meant using humor to cope with the wide variety of tragedies that befall us all before its over.
If I expect humanity to quit managing stress with humor because something bad happened to me, I’d check my wallet and see if there was a NOW membership that I forgot about.
Got a great racist and homophobic joke (told to me by a black drummer I know): “What do you get when a million lesbians join the Million Man March? TWO million people who don’t do dick…” Not a dry seat in the house after that one.
Question: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Two! And it’s NOT funny!
My guess would have been 500.
1 to hold the bulp, and 499 to turn the building.
Answer: 1 .She would hold it up and wait for the world to revolve around her.
1 to shame a man into doing it, and the other to back her up?
If they take more of those happy pills, maybe it will soon
I’m usually even-tempered in real life, but in my version of that joke, I start screaming:
OH MY GOD! That is NOT FUNNY. That is JUST the SORT OF THING I would expect from fucking misogynist partriarchy-loving rapist scum LIKE YOU. You should be ASHAMED of YOURSELF, you PIG. YOU REALLY HATE WOMEN, DON’T YOU…
(the rant continues for quite some time)
…NOW, CHANGE THAT LIGHTBULB, SLAVE!!
You should see their faces when I’m done.
Nope, it takes thirteen.
One to change the bulb and twelve to form a support group.
How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb:
9.
One to screw it in,
one to blame men for inventing such a faulty means of illumination,
One to blame men for making the “screwing” part too “rape-like”,
one to blame men for not changing the bulb,
one to blame men for trying to change the bulb instead of letting a woman do it,
one to blame men for creating a society that discourages women from changing light bulbs,
one to blame men for creating a society where women change too many light bulbs,
one to alert the media that women are now “out-lightbulbing” men
one to just sit there taking pictures for her blog for photo-evidence that men are unnecessary.
NOT my work.
I think the issue of rape jokes is one of power.
Being able to assert themselves as the arbiter of taste, judgment, and what is allowable in society.
Sapir Whorf hypothesis – control the language and you control thoughts.
Plus, if you are named as the judge of X, you can extend your power over Y.
Rape jokes bad, male genital mutilation jokes okay, so sez the feminists, so sez society.
I don’t find rape and rice jokes that funny. Wheat jokes, soybean jokes are kinda okay. Maize jokes are the best though.
You can’t have canola oil without rape.
Rape jokes are only PC if it’s about Bubba in prison.
The only humour I found in rape jokes came in Louis CK’s one stand-up anecdote. His afterthought reaction when encountering a woman who thought it exhilerating to manage conditions of intimacy enough to ‘make a guy really want to go for it.’
Like the first two commenters in this thread, I don’t yet know of or have heard any rape jokes.
And it’s not funny being ear twisted, harangued into accepting the line that we live in a ‘rape culture’. Don’t respond well to dark humour. Guess I need to lighten up a bit.
I get where the article was going and certainly some of the hyperbole from feminists is definitely overreaction, however from a men’s rights perspective, I find myself disagreeing with the article.
The problem is that we’ve seen firsthand how turning something into a joke not only normalises it as a source of comedy but results in victims being ridiculed.
Can we really be surprised when noone takes violence against men seriously when people are conditioned through celluloid to laugh at it?
Likewise, how can the plight of battered men be properly taken seriously when one of the oldest jokes around is the angry wife hitting her husband over the head with a rolling pin (which in reality would cause a skull fracture and possibly brain damage).
That’s the problem with this article and it is a common problem with dealing with gender issues. Usually there’ll be diametrically opposed views on how something affects women, but male issues tend to get ignored in the mix. Remember that it was only in the relatively recent past of the Western World that “entertainment” was 2 men fighting to the death in a ring (it occurs to me as I type this, that this actually raises interesting questions about male disposability and competitions like UFC).
Ultimately there’s a second question that needs to go along with the one which is obvious to mot people. People will automatically gravitate to how joking about abhorrent events affect female victims.
However, what we need to be starting to press the point with, especially with the vile misandry perpetuated by Hollywood, is to start getting people thinking about how it affects men, and if they find it does, whether they’d tolerate it if the gender roles were reversed.
