Post about why rape jokes aren't funny

[fire_fly]

Hi all, I've been looking for a post made a while back, perhaps in 2005 or 06, which is a sort of '101' level article about why rape jokes aren't funny. I've looked through Google and found a couple of things, but I'm pretty sure this was on LJ so it would probably have been un-searchable by Google. If anyone remembers it, has it linked, in

Comments

[alethea79]

Rape jokes (and their cousin, domestic abuse jokes) are one of my biggest pet peeves. I really don't see the humor in them. I sort of get dark humor, but not humor about such extremely sensitive subjects. People can argue that they're trying to make others lighten up or they're trying to take the poison out of the sting, but in my experience, the vast majority of people who tell rape/DV jokes are either completely ignorant of how serious the matter is and/or they have misogynist sentiments. They also tend to have a preference for shock humor, and in my opinion, with all the great ways to be funny, someone who resorts to shock humor doesn't know how to be funny to begin with.

People who crack off jokes like that and are unapologetic about it get blacklisted by me or at the very least lose a lot of respect. For example, I stopped reading a great blog just because one of their new writers makes rape jokes (or some other sexist remark) in some of his posts. You can tell he's really straining to be funny and for some reason he thinks rape jokes are the instant-win humor button. I could easily skip his entries, but I just can't give them the hits anymore. I've also given acquaintances and even a brother-in-law the cold shoulder for making rape/DV jokes.

I think it's OK for survivors to make jokes about their trauma as a means of coping, but the difficulty is getting everyone else to understand that non-victims can't make light of it as well.

Relevant to the OP: feminist blogs have been making some good noise about the fairly new Seth Rogen movie, Observe and Report, which uses date rape as a joke.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/04/13/shorter-seth-rogan-rape-is-hilarious/
http://www.feministing.com/archives/014755.html