Funnily enough, the last time I went to an open mic night, the would-be comedian on stage got into an extremely bitchy humorless argument with a heckler in the crowd.
I admit that I haven’t participated in open mic night at the comedy club lately. I haven’t had the time. They keep booking me into bigger and bigger venues on accountta how much everyone laughs at my rape jokes! I’m goin’ straight to the top! #1 baby! Andrew Dice Clay better watch his back, is all I gotta say!
I am disappointed that the video was taken down before I could watch it. I can’t actually say whether it was funny or not, or whether the rape is or is not a source of humor. I think it’s irrelevant to what I’ve got to say though.
Two Many Cats, I used to get all bent out of shape whenever someone joked about child abuse. I used to not be able to participate in threads about rape and sexual abuse without freaking the fuck out. I once ran out of the theater during the Eve Ensler play Floating Rhoda and locked myself in the bathroom and cried hysterically because one of the characters was an abuse victim.
The final straw for me was when a poster here accused me of making up shit about my childhood, and I completely lost it for like three months. I had to really face the reality of the situation.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the problem wasn’t the ‘‘triggers’’ and the ‘‘jokes’’ and the ‘‘content,’’ the problem was ME and my resistance to deal with my own shit instead of putting it on everyone and everything else.
You say it’s ‘‘okay’’ for someone to not find something funny, but if you don’t find it funny because it triggers past trauma, I think that is really not okay. I think the idea of protecting our weaknesses and contributing to our self-victimization by getting outraged at people who tell sexual assault jokes is dangerous and psychologically problematic. If I can’t be reminded that I was sexually abused without getting all emotional about it, to me, that’s a problem that I need to work on. For a person to be that sensitive about their own trauma indicates to me they haven’t fully dealt with it. Once I really confronted my own demons I realized I really didn’t give a shit what other people said or did to minimize or make light of my pain. Nothing anyone could say or do could take away from, or add to, the pain of that experience.
I imagine that rape sucks. I certainly know that child abuse did. But I’m not going to spend the rest of my life at the mercy of my immediate environment. The world is full of crap things, some of which we experience personally. If we can’t learn to laugh at them, we’re boned.
–olives, abuse survivor, feminist, really big fan of that Patton Oswalt bit about flying ass-raping demons
Well, we could go in for more analysis, but I’m finding this tiresome now. May I please depart in peace? The last time I tried, I was told by you that I had inarticulatable ideas.
One last thing. As PlainJane noted I was indeed making the most distastful jokes in this thread. That was my ironical point. We all have our threshholds of tolerance for offense in humor. Mine for rape jokes happens to be low. Doesn’t make me a better person. I just have a low tolerance for mysogyny.
No one’s forcing you to stick around. Any time you’re tired of posting to this thread, go ahead and stop.
That said, would you take a minute at look at what you just wrote? Look at those last two sentences. You’ve basically just said, “Not liking rape jokes doesn’t make me a better person, it just makes me less of a misogynist.” Can you understand that there’s a difference between that and, “I don’t like rape jokes?” Can you understand that it’s this characterization that people are objecting to, and not the fact that you don’t like rape jokes?
Well, look at the nifty passive-aggressive way you just tried to call a bunch of us misogynists. If you’re gonna leave, could you just shut the fuck up and leave, instead of slinging lame insults as you walk out the door?
Okay, I wasn’t going to respond anymore, because it was just becoming a pointless slamfest. But what Olives says here is important.
I’m glad that you have healed so fully from what happened to you. I’ve never been as deeply affected so as to have rape jokes trigger a full fledged panic attack. As a rule, I simply don’t find most rape jokes funny. I also get annoyed when others insist that I’m being self-righteous when I say so.
I have, in fact, laughed at a rape joke or two. Ask me about the one about the nun’s convent in World War II. It’s all in how a joke hits you that’s the thing.
What I initially objected to is the fact that rape jokes are becoming more common. I certainly am hearing more of them. I believe this is because shock material is getting harder and harder to find. And yes, I believe this contributes to the mysogyny in our culture. And I believe mysogyny needs to be pointed out. As racism needs to be pointed out. As homophobia needs to be pointed out.
As an individual, we may laugh at a rape joke. A rape joke may be funny. But the mysogyny remains.
That’s kinda like going into a thread about a new kitten and complaining about how more and more cat owners just aren’t cleaning up cat shit any more, and what a sorry state society is in because of it.