I just read “A Killing Joke” and was a bit confused, did the Jocker mearly strip her and take pictures or did he actualy rape her after shoting her through the spine? Also, was cripiling, and not killing, her his intention, or was it just the way things turned out?
My feeling is that he didn’t rape her. He shot her with the intention of keeping her alive and then while she was helpless posed her in sexually humiliating positions to take photos to show her father to drive him insane. Leaving her alive with the memory of what he had done to her along with the effect it had on her father was part of his plan. IMHO of course.
Ditto what Otto said, with the added clarification that the writer of The Killing Joke was Alan Moore, who rarely writes superhero plots with storylines left open to interpretation or ambiguity. If he ever intended for the Joker to rape Barbara Gordon, the Joker would have said it to Jim Gordon, Barbara Gordon would have said it, the medical examiner who diagnosed her paralysis would have said it and Harvey Bullock, the schluppy=looking cop would have said it, and Batman would have known using his deductive prowress shortly after entering the hospital room. And DC would still be capitalizing off her angst to this day. (Well, the kinda still DO, don’t they?)
But speaking of the Joker and rape, here’s a question. Why HASN’T he ever raped anybody (outside Seline Kyle in TDKR.)? He’s an abusive pure sociopath and misogynist – rape isn’t that much of a stretch.
My take: the chemical soup he fell into disfigured the Joker’s entire body – why not make the next logical leap and assume those chemicals either severely disfigured or damaged his penis, too, leaving him either phychologically and/or physically impotent? It would explain quite a bit of his madness and rage and the weird sadomasochistic relationship he has with Bats.
Interesting theory, but why do you say that the Joker is a mysogonist? As far as I can tell he does not really care about the sex of his victims.
Well, Harley Quinn used to throw herself at the Joker (at least in the cartoons, not sure about the comics), and he never seemed to care about her in that way. A hot, horny girl in a skintight latex jester costume would do a lot for any sane man’s libido, but I got the impression that the Joker is so far gone, the idea of sex with women (or any kind of “normal” intimacy with women) wouldn’t even interest him anymore.
And I never thought Joker raped Barbara Gordon either.
Ditto what Voodoo Lou said. It’s not the Joker’s hardware that’s all messed up, it’s his head.
Harley can get snuggly with me any time, bay-bee! 
There are a few episodes in which the Joker responds to Harley’s advances. In an episode where the inmates take over Arkham and put Batman on trial, the Joker lays down in Harley’s lap while she kisses and massages him. Since Harley is a witness and the Joker is the judge, Batman’s lawyer objects. She has to object loudly several times before the Joker even notices that anybody is talking. In an episode in which the Joker has stolen a nuclear bomb and is threatening to blow up the city, Harley attempts to shoot him. The Joker’s response to his favorite hench wench trying to kill him? “Harley, you’re the only one for me!”. The episode ends with the two kissing passionately while the Dynamic Duo look confused.
Harley was made canon in the comics, in a form virtually identical to the animated version. The Joker does seem to have had sex with her at least once (Though Poison Ivy believes that he drugged Harley first. This is strange as Harley was very clearly willing to have sex with the Joker.). The Joker does genuinely love Harley. He does not like having these kinds of feelings about somebody or needing them so badly. So, he keeps trying to kill her.
I agree on that. If he had, he would have set the camera on a tripod and began to undress. He didn’t intend to kill her. If he had he would have fired another shot into hear her heart, or her head, or simply used Joker Venom.
More On The Joker And Sex
Several panels in Kingdom Come show a villainess identified in the notes as one of the Joker’s children. I don’t know where my copy of CK is at the moment, but IIRC Alex Ross suggested that the Joker attracts groupies the same way real serial killers do and that he’s fathered many children over the years.
I know, I know. But I thought it might be telling if Joker’s, uh, hardware were software, as it were – and tied it into a natural consequence of his exposure to the chemicals he fell into.
At least we’re all agreed Barbara Gordon was shot, crippled, stripped naked, photographed and sadistically humiliated, but not raped. I mean, that’s just going too far!