this thread was about rape; it's over now

[Unbreakable]

This goes back even farther than Penny Arcade. Back in the 50s, Lenny Bruce was actually arrested in the middle of his act for public indecency, when one of his signature routines involved the Lone Ranger performing "an unnatural act" with Tonto. I'm going to agree that comedians should have the right to offend everyone equally in the name of entertainment. It's only funny when you're not a target, after all.

However, don't go pulling out the First Amendment card just yet. Obscenity is pointedly not protected under the free speech clause (Miller v. California, 1971), but for something to be obscene, it has to meet three criteria:

(a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. . . (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Clearly, the fault lies on both sides: The heckler for interrupting the act, and Tosh for going where he did in his rebuttal.

 

[Kromlech]

So wait, is there any evidence that connects rape jokes ("the normalizing of rape") with an increase of attempted rape in a society? Is that too much to ask? Is that not the right question to ask?
I honestly don't think anybody gives a flying acrobat fuck who finds what funny, but showing some scientific connection (which I believe is what Hip was trying to say) is worth a discussion.

As for Daniel, I believe he was just making an ironic knock-on-wood sorta joke with a generous heap of hostility mixed in for dealing with a heckler. If they honestly think a show will get taken off the air because of this event, they are fooling themselves.

I, along with millions others, find rape funny.

Is that out of context, really poorly phrased, or both?

 

[elcheeso]

except this rationality is flawed since its been an ongoing struggle throughout history. we make laws to protect people, but some people will break those laws regardless. catching one rapist and putting them in jail doesnt magically stop the others. we are also only able to catch rapists after the fact.

Some people might still rape. But the idea is that we need to examine our cultures role in normalising/dismissing/trivialising rape in subtle ways, instead of just saying "no way I know rape is bad, fuck those feminist bitches, I hope they get raped" or the other assorted things you see all too fucking often in response to news on the topic of rape.

It's fairly easy to see if you bother looking, just look at the difference between comments in news of an adult woman getting raped and (for example) children getting raped. I think everyone must've seen the implications and suggestions that any woman in question was probably asking for it/lying/is a big slut/changed her mind afterwards etc etc, but with kids the response is 99.9% THE ACCUSED IS A HORRIBLE PERSON FOREVER BABYRAPE IS NEVER OK. Never a suggestion that a kid was "asking for it" or some sort of giant slut just using their wiles to ensnare a perfectly good guy for no reason besides their own brand of baby evil.

There's other evidence of rape being hushed up/dismissed, of course, rape is the most underreported crime, there's some evidence that police are less likely to put effort into investigating rapes and domestic abuse, yada yada. The question is whether these attitudes are reinforced by rape jokes and other comments along those lines. I'd say yes, as well as some of the stuff that was mentioned earlier in the thread by Oglemi, a culture of silence and protection. Our response to rape is so often wrapped up in how we view women as a whole.

No one wants to believe that we live in a world where over 1 out of 20 guys we know is a rapist, or that 1 out of 6 women and 1 out of 33 men we know has been raped at least once before... so we tell people they're being too sensitive for not finding rape jokes funny, that they're just stupid feminist bitches for saying anything during a shitty comedy routine, that all the "cool" rape victims don't make a big deal about their rape, and so on. We extend freedom of speech to those making the rape jokes, but when they start facing criticism? "Omg you can't criticise this guy shut up forever that's not what freedom of speech is about U-S-A! U-S-A!"

Honestly. Tosh has every right to make unfunny rape jokes (which he used), just like everyone else does... it's just that he shouldn't be surprised when he gets a wave of hate for it, for what I think are obvious reasons.

well the joke would be based on the irony of the situation. a person standing up and complaining about how rape isnt funny, only to be immediately raped can be seen as humourus.

Are you sure that's meant to be funny? Sounds like something right out of a bloody horror film to me.

Also vonFiedler, if you think all feminists are only interested in making rape victims into permanent victims who are damaged forever, I'd really have to question your sources. I don't think I've ever met a self-described feminist who was for people saying "I feel X way about getting raped, therefore you're wrong if you don't feel that way too".

PS: Man my posts are getting way too long. Ugh.

 

[vonFiedler]

Also vonFiedler, if you think all feminists are only interested in making rape victims into permanent victims who are damaged forever, I'd really have to question your sources.

