someone came over and started talking about the “pageant girls”
“TODDLERS AND TIARAS?”
July 2011
eating my feelings in the form of cinnamon popovers.
i think that will be only really funny to amy
the fox says, love her with your wolf heart.: [TRIGGER WARNING for rape]
afistfulofpaintballs replied to your post: [TRIGGER WARNING for rape]
There are offensive rape jokes. Can you give me examples to support your point that you have never laughed at a rape…
reblogging for commentary
Right, so, the way I see it, there are three basic pieces to good comedy—content, relevance/relatibility, and delivery. Content is, obviously, the base content matter of the joke in question; there are some things that are just always funny (person getting hit in the face with a cream pie) and some things that are funny/funnier in a given situation (person farting in their own home? Eh. Person farting at the opera with their boss? LOL). Relevance/relatibility is secondary to the extent that it’s affecting the content, but is just as important. Ever watched a stand-up routine from a period of history you didn’t live through—or, hell, a stand-up routine that you REMEMBER watching and loving ten years ago—only to find that much of it is stale and unamusing? There are, of course, many reasons for this, but a lot of it is probably the relevance factor; that shit would have been hilarious to you then, but it doesn’t gel in the current environment. Relatibility is more or less the same, in the sense that it can affect content the same way—a comic who talks about her trials with motherhood, just for example, is probably going to jive the best with other mothers. Alternately, you might love a comic who talks about college while you’re in college, only to find that much of their stuff bores you later in life. And then there’s delivery, which is arguably the most important part of any comedic endeavor. The way you say/write/present something can (and often does) really make or break the humor.
And the thing is? Rape jokes aren’t funny for reasons that have nothing to do with any of that.
Rape jokes aren’t funny because they can trigger people who are survivors of sexual assault; rape jokes aren’t funny because they can trigger people who aren’t survivors of sexual assault. Rape jokes aren’t funny because 1 in 4 college women in the United States report being survivors of rape or attempted rape; rape jokes aren’t funny because, in all likelihood, whether they’ve told you or not, you personally know a sexual assault survivor. Rape jokes aren’t funny because right now, this minute, as you read this, someone out there is being raped, or trying to figure out how to talk about the fact that they’ve been raped, or struggling with the aftereffects of rape (PTSD, unanticipated STIs, depression, just to name a few), or living with the constant, crippling fear that they are going to be raped, that prevention is their responsibility, that if it does happen, it will be their fault.
But, most importantly: rape jokes aren’t funny because they delegitimize the seriousness of rape. They paint rape as something to be laughed about, to be used as a punchline, to add a little bit of an edge to a skit or routine. And, in doing that, they reinforce the idea that no one takes rape seriously; they make it easier for rapists to justify their actions to themselves, and harder for sexual assault survivors to trust that they will be acknowledged and heard if they come forward. It is already hard enough for sexual assault survivors—what possible benefit could there be to doing something that actively makes their ordeal even harder?
Rape jokes aren’t about comedy; rape jokes don’t have anything to do with comedy. Rape jokes are about rape, full fucking stop.
