once again, I'm missing the fucking joke

The BBQ Pit
121

Mr. B- It’s cool. I think I got a little worked up there, anyway, sorry for that. Some subjects just hit a little too close to home.

That said, it’s true that prison and being stuck in the system is awful. That was the point I was aiming for, but got distracted on the way to. Some people seem to view prison as getting sent off somewhere and basically getting free room and board for a set amount of time. Those are probably the same people who think every inmate is a horrible person who deserves everything prison has to offer, rape and all.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bad, bad, bad people in this world. People who deserve to be locked up and the key thrown out. I’m aware of this. But for every one of them, you’ll find probably 3-4 regular people who just fucked up(or was caught in a bad situation, as bdgr displayed above).

This is not a case of trying to be PC or self righteous. Is it so wrong for people to be offended by rape jokes? Rape is a nasty, hideous, ugly, unthinkable offense. As I tried to point out before, even if it’s a case where someone might think it’s justifiable(which is a whole other debate), I don’t see the humor.

Mr. B, just to clarify, only my first paragraph was directed at you- the rest was for the thread in general.

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Diogenes:

…And you didn’t actually answer the question.

All I asked was whether you thought we should eliminate prison rape, given that it usually targets people who even by your standards don’t deserve it.

So?

techchick:

See, you aren’t just making jokes. You are literally wishing for rapes to occur. You are wishing for horrific things to happen, and presumably you get some type of pleasure from that. This is sick, and it has nothing to do with joking.

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Hey, Diogenes, just in case you were lumping me in with the PC crowd, might help to know this:

Every time I go home I see my father, who is the victim of at least one pedophile. He’s never outright said he was raped, but I know he was molsted.

Every time I see my godmother I see someone who was raped more than once with the likes of knitting needles, scissors and whatever else was handy.

At my grandfather’s funeral I saw at least three people who are both perpetrators and victims of heinous sex crimes against children and as children.

I’d offer you a hearty Fuck You, but that seems a touch too ironic for this sort of thing…

124

Two of my sisters were raped.

I was accused of a crime that many would find “rape-worthy.”

I was exonerated, through the hard work of my attorney, and support of my family and friends. The fact of my innocence did not bother my accusers, my honesty with my accusers did not affect my accusers’ actions. As far as my accusers were concerned, “guilty until proven innocent” was the rule. Luckily, in my case, the judge disagreed.

While I have no sympathy for a predatory thug getting boofed in prison, I think all measures should be taken to prevent it. Hypothetically, this is a nation of laws, not revenge or “might makes right.”

I can completely understand the visceral desire for savage revenge on predators, but there is no way I can condone it. For instance: I might want to knock the living shit out of some asshole insulting my wife or children, but it would be wrong to do so. The only instance I would be justified in physically hurting someone attacking my family would be if they were physically endangering my family. I’ve been in enough situations to have a pretty firm knowledge that if I caught someone preying on my family, or someone else, I would have the ability to overcome the urge to do anything but prevent them from continuing, violent or otherwise, and call the cops to deal with it.

So, yeah, the idea of prison rape for predators (rapists, wife beaters, child molesters, etc.) has a certain sick charm for me, but there is no way I can find it justified beyond the desire for an eye for an eye. Some wise person, whom I don’t remember, said that if, “The world takes an eye for an eye, the whole world becomes blind.”

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I think that’s paraphrased, PT, from Gandhi.

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Oh, for fuck’s sake. Rape, BY ITSELF, is not funny. Anyone who is suggesting that the prison-rape scene in American History X is funny is a moron.

But you know what else isn’t funny? Animals falling thousands of feet to their deaths. Or being run over by trains, clobbered with sledgehammers, or otherwise meeting needless and violent deaths.

But you know what IS fucking funny? When Wile E. Coyote falls off the cliff, gets nailed by a train, or has his Acme[sup]TM[/sup] roadrunner-killing rocket go awry and explode him.

Why are those funny? What’s the difference? The difference is that in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, just as in a prison-rape joke, we all know that it’s NOT ACTUALLY HAPPENING. Does anyone think that people who laugh at Bugs Bunny cartoons are going to throw animals off a cliff to see if they whistle on their way down? Does anyone think that people who can laugh at a prison-rape joke are going to perpetrate, recommend, or gleefully submit to prison rape? It is a matter of RHETORICAL DISTANCE from the subject; how fucking hard is this to see?