Gee, you disagree with something here and want to explain why? Who’da thought?
There is a difference between human beings working out stress and anxiety about life’s difficulties with humor, and the commercialized exploitation of the cultural hatred of an entire class of people.
Does it bother me if a stand-up comic makes a joke that involves rape? No.
Would it bother me if Federal Express made commercials trivializing women being raped because the culture actually found their suffering humorous? YES.
You’re conflating the two.
Certainly Paul, that works to some extent with women’s issues. After all when it’s all said and done, women are infantalised and everyone, especially males, are socialised to protect women and girls from an early age. There’s something hardwired there where at the end of the day people know it’s wrong and when confronted by it in a visceral manner, are appalled by it.
The same doesn’t hold true for men’s issues though. The view of male disposability is so perverse that most people don’t see it. Violence against men in skits – be it by other men or women as well as jokes about it, are pretty common and social attitudes back it up.
Take a look at Sharon Osbourne for example. Not only did she find a man being sexually mutilated where his penis was amputated and thrown in a garbage disposal funny, but she couldn’t even get through the apology she was forced to make with a straight face.
Yet her response to violence and sexual abuse against men is far from uncommon. The phrase “you got beat up by a girl” is often made with snickers and the notion of an angry wife is fairly standard comic material, along with the repercussions of it.
Therefore it’s no surprise that a couple of years back, the NSW cancer council decided to make a joke about battered men in one of their commercials for the “Girl’s Night In” campaign – where a woman lets her girlfriends in, taking their coats and then goes to the wardrobe to store them. Upon opening the wardrobe, we see the women’s husband, tied up and gagged and she throws the coats on top of him. Need I remind you about the Hallmark ad in the US a few years back of the emergency room filled with men impaled in various ways by unwanted Christmas gifts by their wives?
So I’d argue in the case of jokes about abuse and rape against men, I’m not conflating anything because culturally, there is simply just too much of an overlap there.
I know where you’re coming from, but I don’t think you and Paul are that different in your views. In Paul’s case of his father’s passing, he stated that he did not find alzheimers jokes funny for a while. There are some jokes I would never find funny, so Sam’s point about the funniness of jokes being subjective is correct.
I object to humour that seeks to promote and normalize harm. I have known of male victims being disbelieved and mocked and that is never right. Nevertheless, jokes of all sorts are an important way of relieving tension, so the social context and timing is essential when dealing with sensitive subjects.
All credit to you for saying you disagree that’s what debates are made of.
James I understand what you’re saying, but the problem with it is that what you’re saying about stress relief being different is that it only applies when the humour is an anathema to the social values. If someone is laughing at a joke but would leap to the defense of a rape victim when they saw them being attacked, then that’s one thing.
The problem with male victims though is that jokes about abuse against men actually reinforce those attitudes because unlike rape jokes where women are concerned, which don’t reflect the vast majority of social attitudes to women being raped; jokes about abuse and rape against men completely represent mainstream attitudes.
With male abuse victims and the social attitudes they face, there’s no such thing as “just a joke” and wont be until we start to go after traditionalism fully and the misandrist chauvinism it perpetuates, changing those attitudes in the process.
What I found most disturbing about this Sharon Osbourne incident. Was not Sharon and her TALK show panel laughing, which was disgusting! (I have never in my life seen men laughing at a woman being mutilated for trying to get out of an abusive relationship) But the fact that the whole audience laughed with them. This was an eye opener for me. It is a very deep problem.
It is indicative of the herd-nature of most women. Everyone else is laughing? Guess I’d better laugh as well, gotta fit in!
It also ties in quite well with the results from a psych test where someone in authority tells you to shock someone in a chair. The person being “shocked” is just an actor, and yet most people would push the button when told to by a person they perceived to be in authority.
The women on that panel were held in high regard by the women in the audience, and so when the panel acted as if genital mutilation was fine, everyone just went along with it.
That doesn’t excuse anyone from what they did though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
The study I spoke of.
The whole world laughed with them. I haven’t shown that vid to a single woman who didn’t laugh. Only women I know of that didn’t laugh, were female MRAs
OT, and no comment whatsoever.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,540164,00.html?test=latestnews
Excellent article. The thing is, feminists only scream sexism and misogyny when it’s a rape joke about women. The ones about men? Meh! Who gives a fuck right? They are so hell bent on being ‘victimized’ it is sick.