I don't think all feminists think that way but it certainly comes to mind with how often a feminist talks about protecting victims from post traumatic stress and "Hulk Rage?". As Jumpluff noted, this came up no less than a month ago with a different comedian.

I don't think I've ever met a self-described feminist who was for people saying "I feel X way about getting raped, therefore you're wrong if you don't feel that way too".

And yet you stand here telling me that you feel a certain way and that I am wrong. I wasn't generalizing, I was addressing sentiments expressed and linked to in this thread.

 

[elcheeso]

Are you suggesting that some people who get raped don't develop issues with PTSD, flashbacks and potentially violent outbursts when reminded of what happened? Cause... you know... that does happen... sometimes. If you read the entire article you seem to be referring to, you would've noticed she talked about victims who deal with what happened with jokes and even mentions that she had been making some jokes about rape lately... it differs from person to person. The idea is not to disrespect how each person deals with a rape, and by the sounds of things she's dealt with a lot of dismissive shit over the years, which was what the post was addressing.

Also, I don't recall comparing rapes with you and telling you you were wrong for feeling a certain way about being raped because I feel another way about being raped (which would be difficult, since I've never been raped and since you didn't bring it up earlier, I'm also assuming you haven't been raped either, sorry if that's inaccurate). Or are you just extrapolating and assuming I'm saying no one can disagree about anything ever? You'd be wrong.

Also I never saw that thread. Not surprising that this shit happens all the time though.

 

[some hero]

Are you sure that's meant to be funny? Sounds like something right out of a bloody horror film to me.

He is serious. He, like me, finds irony funny. If it were to have happened, i would have found it funny and laughed. Not at the chicks pain or suffering but at the irony of it. There was a story a while back about a prison burning down and a bunch of inmates dying. Now it was messed up, but it was also very ironic and could be seen as funny by some. Not the idea of men burning to death, but the idea that criminals died by fire. Which represents hell in a lot of religions. It sounds horrible but never underestimate how funny irony can be.

Is that out of context, really poorly phrased, or both?

I don't mean that a dude raping a little 8 year old blonde kid is in any way shape or form funny. I mean that rape in general is funny. The word and all the ways it can be used. When you start giving names and showing faces it obviously stops being funny.

 

[vonFiedler]

Are you suggesting that some people who get raped don't develop issues with PTSD, flashbacks and potentially violent outbursts when reminded of what happened? Cause... you know... that does happen... sometimes. If you read the entire article you seem to be referring to, you would've noticed she talked about victims who deal with what happened with jokes and even mentions that she had been making some jokes about rape lately... it differs from person to person. The idea is not to disrespect how each person deals with a rape, and by the sounds of things she's dealt with a lot of dismissive shit over the years, which was what the post was addressing.

There is therapy for PTSD. There is not a world where everyone coddles you and stops telling jokes or crafting stories or even socially addressing the numerous bad things that cause PTSD.

Also, I don't recall comparing rapes with you and telling you you were wrong for feeling a certain way about being raped because I feel another way about being raped (which would be difficult, since I've never been raped and since you didn't bring it up earlier, I'm also assuming you haven't been raped either, sorry if that's inaccurate). Or are you just extrapolating and assuming I'm saying no one can disagree about anything ever? You'd be wrong.

I mean this with no disrespect, cause you confused me with your first response. Which is why I split up your post cause you seemed to be talking about two entirely different things. But what the flying fuck are you talking about?

Reexamine your original post;

I don't think I've ever met a self-described feminist who was for people saying "I feel X way about getting raped, therefore you're wrong if you don't feel that way too".

I feel X way about rape as indicated in my OP and you responded with "I don't trust your sources" which seems like a disagreement to me. But you haven't been raped so now I guess you don't even get an opinion??? I talked about how there are feminists who feel that all men, raped or otherwise should feel the one way about rape. So how do you go from that to what individual rape victims should feel about it?

 

[frogoholic101]

Sigh. This is why it annoys me that rape statistics are almost always framed around the victims and never the offenders, though I suppose it is much harder to know for sure with them considering 97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail (Sal, also a reason your response is ridiculous, because most rapists will know they won't suffer any sort of negative repercussions because rape is so rarely taken seriously, assuming it even gets reported to anyone).