Offhand, pretty much every joke I can think of involves something that would be horrible in real life; for example, the world’s funniest joke:

Ohmigosh, I must breathlessly protest that it is NOT FUNNY for people to be SHOOTING THEIR OWN FRIENDS!

Jesus Christ, how fucking literal and humorless do you have to be to not see the rhetorical difference between the joke above and the situation of someone actually shooting his own best friend over a misunderstanding? That’s what’s going on in the prison-rape jokes.

Prison rape (and all rape; I use this example because it seems to show up in jokes more often) is horrifying; everyone knows this. And since long, long before the written word existed, people have been using laughter to comfort themselves in the face of terrifying, brutal reality. Get used to it, and take it for what it is: an expression of an extreme urge, with no bearing on the speaker’s actual behavior in life.

What someone says is only half of the communication; how they say it is the other half.

(Serenity now… Serenity now…)

127

Do you really find this funny? I need to lower my denominator a bit, I guess. I’m envious of people who can find humor in the inane.

128

Prison rape is already illegal.

I was molested by a friend of the family when I was about eleven or twelve. I found out later that he had molested dozens of other kids. I don’t care what happens to him in prison.

My mother was raped repeatedly by her first husband (my biological father) who was also brutally abusive to me and my brothers. He used to drag my mother around the house by her hair. I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop that guy from getting gang raped.

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There’s a difference between not lifting a finger and actively WISHING it to happen.

And I’m surprised at your casual attitude regarding the status quo. Prison Rape IS already illegal and it sounds like you’re shrugging your shoulders saying ‘oh well’. For someone who is so active and vocal about issues of human rights and decency on this board, I’m surprised that you wouldn’t assist in the efforts to stop prison rape (which, incidentally, happens to women as well)

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jarbabyj: I wonder what these advocates of “prison vigilantism” would feel if the illegally-doled punishment were murder (as it is in some cases) instead of “merely” rape.

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I’ve already said I’m not an “advocate” of prison rape and that the state shouldn’t sanction it. All I’m saying is that sometimes I don’t feel sorry for the victim. That may not be a noble way to feel but it’s human.

As to stopping it, I don’t know how it could be stopped absolutely, but sure, the state should do whatever it can to stop it from happening. The state has to be objective and impassive in how it implements laws and policies. I would not want my private feelings of satisfaction to be legitimized by the state.

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I’m not ready to disagree with you, jar…the rape-wish thing is something that gets tossed around pretty damned easily at times, and I can certainly understand where you’re coming from. I don’t find rape jokes even slightly funny, any more than dead baby jokes or cancer jokes.
But I would like to address this, from a slightly different perspective:

I do know the pain and humiliation.

And let me tell you, I wished it on my attacker with every waking breath for YEARS.

I wished him to be raped. To not be able to breathe, to be afraid he was going to die, to look up at the sky and go absolutely fucking NUMB with the horror of what was happening to him. I wished him to wake up the next morning and feel fine for about 1.5 seconds before the realization hit him, and I wished that realization to hit him in the gut EVERY morning, forever. I wished that when he looked in the mirror, he would be able to SEE it, a black mark on his skin where someone plucked out his very soul.

I wished him to have nightmares every night for the rest of his life, to be afraid to walk alone into a bookstore, to have to lock himself in a public restroom stall just to pull himself together when there was a crowd around, and to be afraid of half the human population just on general principle.

And when I got done wishing all of THAT, I wished even worse. At my worst, I wished death upon not his children, but his grandchildren, because then he would have to suffer twice–his own grief, and the grief of his own beloved children.

That’s how low the experience of rape can bring you. And not everyone has reached–or will ever reach, for that matter–a plateau of healing that will allow them to never wish vengeance upon someone who visits that kind of pain on an innocent victim.

I guess my point is that not everyone–not even every survivor–is going to respond to the issue in quite the same way. I may not laugh at rape jokes, but I can certainly remember some dark spots in my life where I wished it upon the man who raped me. And it was no joking matter, either…it was pure, rage-driven desire for vengeance. If I had found out, even a few years ago, that he had been raped and killed in prison, I might well have made a pilgrimage to Florida just to spit on his grave.