You mean like when people suggest that a man will be raped in prison and find it funny because there actually is something a person can do to deserve to be raped … be a guy. It actually turns into part of the punishment for certain types.
Off topic (somewhat). There are people on TheGlobeandMail.com comments section calling for the torture/murder/rapes of the men who raped that girl in India.
Aw come on dudes and dudettes, lighten up. Rape today means something very different to what it did 50 years ago. These days, a woman is raped every time she changes her mind, or is too drunk to notice that she might have had sex, or a man looks at her sideways. Heck, a woman is raped every time she ventures outside her house that men built, into her car that men designed, and onto the roads that men paid taxes for.
Today we are talking about hobby-rape, not real-rape. Hobby-rape is the hobby you take up when men stop noticing you. Making jokes about rape, these days, has about as much gravitas as making jokes about stamp-collecting or basket-weaving. I’ve not known anyone who’s committed suicide because people made fun of their stamp-collection.
To illustrate my point, the recent famous rape in India is a real-rape. Western women haven’t a clue what real-rape is. So long as we are clear that we would never ever joke about real-rape, I think it’s all fair game.
Just a brief point to draw attention to the positive, healthy aspects of hobby-rape. Hobby-rape can be a fun activity and a rich bonding experience that can involve the whole family. Is your family boring, always ignoring you because they’re glued to the tv? Surprise them with a “mom, I’ve just been raped” while feigning healthy doses of sobbing. Make sure your dad is present, so you can watch him blow a fuse, froth at the mouth, and become a white-knight as he vows to defend your honor – and if he bursts a blood-vessel, you might even be rid of the ol’ patriarch for good. Watch the rest of your family unseat themselves from in front of the tv and rally around you, showering you with sympathy, gifts and attention.
Win friends and influence people. Hobby-rape can also be profitable, like when you accuse an ex of rape… or someone you don’t even know, just because you didn’t like the look of him. If only you could watch his face when the police arrive at his door. You can’t lose. If you pull it off, you might get compensation and adulation from friends and feminists. If you don’t, the worst that might happen to you is a fine with all the gravitas of a speeding ticket… but you’ll still get the sympathy, because everybody will know that something terrible must have happened to you to force you to lie… like maybe you were abused as a child.
My favorite rape jokes are from Sarah Silverman.
“I was raped by a doctor, which as a Jewish girl, is so semi-sweet.”
Or even more outrageously: “Is it really molestation if the infant makes the first move?”
Off to watch “Young Frankenstein.”
Sarah Silverman is hilarious.
How would we argue that joking about a mans penis being mutilated on that stupid morning show is indicative of a permissive attitude towards violence against men by women, of blaming the man for his own victimization and cultural misandry and at same time argue that feminists making very similar arguments about rape and rape jokes are invalid?
Because joking about a horrifying thing in abstract is not the same about joking about something that’s actually occurred.
Consider the difference between laughing at someone dying in a James Bond film in an amusingly choreographed way, and laughing at someone dying in a hail of bullets in a ditch somewhere in Afghanistan.
By that logic, mra’s can no longer point to jokes about violence against men or boys that don’t involve real people as indicative of the existence of misandric culture.
Personally I’m okay with that.
That’s fine. My point was that mra’s will often make the same arguments that feminists are making, while criticizing feminists for making those same arguments. For example, we campaigned against the “boys are stupid, throw rocks at them” meme and object to the tendency on the culture to blame men’s behaviour for the abuse they receive from women.
Ugh. Rape jokes are about rape (a topic), the persons involved are fictional. I think nobody here would like/support the idea of making a joke about a real person who is a rape victim.
The feminists are laughing at a real victim of violence and they see this behavior as okay because he’s a male.
This is the whole point of difference. Any topic can be funny, real victims are not. I’m surprised I’m even having to point out this thing.
Mras have for a long time objected to fictional jokes about violence against men, objecting to genital torture as a comedic device and the “boys are stupid, throw rocks them” memes and so on for the same reasons that feminists object to rape jokes. I’m surprised I’m even having to point out this thing.