Stats are for the US, for what it's worth. It may be different in other countries, though I doubt things are widely different. According to https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/172837.pdf, 18% of women have been the victims of a rape or attempted rape over their lifetimes, with approx 3% of them being attempted rapes and the rest completed. That's a bit over 1 in 6 women raped (so chances are if you know any women, one of them has probably been a rape victim). Of course, you also need to remember that rapes are something that people do (mostly men, the proportion of women rapists is ridiculously small)... so, assuming one man only rapes one woman over their lifetime, 1 in 6 men are rapists (I'm assuming a 50/50 population split even though I'm pretty sure it's something like 51% women 49% men). One would assume that a man that is willing to rape one woman would do it to another, so assuming 5 rape victims per rapist, that comes to 1/30... 10 rape victims per rapist, 1/60. Remember, most rapists are friends/family/partners/acquaintances of the victim in question, and not usually the evil rapist in the bushes type, so that's why I came to 5 per rapist... could be more, could be less. I don't know if there are any official stats on that.

I'm having a real hard time believing these statistics. How do the polls work? Turn up on the doorstep and go 'excuse me, ma'am, have you been raped at any point in your life and by how many men?' Probably late to the party on this point though. And if it is so prevalent, why aren't more women reporting it?

And seriously, if we start saying 'you can make jokes about anything except...' then we'll run out of jokes. There are 9/11 jokes, but people's families are missing a few relatives because of it. There are WW1 and 2 jokes, yet millions died. There are jokes relating to medical conditions, but some people suffer from them. For every chicken crossing the road joke, there's some poor kid with a dead pet chicken.
Either everything's ok to joke about or nothing is.

 

[Myzozoa]

A rapist, a scandalously clad woman, and Daniel Tosh walk into a bar. The bartender comments that the woman wearing very little clothing, Tosh makes a rape joke, then the rapist rapes the woman.

Who is to blame for the rape???

requesting myzozoa answer

'haha'

I'd also like to point out Myzozoa that your "article" is simply a blog written by a self-acclaimed feminist. It is neither scholarly endorsed, nor backed by research. Even in her "Rape FAQ" she offers zero statistics or credible sources for her information. It's simply one person's ideas based on a subject of maybe personal experience, which we can't even be totally sure of because, again, it's simply a blog on the Internet.

There was no 'rape faq' in that link (wtf), she writes about what thoughts go through her mind in a situation where an acquaintance makes a rape joke, from her perspective as someone who was raped. I actually had no intention of making it seem like I was linking to a scholarly article, that was poor word choice, my bad next time I'll call it a narrative.

Also seriously fuck off, why are you talking on these forums if 'maybe we can't even be certain of anything, and we should all make sure all our posts are peer reviewed.' Like really, are you serious? I was trying to contribute something that I think is relevant to this. You know what else isn't peer reviewed? The New York Times. You're just asserting some vain elitism about trustability of sources. People respond to this blog in the exact same sense that they respond to other forms of journalism. I don't feel the need at this time to link to rape statistics, other people can handle that (it won't matter because it'll dismissed by the adolescent males on this forum a la confirmation bias)

Myzozoa your link is extraordinarily long and rambles. Unless you give me a really good reason to, I am not going to read it.

Especially since your quote I disagree with entirely. I dont think that because a person enjoys rape jokes they cant treat rape as a serious topic.

I dont think rape jokes are meant to do anything more than make people laugh. I think the reason most people dont say things like that about rape except in jokes is because in general, they dont think it..

I have a few points I think are relevant here, but, they might just as easily be wild strawmen since you havent really made your point except to link to a massive article that I am probably not going to read.

If I make a joke about a slave being lynched, I would not deride someone for telling me to shut the fuck up (or the equivalent), I'd accept that I offended them and be like 'I offended you, I meant to be funny but I see how I was extremely offensive and scary to you.' (Notice that some people in this thread deny any right to complain or take offense) The problem (to me) is not as much that people make rape jokes (but I think a lot of them aren't funny and are just veiled misogyny), it's much more offensive that people don't accept that they are a fan of something problematic. If I confront someone and they tell me 'haha, learn to take a joke' thats MESSED UP. You might not be aware (I think you are), but people who have been raped often develop psychosis, which can be triggered by rape jokes. They might literally relive the torturous experience without any warning. So should they just never go out in public at the risk of someone making a rape joke? (insert melodrama warning here, btw) I guess thats an acceptable solution since a bunch of them develop agoraphobia anyway.../melodrama

