Thanks for being gracious Olives and Diosa.
I agree, I don’t think you are a sexist asshole at all. I’m glad some of the things posted are making you reconsider your previously held beliefs on those subjects. And thank you for saying so.
I appreciate it.
One thing that sticks with me in reading all this is that this sexist culture is so very ingrained in our society that guys like me, who claim to be pro-woman, liberal, pro-choice, etc. can still have some sexist thoughts/beliefs and not even realize it. It’s eye opening.
There are plenty of jokes about murder, mass murder, torture, terrorism, assault, robbery, mugging, blackmail, eating babies, getting your dick cut off, racism, and all other sorts of mean, nasty things. I don’t see why rape gets such special consideration for being NOT FUNNY. It depends on the spirit of the joke; the same joke can mean different things when told by different people and situation. There’s a difference between belittling a person who got raped, and lampooning society and the human condition. I don’t tell jokes about rape, personally, but I don’t really think rape deserves any special protection that murder and torture don’t get. It doesn’t help that a lot of rape “jokes” aren’t really jokes at all (“haha what if I raped that bitch right now?” is not a joke, it’s a statement meant to be shocking).
You forgot the “whore/slut” option, where we can have sex with guys to avoid being raped by them.
I think that’s really quite a lot of progress. It’s a very hard step to take.
I probably should’ve quoted miss elizabeth’s earlier post about “telling all your friends if they make a rape joke that they’re being bad people etc etc” instead, I think Drunky Smurf’s post was in bad taste.
Yeah, I don’t think rape is the Great Non-Jokeable; I just think Drunky is a dipshit. And not funny.
I think, probably, because none of the things you mention in your post require consent to go from illegal to not illegal. They are straight up not legal and not cool, but rape is just sex without consent. It’s a not-illegal action made bad by lack of consent. So, you’re making a joke not about the act of sex, but about a woman’s inability to consent to the act.
Not to beat the racism angle to death, but that’s something I had to learn when confronting racism in our society. Something I continuously learn, actually. I think if you are a member of a privileged class for whatever reason, the only real solution is constant awareness and willingness to look at your own attitudes and behaviors.
I apologize for attacking you, thank you for saying this. I’ve learned some things, too. Before these discussions, I assumed that men who persisted after being rebuffed were just incredibly self-centered, goal-driven bullies bent on winning at all costs. It never occurred to me that anyone believed that perceived signals could override obvious reluctance or the word no.
Doesn’t make coerced sex any less assault-y, but helps me understand that men who do this aren’t necessarily devils, but maybe just operating on urban myths about women and sex.
1000 times this.
Call a cab? What is this 2011? How do you function without Uber?
I think the critical distinction is the same as in a lot of humor–comedy that cuts is only really funny when the subject of the joke has earned it or deserves it in some way.
Most “jokes” about rape are at the expense of the victim. If there were such a thing as “jokes” about rape that were at the expense of the would-be rapist, THOSE would probably be pretty funny.
It’s not just being a member of a privileged class. I think I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again because I’m boring.
My ex-BIL had some CDs of David Allan Coe. For people who don’t know who that is, he has one famous or semi-famous country song called “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.” It’s pretty funny. And it’s why I knew his name.
What I didn’t know, until I saw my BIL’s CDs, was that DAC is also known for his racist songs. Songs with titles like “Nigger Fucker.” I found a CD with that song on it, and my opinion of my BIL changed. I was disgusted that he had the CD.
My husband is a fan of rap and he listens to music that is plainly misogynistic. The music talks about bitches and hos and beating them up or killing them. I hate the music. It makes me feel demeaned. But I don’t think of my husband the same way I think about my ex-BIL, that just owning the songs is disgusting and unacceptable.
Why is this? I think because I have internalized that societal idea that it’s okay to be offensive and crude and ugly toward women, and that listening to that sort of music doesn’t mean anything about the person listening. But I wouldn’t accept that argument if it were about David Allan Coe.
(I am accepting it less and less about women, too. Hearing the music bothers me more and more.)
Good for you. Spreading the gift of laughter and joy is a blessing to us all.
May God bless you Always! 
I don’t agree that it’s only funny when the target deserves it. I’ve seen several shows where the humor was plainly in the “contrary to fact” school. One such show was practically defined by the phrase “it’s not what it looks like!” Where the main character was really a nice, good person, but kept getting caught at the exact moment it looked like he was doing something bad, and he’d yell “it’s not what it looks like!” Up to the point where eventually he had more enemies than friends. The show itself was really, really funny.
Hell, two-thirds of Candide was more or less everybody getting shit thrown at them for no particular reason (though occasionally they did deserve it, albeit most of the time they “deserved” it, it was due to ignorance rather than malevolence). The humor in that came from the contrast of the crappiness of the world with the “this is the best of all possible worlds” mentality. That’s what I think a good rape joke would generally do – make fun of the human condition.
Certainly a lot of humor is of the “comeuppance” variety, where a bad person has the tables turned, but there’s no small amount of humor (even, imo, good humor) that comes from making fun of the fact that bad things can happen to good people.
Eh, maybe? I’m not sure I really agree, but I can’t really come up with a huge rebuttal on the spot.
Overall, I don’t tell rape jokes because they’re hard. Like, really, really hard. It’s certainly difficult to make one that’s actually funny and not just shocking or mean-spirited. However, I’ve heard rape jokes made both at the expense of the victim and the rapist that are funny – but they rely a lot of pacing, tone, timing, situation, set-up and tons of tiny things that take talent and effort to get right. I’ll grant that most people probably shouldn’t tell them because 95%+ of rape jokes are at best stupid, at worst offensive, and oftentimes not jokes at all. But I really maintain that rape itself is impossible to make a funny, non-malevolent joke about (with the obvious caveat that humor is subjective).
Uh… “possible” to [blah blah blah]
I revised that sentence like four times, sorry.
I think the prevalence plus the secrecy and shame of rape makes it pretty hard to joke about effectively. I think there could be funny rape jokes, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard one.
There are funny pedophilia jokes, so there are probably funny rape jokes.
But there are a lot of rapists in the world. A lot. A whole lot. When someone tells a joke that might not actually be a joke, it’s harder to laugh at than if you feel secure that it’s a joke. It’s like hearing racist jokes. People say racist things, then say, “I was joking!” but that doesn’t necessarily take away the nasty taste in your mouth when you suspect that they are only saying they are joking because they got pushback. (See, for example, a whole shitload of Republican emails with watermelons on the White House lawn. It’s a joke, see? A joke!)
Eh. I’ll go on record and say rape jokes can be funny. Jokes about anything can be funny. The key is, it has to be funny, and yes, the funniest ones are those that poke fun at the human condition. A lot of rape jokes are not funny.
(Examples of funny rape jokes: Patton Oswalt’s spiel about getting raped by flying monkeys, Mike Birbiglia and the mattress incident in ‘‘What I Should Have Said Was Nothing.’’)
Rape is horrible, but it’s hardly the only horrible thing that can happen to a person, and it’s not so special we can’t laugh at it. Jesus, imagine a world where we couldn’t laugh at horrible things. How else would we cope with them?
OK, but there’s always something women can do to be safer than they already are. It’s a continuum, but the endpoint at the ‘safe’ end is, well, living inside a safe.
What’s your metric for ‘safe enough’? And why is it the proper one?