{"id":5554,"date":"2008-11-24T01:44:25","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T09:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5554"},"modified":"2008-11-24T01:44:25","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T09:04:13","slug":"can-rape-jokes-be-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5554","title":{"rendered":"Debating Rape Jokes"},"content":{"rendered":"

[trigger warning]<\/p>\n

Can rape jokes be funny? Megan at Jezebel<\/a> argues they can be:<\/p>\n

If we take sexual assault off the table of things we can laugh about or joke about, it’s just another way of saying: this is a different crime than any other crime, and so we can and must treat its victims differently than any other crime.<\/p>\n

And, you know, fuck that. I got treated differently than any other crime victim once because of the kind of crime that I was the victim of. If I had been mugged, would the cops have been calling my friends and asking them how much I’d been drinking that night? If I had been only robbed, would it have mattered to the cops whether I’d told the guys I was out with that night that I was dating someone? If I had been shot walking out of the bar, would it have been anyone’s business if my friend thought that I was flirting or not? And if any of those crimes had been committed instead, would everyone be so horribly offended by me making jokes about it? It’s all part of the way in which society wants to treat me differently because of how I was victimized. Let’s treat sexual assaults like any other crime and tell some rape jokes. Cool?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the course of her post, Megan talks about this Wanda Sykes routine:<\/p>\n


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…she’s making light of Kobe Bryant’s victim, who was raped after she went up to his hotel room at the ungodly hour of 2 in the morning. In fact, you could argue \u2014 and I am \u2014 that Wanda Sykes is poking fun of that victim for being, you know, stupid enough to get raped.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I didn’t even consider <\/em>that interpretation until Megan suggested it. To me, Sykes’ joke seemed to be playing with how tragic\/ludicrous it is that visiting a celebrity’s hotel room isn’t<\/em> safe for a woman. (Men <\/em>can visit a celebrity’s room to discuss his jump shot without worrying about being raped — and without being blamed for it if they are raped).<\/p>\n

Disagreeing with Megan’s approach, Liss writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Except, here’s the thing: Public rape jokes have fuck-all to do with sexual assault survivors using humor to deal with their own sexual assaults.<\/p>\n

Megan’s argument lacks some critical distinctions and exceptions: Public jokes and private jokes are not equivalent. Jokes for laughs and jokes for catharsis are very different animals. Jokes about rape made by men, who have a significantly lower chance of being raped, are not the same as jokes made by women, whose lives are qualitatively different from men’s<\/a> because of their heightened chance of being raped. Jokes that minimize<\/i> the severity and ubiquity of rape (e.g. prison rape jokes) perpetuate the rape culture; jokes that underline<\/i> the severity and ubiquity of rape (e.g. Wanda Sykes’ detachable vagina<\/a> bit) challenge the rape culture.<\/p>\n

And even still, all rape jokes run the very real risk of triggering survivors<\/a> who aren’t expecting rape jokes in their escapist entertainment. (Go figure.) Which underscores the inherent deficiency of the question “Is a rape joke ever funny?” It’s incomplete without a discussion of audience, intended or otherwise\u2014and the audience for any rape joke potentially includes survivors who may not only find the joke decidedly unfunny, but also triggering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think Lissa interpreted the Sykes routine pretty much as I did (although she put it better than me, typically).<\/p>\n

Asking if a rape joke is “funny” is besides the point, because “is this funny” and “is this problematic” are not the same question. As I’m pretty sure bell hooks points out somewhere, some jokes are offensive and <\/em>funny. I think a better question for feminist analysis is the one Liss asks: does a rape joke (funny or not) perpetuate rape culture, or does it question rape culture?<\/p>\n

And, finally, I think people should be careful to avoid turning discussions of humor into the politics of personal purity (just to be clear, Melissa didn’t do this, but it’s a mistake I’ve seen other feminists make in similar discussions). It’s worthwhile to subject humor to the kind of feminist analysis Melissa uses. But we shouldn’t give ourselves demerits for having laughed at the “wrong” joke, because the point of these discussion isn’t for each of us to gauge our own (or other people’s) level of feminist purity.<\/p>\n

This is a feminist-only thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[trigger warning] Can rape jokes be funny? Megan at Jezebel argues they can be: If we take sexual assault off the table of things we can laugh about or joke about, it’s just another way of saying: this is a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rape-intimate-violence-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}