I agree, rape jokes are intended to make people laugh. But, like other types of 'shock' humor there is a fall out. Now, do they in any way contribute to a victim blaming culture, or a culture that minimizes the humanity of rape victims? Answer me honestly, I really believe that they do contribute in some way. Not to be pretentious, but I don't think you can honestly say that they don't contribute :/ The 'joke' of rape jokes is usually either 'haha she wasn't actually raped because x reason' or just straight up 'haha she got raped'. The problem is that these jokes are oh-so similar to how people actually respond to rape victims in the 'real' world, when they bring up their rape :/

At the very least, I think there is cause for concern and closer examination. Like really dude, there are people in this very thread giving a pass to Jr^6's post. I really strongly recommend you read the article 'quasi-narrative' at least for some perspective (it rambles and meanders, but I think it's well written and insightful, I didn't pull it out of my ass, I read this a long time ago and remembered it when this topic came up). Also not to be an ass, but youre a mod! you might be used to long off topic crap !!!!!1


Lol, btw, look no further than the post above me for people in this very thread on this very forum who cannot accept that rape is real. The statistics I usually hear range from 1 in 4 women to 1 in 10. I will also hazard that everyone in this forum has had close personal contact with a rape survivor, they just aren't aware.

 

[frogoholic101]

''Lol, btw, look no further than the post above me for people in this very thread on this very forum who cannot accept that rape is real. The statistics I usually hear range from 1 in 4 women to 1 in 10. I will also hazard that everyone in this forum has had close personal contact with a rape survivor, they just aren't aware. ''

I know rape happens, I am just having a hard time believing it is so prevalent. 1/4 women and 1/30 men sounds ridiculous to me. I will admit I am not aware of all the facts of rape, but those statistics seem far too high to me and I'd like to know how they were carried out.
And what kind of rape are we talking about here? The 'in-the-bushes' kind or what?

 

[Myzozoa]

''Lol, btw, look no further than the post above me for people in this very thread on this very forum who cannot accept that rape is real. The statistics I usually hear range from 1 in 4 women to 1 in 10. I will also hazard that everyone in this forum has had close personal contact with a rape survivor, they just aren't aware. ''

I know rape happens, I am just having a hard time believing it is so prevalent. 1/4 women and 1/30 men sounds ridiculous to me. I will admit I am not aware of all the facts of rape, but those statistics seem far too high to me and I'd like to know how they were carried out.
And what kind of rape are we talking about here? The 'in-the-bushes' kind or what?

Are you going to assert that theres like, a type of rape that doesnt count? Why does it matter?

 

[frogoholic101]

Are you going to assert that theres like, a type of rape that doesnt count? Why does it matter?

Don't put words into my mouth. It matters because I can hardly imagine 1/30 of the male population going out at night and raping women in the bushes. There is a difference between that and, say, date rape or statutory rape.

Edit: http://aspiringeconomist.com/index.php/2009/09/11/rape-statistics-1-in-4/ So the questions were slightly less straightforward than reported, and the definition of 'rape' was twisted.
And then http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html

 

[elcheeso]

There is therapy for PTSD. There is not a world where everyone coddles you and stops telling jokes or crafting stories or even socially addressing the numerous bad things that cause PTSD.

I mean this with no disrespect, cause you confused me with your first response. Which is why I split up your post cause you seemed to be talking about two entirely different things. But what the flying fuck are you talking about?

Reexamine your original post;

I feel X way about rape as indicated in my OP and you responded with "I don't trust your sources" which seems like a disagreement to me. But you haven't been raped so now I guess you don't even get an opinion??? I talked about how there are feminists who feel that all men, raped or otherwise should feel the one way about rape. So how do you go from that to what individual rape victims should feel about it?

I said I questioned your sources because it is so contradictory to my experiences with feminists and with feminist blogs/books in general. I have never met nor read anything by a feminist who has said what you were suggesting, though I guess I don't have much experience with radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin and the like.

Basically, my original post was actually about two things, one was on the topic of me never seeing anything similar to what you're suggesting feminists say, and also about how people react to their own rape. The thing about not disrespecting or disagreeing with people who feel X about being raped is directly referring to feelings about being raped, not about how you feel about me telling you I haven't seen feminists tell men how to feel about rape. Hence my reaction to

And yet you stand here telling me that you feel a certain way and that I am wrong. I wasn't generalizing, I was addressing sentiments expressed and linked to in this thread.