I’m fine with people having fun with or making fun of each other. Maybe other MRA’s are not. All I seek is, the politics, the justice system, the academia, and such bodies must be fair to all. People in society have their free views and I personally don’t object to them having misandric attitudes.
That’s fine. Im just saying that the mens movement needs to be consistent in its arguments.
If feminists are wrong for objecting to rape jokes, then mras are also wrong for objecting to “boys are stupid, throw stones at them” and the use of violence against men as a comedic device.
The mrm needs to be able to navigate the rape culture debate without making these errors, or stay out of it, imo.
I think the main difference is that castration jokes are accepted because they are about male victims. But if a joke involves a female victim,suddenly people are offended. We are merely fighting the double standard; either everyone is game,or nobody.
The right to offend and be offended, as Sam points out, is very much a human right. It’s otherwise known as freedom of expression and is something that western culture has prided itself on. That right does not square with the totalitarianism of feminist dictat. The novel “50 shades of gray” is not my sort of reading material. I chose not to buy it, as is my right, but many thousands, especially women, thought otherwise as is their right. Feminists sought to ban and burn the book which I think showed us all what they are actually about = Feminazis and opponents of freedom.
If orgasm is the most pleasurable human feeling, the 2nd most pleasurable human feeling is outrage.
If you’ve never had an orgasm, then outrage is all you have left, apparently.
I struggle with this post and the whole topic of rape expressed humorously.
Personally I don’t find it funny as when hearing it I immediately conjure up images in my mind of men’s and women’s ripped, bleeding flesh and traumatized psyches. I can still see the ghostly half alive looking drugged face of a loved one who was raped and stuck on valium for years.
I can logically see the value in taking the wind out of feminist sails by breaking their taboo of treating rape as some sacrosanct off limits to anyone but themselves type topic, but emotionally I feel disgusted.
I’m trying, despite the waves of physical disgust rolling through my stomach at the moment, to see how this topic might encourage men who have been raped to come forward for help. I imagine if I were a man who’d been raped and I heard folks treating the topic lightly making fun of the general subject of rape I may feel discouraged reaching out for help to deal with the trauma by reporting it.
Food for thought.
One of the things that sickens me is the way we take the legitimate concept of rape–which you describe as an incredibly violent and traumatic violation–and water it down in a sick and degraded way to mean “any sexual act of penetration that is not 100% consensual in any way,” down to the point that if a girl gets fingered during a makeout session and is startled we call her “raped.” This is what sickens me, because it is not legitimately rape, but we act like it is. Although of course, “made to penetrate” isn’t.
The culture is sick not because it makes rape jokes (which are rare, at least when directed at women) but because it’s made male victims invisible and taken illegitimate ideas about rape and turned them into “rape.” It’s sick.
Is kicking puppies athletic?
I realise this was most likely intended to be a joke, but…
Dogs are called man’s best friend for a reason. They are quit possibly the most loyal friends you will ever have.
Your words make me sad.
Kicking anything is athletic. The point is that there are things we don’t do.
Make that “there are things some people don’t do.”
My joke is above. I still don’t kick puppies.
Well, as long as we are blending kittens, I see no reason to object to your idea of exercise.
So we can joke about murder, genocide AIDS babies and a whole host of other things, but rape is a no go? Bullshit. I’ll make all the rape jokes I want to and anybody who doesn’t like it can go fuck themselves.
There are a lot worse things than rape. A few of which I mentioned above. I remember the Daniel Tosh incident from last year. That woman was an idiot and got shot down just like she deserved to.
Do you make jokes that target veterans with PTSD or men that have had their lives destroyed by women with borderline personality disorder?
Everyone makes jokes about Veterans with PTSD. That’s the oldest joke in the world with Grampa thinking he’s in the war attacking people. Or when Grampa yells something war related as he grabs his gun (broom) just because a car backfires.
Have you seen Two and a Half Men? The main character Allen has had his life destroyed serially by several women and the joke is that he never learns. They also had an episode where a Doctor harms Charlie’s genitals because he slept with her and didn’t call her back.
