I want to preface this by saying that I in no way intend to pick on any particular person here. I don’t want to demonise anyone, nor am I implying that they are wholly dreadful people – just that they didn’t really think before posting or commenting. And it is not limited to the people I mention in my inspiration for writing this post – it is indicative of our culture in general. Neither, though, am I going to lighten what I say for the sake of not losing friends. If a friend says something offensive or uneducated, then I believe you should call them out on it. And if they aren’t willing to listen to what you have to say, then they probably wouldn’t be a good friend to you in the long run anyway.
Warning: Parts of this post may be triggering.
Last week a lovely blogger made a post that I feel was very poorly thought-out. Not only did she make rape jokes, but the title of the post referred to herself as being a potential rapist. Not only did she make this post, but none of the people who commented on it called her out on the inappropriateness of it – in fact, they thought she was hilarious. This was perhaps even more disgusting to me.
Rape jokes aren’t funny. Not only are they not funny, they are incredibly ignorant and anti-feminist.
I am not going to get into the “feminism isn’t relevant and I am not a feminist” argument, as that is a whole other post. (And to young women who say that, or that it is sexist and elitist: again, ignorant. Go educate yourself.) But suffice to say, I believe it is still incredibly important and relevant to be a feminist. This is why I am saddened that intelligent, well-spoken, progressive women find rape jokes funny.
You don’t need to take my word for it. Just Google ‘why rape jokes aren’t funny‘. You really don’t need to take my word for it, when so many other amazing, strong feminists have written about it. (warning: some are triggering.) They can do a much better job than I can explaining why rape jokes are bad and harmful, even when told by people who think they would never actually condone rape.
In saying that, though, I’d like to tell you a little story that is particularly relevant to why I find rape jokes unfunny.
Once upon a time there was a girl who didn’t like herself very much. She got into a relationship with an emotionally and mentally abusive boy. One night, they were fooling around (no lust on her part, she was starved for affection.) She wasn’t on birth control, and unbeknownst to her, there were no condoms. Her boyfriend, however, was very aware of this fact, and when she said she didn’t want to have sex without a condom he made her believe she had to. She had to, because it was her fault for being a tease, and he was all worked up so she had to help him get off. (Needless to say he never troubled himself to try and help her get off.) So he held her down while she struggled against him, and didn’t even have the decency to pull out. Afterwards he told her that tomorrow, before she went to work, she’d have to go get the morning-after pill, because he didn’t want to have to deal with the trauma of going through an abortion.
The next day he went home to watch T.V., while she went to work in the city. Of course, she went to go get the morning-after pill, but did not realise that that Saturday happened to be the Saturday of the annual Christmas parade. In a city of over a million people, all of whom seemed to be in town with their children, crowding the sidewalk while she desperately tried to find a chemist that was open while telling herself it was her fault. She found a chemist, didn’t get pregnant, and ditched the abusive, rapist boyfriend soon after. But that is not where the story ends.
She became depressed, and after a series of abusive emails from her ex, calling her a slut and a whore she got so drunk she passed out in her own vomit in the middle of town, and woke up in the hospital. She was very, very lucky she didn’t wake up in a morgue. The next time she tried to have sex, she had a panic attack. But she kept going, pretending she was enjoying it (she was very practiced at this) even though it was so incredibly painful, because it was her problem, not his, and he needed to get off. (This is in her head. This boy was very nice and would be mortified to learn he had hurt a girl, even though it was through no fault of his own.) Again and again with nice boys, until she came to believe that she was abnormal. She couldn’t like sex, she would always find it painful, she was frigid. She felt so guilty all the time, and she didn’t know why. Sometimes, a tiny thought would creep in to her head – “Maybe he raped you” – but this was quickly, shamefully, pushed away. Women who were raped ended up in hospital, bleeding. Women who were raped suffered extreme trauma, were unable to function in their everyday lives. Women who were raped were beaten badly. Her experience hadn’t been so horrible, so painful, so it was disrespectful to women who were truly raped to call her experience rape.
She didn’t think the panic attacks she had while trying to have sex meant that she was traumatised. She didn’t believe that the guilt she felt, the alcoholism, wanting to kill herself, meant that she was traumatised. She didn’t think the fact she thought her face and body were hideous meant that she was traumatised. She didn’t know what to think or believe or who she was anymore, because she was traumatised. Because she was raped.
These feelings do not go away. It is nearly four years later, and although I have finally come to terms with the fact that I was raped, and no longer feel guilty about saying that, I am still terrified by my experience. I am in a loving, supportive relationship, and have realised that it is not me, and I am not “frigid”, but that I was raped and had lost all trust in a sexual partner, no matter how nice and caring they were. I will live forever with my experience, but I am now a rape survivor, not a rape victim.
If you have not been raped, you cannot know the guilt, the terror, the shame, the disgust, the self-hatred a rape victim feels. Feeling dirty and showering for hours to get clean, hating your vagina, panic attacks, anxiety, being afraid of men, thinking you are crazy, believing you will never be able to have normal sex, that you will just have to put up with the pain for your partner’s sake. You cannot know that no matter how well-adjusted you are to the experience, a casual joke about rape can bring all of those awful feelings back. You cannot know that when people makes jokes about such a traumatic event, it trivialises it, it makes you doubt and question yourself. If people can joke about it, it couldn’t have been as bad as I have spent the past few years believing it to be. Can it?