Maybe I should just use quotes next time. This shit can get confusing. And yes, there is therapy for PTSD, but it doesn't have a cure and the drug treatments aren't particularly effective, iirc. All this thread is telling me (and this isn't directed at you specifically, though you're part of it) is that the comfort and laughter of (mostly) dudes is far more important than the offense other people and particularly the trauma of actual rape victims. It's just sad.

He is serious. He, like me, finds irony funny. If it were to have happened, i would have found it funny and laughed. Not at the chicks pain or suffering but at the irony of it. There was a story a while back about a prison burning down and a bunch of inmates dying. Now it was messed up, but it was also very ironic and could be seen as funny by some. Not the idea of men burning to death, but the idea that criminals died by fire. Which represents hell in a lot of religions. It sounds horrible but never underestimate how funny irony can be.

I don't mean that a dude raping a little 8 year old blonde kid is in any way shape or form funny. I mean that rape in general is funny. The word and all the ways it can be used. When you start giving names and showing faces it obviously stops being funny.

So basically as long as you can dehumanise the victims and pretend that rape is conceptual instead of the very real crime it is, rape is hilarious. Borderline sociopathy is the key to finding rape amusing? Somehow, that explains so much about you.

I know rape happens, I am just having a hard time believing it is so prevalent. 1/4 women and 1/30 men sounds ridiculous to me. I will admit I am not aware of all the facts of rape, but those statistics seem far too high to me and I'd like to know how they were carried out.

The same way almost all polling is done. Telephone calls.

The national sample was drawn by random-digit dialing from households with a telephone in all 50 States and the District of Columbia. The sample was administered by U.S. Census region. Within each region, a simple random sample of working residential “hundreds banks” of phone numbers was drawn...

... A total of 8,000 women and 8,005 men 18 years and older were interviewed using a computer-assisted telephone interviewing system. (Five completed interviews with men were subsequently eliminated from the sample during data editing due to an excessive amount of incongruous data.) Only female interviewers surveyed female respondents. For male respondents, approximately half of the interviews were conducted by female interviewers and half by male interviewers.

[Female respondents only] Has a man
or boy ever made you have sex by using
force or threatening to harm you or
someone close to you? Just so there is
no mistake, by sex we mean putting a
penis in your vagina...

Has anyone, male or female, ever
attempted to make you have vaginal,
oral, or anal sex against your will, but intercourse
or penetration did not occur?

They go into more detail in the file itself, that's just a quick overview of who/how they were polled and a couple of the questions used. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/172837.pdf for the survey itself. They're well accredited statistics, I've seen some surveys go up to something like 1 in 4 women, but I usually see 1 in 6. The stats about the rapists was from a post earlier in the thread claiming 6% of college students admitted to raping a woman if the word rape wasn't used (i.e. something like "forced a woman into sex" instead). Obviously it could be different from the population at large, but if you assume 5 different women raped per rapist, the rate is 1/30. It's a horrifying statistic no matter how you look at it... unless you're an arsehole and think that raping a 14 year old girl or raping the woman you drugged at a party while she was unconscious totally doesn't count because it's not the stereotype you prefer to believe about rapists.

 

[frogoholic101]

Would you like to look at the links above? The statistics have a hole or two.

 

[Myzozoa]

Don't put words into my mouth. It matters because I can hardly imagine 1/30 of the male population going out at night and raping women in the bushes. There is a difference between that and, say, date rape or statutory rape.

Edit: http://aspiringeconomist.com/index.php/2009/09/11/rape-statistics-1-in-4/ So the questions were slightly less straightforward than reported, and the definition of 'rape' was twisted.
And then http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html

Go ahead and read the comments of that first link, he basically admits that his criticism is full of shit. If you remove the data from the ambiguous question it doesn't change the result significantly.

 

[elcheeso]

Would you like to look at the links above?

It's cute that you think I haven't already. Personally, I don't really care about the reaction to a 27 year old paper that I didn't reference, but the first essay was complete and utter shit and whoever wrote it should be ashamed for typing it out. The part on Kilpatrick's survey in the second essay might be more in tune with the survey I referrenced since they ask similar questions, but I believe the author is being purposely obtuse by ignoring "by force or threat" in the questions. By force or threat is pretty hard to misinterpret.