Comedy Gold folks!
I know that veterans are treated like a joke, and women’s abuse of men is seen as an on screen and cultural joke, what I’m asking is do we agree with that and take part in it, or do we object.
It’s not about objecting to the joke. It’s about pointing out that if there was a Patriarchy and a Rape Culture, wouldn’t the really funny shows be about subjugating and raping women?
I don’t know the answer, but I do believe that enough people find male pain funny enough for it to be main stream comedy gold.
For example:
The day after a very hard leg workout, my workout buddy asked me how I was feeling.
I said “I feel like I was a$$-raped by Bigfoot who kicked me in the nuts before leaving me to do the walk of shame through the forest in my bare feet. I wonder if he’ll call me.”
He LOL’d because I’m sure he could relate to the pain in my groin and body after such an arduous workout. He wouldn’t LOL if it literally happened to me.
How much PC do we want to apply to comedy? How much can we apply to comedy before it’s so PG that it’s not funny anymore.
A bear and a rabbit are taking a shit in the woods.
The bear asked the rabbit “Do you have problems with shit sticking to your fur?”
The rabbit replied “No, not a real problem for me.”
So the bear picked up the rabbit and wiped his ass with it.
I tell that joke to every kid I meet. ass=butt and shit=poop, but the parents are usually pretty shocked.
Now that joke has an entity literally wiping it’s ass with another entity. They are anthropomorphised and I think it might still be funny to some if a person was wiping their ass with another person’s hair but I’d hope somebody would be more selective in their audience before telling it.
Does it mean we live in an ass-wiping culture?
@Reggie:
“It’s about pointing out that if there was a Patriarchy and a Rape Culture, wouldn’t the really funny shows be about subjugating and raping women?”
That’s a really good point right there.
I watch A LOT of different movies, being a movie nerd, and this reminded me of the movie where Jodie Foster is gangraped on a pinball machine, ‘The Accused’.
To the best of my recollection, and this goes for a lot of other movies dealing with themes along that line, the vast majority of viewers were women, and I’ve never met any guys who actually wanted to go back and watch that particular movie again.
The rape scene scared the shit out of me more effectively than any Alien movie I’ve ever seen, and I remember leaving the theatre in a sweaty, guilt-ridden state of mind, which were probably the only point with the movie.
@Kimski – I had a conversation with a woman who was quite upset by the anal rape scene in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Her objection was basically that the scene was brutal and gratuitous.
I mansplained to her that, contrary to the feminist narrative, the Dragon Girl was not destroyed by the rape, but rather was empowered by it – she exacted a vicious, ongoing revenge on her rapist, then became relentless in a search for a serial killer of women (whom she helped kill), and then became one of the wealthiest women in the world – all in the same month as her original attack. In short, rather then wallow in her victimhood, the formerly feckless Dragon Girl embraced her power and agency in a spectacular fashion.
The woman I explained this to was quite grateful for my insight – it was clear to me that she “got it”.
Why did the feminist cross the road?
Because the pedestrian light turned green and/or white and opposing traffic had stopped, making the distance traveled perfectly safe. (By law, all feminist jokes cannot be funny)
- Greg Gutfeld, The Vagina Demogagogues, in “The Joy of Hate”
Why did the feminist cross the road?
She had finally found 4 manginas strong enough to carry her.
Reggie
I don’t think that you understand their rape culture argument. They are not saying that because people make rape jokes, we live in a rape culture as your analogy is suggesting, they are saying that joking about it is a symptom of that culture, in the same way joking about men getting their penises mutilated is a symptom of misandry in the culture.
The difference is that rape jokes are usually hypothetical situations, with no intent on trivializing it. When The View laughed at that poor fellow getting his penis ground up in a garbage disposal, they were pretty much saying “it’s not that big a deal, it’s not like it’s a woman or anyone important like that.”
And my point was that if we truly lived in a rape culture, the mainstream would be joking about it like they do about male rape and male pain.
We actually live in a very anti-female-rape culture and most people bow down as soon as “That’s not funny!” is said because they fear the repercussions.
4 out of 5 Doctors who’ve tried Camels prefer women.