It’s not pretty, but there it is.

I’m very, very sorry for your experience, jarbaby. It wasn’t your fault, and you never deserved to be treated that way. I hope this doesn’t upset you further; that is truly not my intent.
Take good care.

Best,
karol

133

The reason I don’t wish prison-rape revenge on anyone is that it rewards more scumbags that it harms. Saying “I hope inmate-scumbag X gets raped repeatedly” is by the nature of the system also saying “I hope inmate-scumbag Y gets rewarded by letting him rape inmate-scumbag X to his heart’s content.” I mean, who else is going to do your dirty work for you? Should the state recruit a corps of virtuous revenge rapists who will get no pleasure from the act? Hardly. For revenge to be satisfied, some scumbag will be doing the honors, and thanking us for the fresh meat. Eventually, we end up with the irony of Poster A’s designated revenge target being raped by Poster B’s designated revenge target, and so on down the daisy chain.

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Like Jeffery Dahmer? Do we feel sympathy for what happened to him? I don’t. (Call me cold hearted, I read a lot about the things he did…he deserved everything he got here and everything he’s getting now)
Rape is wrong. No one here has said it isn’t. I agree wholeheartedly with bodypoet, I had a lot of the same thoughts and feelings about the person that did it to me. (and a friend of mine…and a friend of hers…quite the history he had)

He’s not the biggest guy in the world either. A guy that some “Bubba” types would look at as an easy mark. I certainly hope so.

The thought of rape disgusts me, I can’t even tell you how much. There have been many movie scenes regarding this that made me sick to my stomach. But I would probably cheer if I heard it had happened to this person.

I don’t find the baby jokes funny…the “bubba” jokes…I’ve always laughed at. As an abstract concept (with the one exception).

It’s a matter of perspective.

~J

135

As a matter of fact, yes, I do. For one thing: he was murdered. There was not a lawful execution. Try to rap this idea around your pea…er, your brain: NOBODY DESERVES TO BECOME THE VICTIM OF MURDER! There is a difference between a lawful execution and a murder. There is a difference between lawful confinement and becoming the victim of a rape.

Damn nice of you to make yourself the judge and jury and sole arbiter of what he did and didn’t deserve when you weren’t at the trial. I’m given to think that the trial is the place where the evidence gets trotted out and the judge makes the lawfully-determined decision as to what the sentence is. But then, I’m not a piece of shit who goes around wishing for folks who’re in prison to get raped and murdered.

As opposed to the actual deserved punishment, huh? Now, I bet you’d freak out if I advanced the idea that you deserved what happened to you, wouldn’t you? It’s no different. You were a victim; the guys in jail who’re getting raped and murdered are victims.

No, it’s a matter of inhumanity.

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There’s no need for you to throw random insults at me Monty, I wasn’t addressing you personally, and I’ve been nothing if not cordial on this message board.

You don’t agree with me. Too bad. I will still sleep tonight. I’m not a “piece of shit” and calling me that for expressing my own opinion doesn’t exactly “fight ignorance”, does it?

No, I wasn’t at Dahmer’s trial. He was however, convicted by a jury of his peers. He kidnapped, raped, tortured, murdered and then ATE people. IMO he deserved to die.

Yeah, some guys do think that girls “deserve” rape. Freak out? No, I personally don’t know you well enough to care what you think.

:rolleyes:

Now, perhaps if you’ve calmed down a bit, you can try to persuade me around to your point of view. That’s what this is supposed to be about right? Helping people understand each other, fighting ignorance, making a better world for us?

Or are we just here to call people asshats?

~J

137

Careful, Monty. <back-and-forth glances> Jade’s trying to draw you out.

BTW: I dig your rap. Except, it’s not “inhumanity” that’s the problem.

Asshats. I have fun just typing it!

138

Jaade’s displaying her ignorance of justice. Dahmer was obviously a loon. And her “idea” is that random violence is better than justice. Wasn’t she complaining about being the victim of violence? It wasn’t a random insult. I made a factual comment.

BTW: I left out the w from wrap above.

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Monty, would you clarify, please? I’m trying to follow your logic, but I’m not sure what “factual comment” you’re referring to.
Sorry, it’s been a long morning and I’m just not getting it…
Thanks.

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My factual comment was regarding what kind of person someone who wishes random violence on someone else is.