 

[frogoholic101]

One of the questions in the survey was
'Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?'

An answer of 'yes' was considered rape. This means that if you take a drink off a man and later have sex with him while intoxicated, that's rape. This really opens the floodgates for any woman who regretted a one night stand after a night of drinking to claim rape. As Dr Sommers says,

''If your date mixes a pitcher of margaritas and encourages you to drink with him and you accept a drink, have you been "administered" an intoxicant, and has your judgment been impaired?''

The writer of the survey even admits this:

''Koss now concedes that question eight was badly worded. Indeed, she told the Blade reporters, "At the time I viewed the question as legal; I now concede that it's ambiguous."[20] That concession should have been followed by the admission that her survey may be inaccurate by a factor of two: for, as Koss herself told the Blade, once you remove the positive responses to question eight, the finding that one in four college women is a victim of rape or attempted rape drops to one in nine.''

So 1 in 4 becomes 1 in 9. But that's not all.

Moreover, of the women who were counted by Koss as having been raped, only 27% identified themselves as rape victims. Doesn't that seem a bit off to you? 49% said it was 'miscommunication'. 14% said it was a crime but 'not rape' and 11% said they 'were not victimised'.

Plus, if you're into really kinky stuff, consensual sex with BDSM could be counted as rape in the survey.

42% of rape victims went on to have consensual sex with their 'attacker' at a later date.

Bolded are points of interest from the Blade article.

''Koss also found that 42 percent of those she counted as rape victims went on to have sex with their attackers on a later occasion. For victims of attempted rape, the figure for subsequent sex with reported assailants was 35 percent. Koss is quick to point out that "it is not known if [the subsequent sex] was forced or voluntary" and that most of the relationships "did eventually break up subsequent to the victimization."But of course, most college relationships break up eventually for one reason or another. Yet, instead of taking these young women at their word, Koss casts about for explanations of why so many "raped" women would return to their assailants, implying that they may have been coerced. She ends by treating her subjects' rejection of her findings as evidence that they were confused and sexually naive. There is a more respectful explanation. Since most of those Koss counts as rape victims did not regard themselves as having been raped, why not take this fact and the fact that so many went back to their partners as reasonable indications that they had not been raped to begin with?''

So a lot of assumed and taken for granted in the survey's statistics. When the woman is raped, she's counted. When she's not, she's 'sexually naive' and is then counted.

Second half of this article deals with another survey of you're interested: http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html

If you only consider the women who identify themselves as rape victims, the figure falls to a more believable 1/14. The questions asked in the survey were far too ambiguous to let the survey have the weight it is getting.

@above, yes , the 2nd half refers to Kilpatrick's stuff.

 

[elcheeso]

Now I have a question for you. Did you even bother looking at the survey I linked? Or can you safely ignore all studies on the subject because some other people argued that some other surveys were wrong for generally feeble reasons and backed up the things you desperately believe are true?

 

[jumpluff]

These people just need to develop a sense of humor

Oh, yes, I forgot to reply to this particular gem. So, because a person's particular sense of humour does not include rape humour, it's not a sense of humour? I have no idea and do not care whether the woman in question is a rape survivor; it's none of my business. However, the presumption that 'these people' -- in particular, rape survivors -- should 'develop a sense of humour' and laugh off being raped is, at best, ignorant. I'm sorry, but having a sense of humour does not mean finding all jokes, no matter how base and void of wit they are, funny or clever. I would argue that's a fairly undeveloped sense of humour, in fact.

If you're going to defend people's rights to make a particular joke, how can you not defend a person's right to not find that particular joke funny? Both come down, essentially, the same thing -- allowing people's diverse tastes and opinions to be exercised.

 

[Jellicent]

Alright, I was gonna refrain from posting in this thread, but fuck it, I'm drunk, so diving in.

Back in college, I was at a party with several friends. There was a totally regular guy there (a bit obnoxious, but otherwise, normal enough) that, out of the blue, began molesting a female friend of mine. She was, quite clearly, telling him to stop. Thing is, he was "that goofy guy", and everyone else there was laughing it off and saying shit like "oh, him".