Ok, so you say rape culture exists, in relation to male rape and male pain. I would agree with you that this type of culture exists more for men, than it does women. I have seen that it exists for female rape victims too though – in the same way there is a bias towards blaming men for abuse they receive from women, the same bias exists for rape of women, often unconsciously and too a lesser extent. You can see it when you see so many people going on about how women just need to learn not to act like an absurd man in the ghetto asking for for it at 3am in order to prevent rape.
The easiest way to tell if a joke is funny is simply reverse sex roles in the joke. If women find jokes about men being raped funny, but are enraged about jokes where women are raped by men, then these women are seriously sick and should be avoided.
If women find jokes about men being raped funny, but are enraged about jokes where women are raped by men, then these women are typical double-standard misandrists and should be avoided.
I appreciate dark comedy, and I agree with jk-phd with the reversal of roles. It’s always the easiest way to understand if something is actually sexist or if it’s merely one side using their privilege to dominate ‘acceptable language’. Also agree with the old George Carlin bit about context and exaggeration. The Tosh line about “wouldn’t it be funny if like 5 guys ran up and raped her?” is hysterical simply because of the extreme lengths of the exaggeration and the context of the situation. If he had said it to a guy, “Wouldn’t it be funny if 5 guys ran up and raped him?” … still hysterical. It’s the exaggeration of the common experience that we find amusing.
But it doesn’t surprise me none that PC thugs don’t appreciate comedy that isn’t expressly tailored to their feelings.
That joke fits right in with the theme of the article. It went to a dark place and nobody will endorse it. You found the puppy nobody will kick.
I bet you that a lot of people laughed out loud at that joke but all you (and the pedo) hear is crickets.
More than just crickets, deletion. Fuck sake, there always has to be one motherfucker in the crowd.
Dusty,
STFU
Man, I am sorry, Paul. I didn’t mean any harm.
But was my joke any more offensive than “9 out of 10 people like gang rape”?
This article is about subjectivity of humor.
And don’t call me a motherfucker.
Nice article.
OT: Ghitis did not learn her lesson, and is dishing out more misandry:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/04/opinion/ghitis-women/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
Wow! One of her readers seriously suggested Oprah as the first female president of the US:
“Woe to you, oh, earth and sea.
For the devil sends the beast with wrath, because he knows the time is short..”
You just can’t make shit like that up.
Thank you everyone for the great responses. It’s a lovely welcome to AVfM!
Since this article has been released to so many thousands of people, there is a mistake with the wording of the article which gives way to a critical criticism.
The article makes it seem like we should hold the strict standard of saying philosophically correct statements to the general public. I am well aware that plenty of people say ‘that music is shit’ and yet they do not mean it in a literal, objective way.
I should clarify that the standard is most useful, most required when we are faced with activism. When someone protests or defends a ideology / tenet then it becomes a cowards way to argue with pseudo-objective statements. Causal statements of non-activism ie ‘Meh, there songs are crap’ is not the same as a feminist arguing for rape culture and how ‘rape jokes are never okay!’ And as such, the standard is applied to the feminist but perhaps hardly at all to the non-activist.
I agree that whether or not a joke is considered “funny” is entirely subjective and a matter of personal opinion.
I also agree that some rape victims can tell each other rape jokes as a means of coping with their personal tragedy. However, as was also pointed out, for some rape victims they can be deeply horrified by the telling of a rape joke.
I believe in freedom of speech and your right to tell all the rape jokes you want, if you are fine with potentially insulting a rape victim.
All that I will say is that I personally believe that rape jokes are appalling and degrading to the victim. Whatever gender of the rape victim in the joke, I believe they are all equally offensive. I have never told a rape joke, and I never will. Everyone else can make up their own minds.
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_22311514/california-court-overturns-rape-conviction-because-victim-was
http://www.smh.com.au/world/california-official-urges-change-in-law-to-stop-rape-by-impersonators-20130106-2cax5.html
Did anybody see this…. ??
any thoughts … ??
I mean, seriously … !! Do they want to make rape look like a joke …. ??
I lost a close relative to suicide, but I don’t find suicide jokes offensive and sometimes tell suicide jokes myself. Anything can be funny.