I told the prick to stop. He looked me in the eyes, laughed, and proceeded to squeeze her tits. She looked at me, genuinely scared. So, I grabbed his hand, told him more firmly to stop, he grabbed at her thigh as everyone else laughed, and I broke his fucking hand, grabbed the motherfucker, and threw him into a wall (I was heavier/stronger then >.>)

I was the guy who was asked to leave. Actually, they demanded I apologize to the little fuck to boot. Instead, I chilled with my friend in the bathroom as she cried. On the other side of the door, he was taunting. No one else there fucking cared at all. Note, these were her close friends.

We left. At another party, we happened to run into him again. He pulled the same shit, with a completely different crowd. Once again, it was laughed off. This time, I pummeled the shit out of him. When asked why by some dude, I explained and he seemed to understand and be okay with it.

A few weeks later, at a pizza place, that same dude I had talked to came up to me and told me his girlfriend had been raped, multiple times, by the same fucking guy. She was afraid to testify alone against him, though. So, my friend and I went to testify with her. I was interrogated, for several hours, and accused of everything from heavy drug use (nope) to just making shit up (also, hey, nope). It wasn't until I flat out turned myself in for assault and asked that they at least look into the case that they said it was enough and stopped. One of the three detectives high fived me, saying he wished he could beat the shit out of a rapist. My statement as a whole was dismissed.

Instead, they made the girl that was raped multiple times call him up and ask about the entire ordeal on a taped recording. When he finally admitted, on a taped phone call, to raping her, they arrested him, and he was promptly bailed out. He then proceeded to taunt and harass both the girl he had raped and my friend that he molested. When the girl that he raped told the cops, he quickly moved out of state and they, once again, dismissed it.

He's still out there. He seems like just a regular guy. Nothing was done to actually stop him from continuing to rape and molest girls. His friends still stand by him, and excommunicated my friend and me, calling her humorless and me a crazed freak. This is, quite sadly, not the only case of a friend of mine being molested/raped that I've been informed of. It's just the only one where they were even willing to bring it to the police (and even then, only because a different girl that had been raped was too scared to do so by herself).

Rape is definitely out there, and it's way more accepted than you would think. It's not just the creepy guy in the alley. It's that goofy guy in your class. It's the hipster kid you know with awesome taste in music. It's your good friend's father. It's your other good friend's ex. And it's not taken seriously by law enforcement, society as a whole, and direct witnesses.

More on the topic of the OP: I'm actually opposed to censorship, and comedians should be allowed to say whatever fucked up stuff they want to if it's funny. That said, rape itself isn't funny, and a good comedian will know that the joke better be damn good if he's gonna try to pull it off. Tosh, quite clearly, didn't have the material to back it up. Audience members shouldn't interrupt a comic's schtick. Comedians should know that if their audience is genuinely, vocally opposed to their jokes, it's not really "funny" to talk about how funny it would be if they were then gang raped.

If you find rape to be funny, you probably don't realize that people that you know, people that you love, have been raped. Also, you probably don't realize that people that you know and love are rapists. Yes, there are rape victims and rapists on Smogon and in your real life. Do you think I'm being crazy and that you'd aware of that if it were true? Odds are, you really, really wouldn't if you think rape is funny.

 

[vonFiedler]

And yes, there is therapy for PTSD, but it doesn't have a cure and the drug treatments aren't particularly effective, iirc. All this thread is telling me (and this isn't directed at you specifically, though you're part of it) is that the comfort and laughter of (mostly) dudes is far more important than the offense other people and particularly the trauma of actual rape victims. It's just sad.

I don't want to bog this thread down with my past life problems due to them not including rape (aside from a family member having been raped). But there is a cure for PTSD and it's a mixture of time and growth. I have lived happily on my own terms for 8 years now and I wouldn't expect any sympathy for the fact that I was abused as a child. I have had my bones scraped. A knife was dragged back and forth across the nerves attached the small bones on my foot. It is the most painful thing that can ever happen to you. And after my foot had healed do you know what remained of that pain? Nothing. Nothing real. When I am going through hardships, or working hard at the gym, I know that there is a time and place where I am not suffering and that gives me the willpower to finish what I am doing. As a society, I think we are becoming preoccupied with not letting wounds heal.

The comfort and laughter of both genders is important because it doesn't stop at rape. If you aren't affected by rape you might be affected by suicide, mental illness, murder, tragedy. How far do you go before guys like Jimmy Carr, whose job it is to make people happy, are completely out of work?

 

[VuvuzelaBzz]

Oh, yes, I forgot to reply to this particular gem. So, because a person's particular sense of humour does not include rape humour, it's not a sense of humour? I have no idea and do not care whether the woman in question is a rape survivor; it's none of my business. However, the presumption that 'these people' -- in particular, rape survivors -- should 'develop a sense of humour' and laugh off being raped is, at best, ignorant. I'm sorry, but having a sense of humour does not mean finding all jokes, no matter how base and void of wit they are, funny or clever. I would argue that's a fairly undeveloped sense of humour, in fact.

If you're going to defend people's rights to make a particular joke, how can you not defend a person's right to not find that particular joke funny? Both come down, essentially, the same thing -- allowing people's diverse tastes and opinions to be exercised.

I agree with what you're saying, however I think he just worded what he was trying to say poorly. The way I interpreted it was that people like this woman should grow thicker skin before going to a comedy club of the sort, which is a sentiment I personally agree with. If she finds the topic of rape to be off-limits or 'taboo' attending such a performance is at best ignorant and at worst seeking out a reason to take offense.

It's likely that I'm mistaken though.

Anyways, what I find irrational about this whole affair is that they're trying to get this comedian's show off the air, despite the fact that this didn't happen on-air. As others have said previously, I think it should be left to the law to decide whether what he said was an indirect-threat, my personal opinion being that it most likely wasn't.

As far as the various debates that this thread has branched off to since the OP are concerned, I think a lot of them are subjective and lack any real chance of a meaningful conclusion.

In the argument about the accuracy of some of the statistics regarding rape victims and offenders, everyone can essentially interpret things any way they find most acceptable. There's so many variables in this case(as well as many others) that people have the option to only trust arguments and statistics that suit their preexisting opinions.

On whether rape jokes are/can be funny, I believe that it's completely subjective. Personally I find those which are clever and witty to be funny, granted I'm not aware of many such rape jokes. I think it's fair to say that in some occasions rape jokes do trivialise rape, however the amount of negative social phenomenons that is trivialised in this day and age and the ways in which that's achieved is large enough enough that I'm willing to say that rape jokes aren't particularly close to making the top of the list of "Things that trivialise negative phenomenons and need to be put to an end".

Just my 2 cents on the matter.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Just quickly want to say sorry that the first post of this thread is such a turdfarm, I didnt go back that far when cleaning it up.. I'll do that now, probably delete almost all of it..

Ok, I had a reply in the works to your post Myzozoa, but, I think I will focus on my point, because it explains my position better.

Rape is really horrible. The fact that there are people who are so traumatised by it that it restricts where they can go and what comedy shows they can go to and still get caught out even years after the fact is I cant think of a better word than horrible..

But humour is strange. It's really weird. I dont pretend to have any explanation for it, but, I do know that offensive jokes trigger this reaction in me that I love. There are good reasons to deny myself that, I am basically risking other people suffering the consequences for what I enjoy. But.. I love it.

I mean, obviously you have to apply some common sense and not just make these jokes regardless of the context. And I possibly havent been as careful as I ought to in the past.. I'm not sure..

I am pretty sure though, that in the contexts I am involved with, people understand that these jokes are just jokes. It probably does in some small way contribute to making the world a worse place for a set of people who really have it bad enough already but I think that impact is pretty damn small. And as hard as there is to sell it - defending the smarmy young men who like to laugh at misfortune against the victims of brutal crimes - there is an upside.

 

[Trax]

Rape isn't funny, but this seems more to be insulting someone who is being a bitch than making light of it.

 

[Raikage]

You might not be aware (I think you are), but people who have been raped often develop psychosis, which can be triggered by rape jokes. They might literally relive the torturous experience without any warning. So should they just never go out in public at the risk of someone making a rape joke? (insert melodrama warning here, btw) I guess thats an acceptable solution since a bunch of them develop agoraphobia anyway.../melodrama

The difference here is that in this particular instance the woman was at a comedy club where she knew she was going to run into this kind of material. Course, if you weren't referring to Daniel Tosh's incident specifically then I have nothing to say.

I don't really have any interest in any other part of this argument.