I didn’t talk about my rape for four years, perhaps because it took me about that long to realise that I was raped, perhaps because I was ashamed, perhaps because I thought no one would believe me. Who gets raped by their boyfriend? You don’t have to be abducted off the street, or gang-banged in an alley, to have been raped. You could just have been too drunk to say no, or guilted into it by your boyfriend. It was not your fault, and it was not my fault.
Rape jokes ‘normalise’ rape, making it acceptable in society. Making it acceptable makes it easier to dismiss, or condone. Makes it easier to blame the victim. Makes it easier for the victim to blame herself or himself. I am not saying that the blogger I originally mentioned would in any way condone rape, nor the girls who laughed along with her. But they are females, and if females are making rape jokes then it sends a message to men that look, women can laugh about it, so it can’t be that bad. I am also not claiming that any of the women involved in that post are inherently anti-feminist – I just consider participating in rape jokes an anti-feminist act. (and it’s not just my opinion, again, see articles linked above.)
I don’t have a very large readership, I know, but some women who take the time to visit my website do. I am not asking you to censor yourselves, no one should, but really, be aware of what you put out there. Be aware that your flippant comment about rape could trigger terrible memories in 1/4 of your audience who come to your website to laugh and be happy and forget about their problems for awhile. Be aware that even though some people may comment, laughing, there may be others who don’t comment who aren’t. Be aware that just because it hasn’t happened to you, personally, doesn’t mean that it is an issue in our society that you can ignore. Just because you think you don’t know anyone who has been raped, doesn’t mean that it is true.
There is the argument that joking about rape can sometimes be funny, that it can be art. Normalising it allows it to be opened up to discussion, to be pulled apart and talked about and maybe, even, some progress made in trying to stop it. Honestly, in the privacy of my own home with the support of my boyfriend, sometimes I make jokes about rape – about my rape. Being able to finally laugh at such a horrible thing that happened to me makes it hold less control over my life, lets me conquer my experience. So that begs the question, who can make a rape joke? And in what context? Should rape jokes NEVER be made, ever ever ever? Obviously this is not a call I can make. Sometimes, and I may seem to be contradicting myself here, I think they work. Jokes can make clearer our women-hating culture. Amanda Palmer’s Oasis shows how prevalent date-rape is, so prevalent that it’s really “not a big deal” – when it really, really is. Satirising rape is walking a very fine line, however. But rape jokes should not be for every day use. Not as slang, not as a flippant statement, like “That film remake raped my childhood.” Not in some offhand remark, like rape doesn’t matter. Not in a blog post targeted at women who are at high-risk of sexual assault. And unless you have been raped, you have no idea what horrific memories and emotions your pithy comment can trigger in a deeply traumatised person.
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Agreed. Totally. Some lines are too fine to cross…
I completely agree. I read the original post in question and was upset by it, but didn’t comment. I haven’t been raped, but I was sexually harassed earlier this year and some of what happened with that harassment is actually classified as sexual assault.
If I was upset by that post, after what I went through, I can’t begin to imagine how it made you feel.
Thank you for sharing your experience Poppy. It puts a lot of oomph behind a post that was already going to be important. I’ll be linking to it in my Pick N Mix today.
I saw the original post you refer to and my first though was wtf, that isn’t funny. So I clicked through to the comments, I saw yours there and was glad someone had called her out on it. I didn’t leave a comment myself though.
I’ve thankfully never been sexually assaulted, and because of that I probably make occasional jokes about rape in context of prison same sex “relationships”. I know it’s wrong.
Just so you know, I appreciate and agree with your ideas too, but I just have to say, your story makes me wish I could give you a hug…
I feel a bit bad, because I had to ask who it was that posted rape jokes, even though I had read the post in question (and had an inkling..)
I don’t want to comment really. I just want to say *hugs* to Poppy.
I don’t have any idea what the post in question was, but I am in 110% agreement with you. I’m going to TRY and not go off on a rant, because this is such a hot-button issue with me – one of my close friends has been sexually assaulted, another close friend was raped by a stranger, and my cousin was raped while drunk – she actually went to the police and was told that her case would be too weak to bring to trial. The f’d thing is, he’d end up in jail longer for assault and battery than he would have for rape anyways! I totally agree with a recent post on Feministing that makes the point that the reason rape jokes are supposed to be “edgy” and shockingly, offensively funny is because it’s supposedly taboo. But it’s NOT. It’s disgustingly normalized in our culture, and something like less than 10% of rapists even end up in jail! (Don’t get me started on sentence lengths, either…ugh. Charges for possession of marijuana will generally get a longer sentence than rape!). And what REALLY pisses me off is that you know if it was a problem that affected males for the most part, instead of females, it would be taken much more seriously!
Anyways, rather than getting up on my soapbox, I want to say that I am so, so sorry you had to go through something that NOBODY should ever have to go through. You are strong and beautiful and I’m glad that you are starting to feel better and overcome the trauma. Thank you for sharing your story and lots of hugs your way.
Rape jokes seem to be a way to normalize and humanize incredibly awful situations – situations that can’t and shouldn’t be normalized.
I don’t think that people realize how extensively that kind of trauma can hurt a person…
*hugs* to you miss, for speaking the truth!
thank you for sharing this… :)
megan http://combat-baby.net
Hmmm…very thought provoking.Firstly, you’re very brave to discuss your experiences like this.
Sexual assault is a touchy subject for me, and most women I guess. I read the post in question, and whilst I didn’t comment about the rape part of it, the other things in her post WERE funny, so I didn’t even think to say anything about it. Reading your post here does make me realise though how desensitised even I am, to have not even thought about commenting about it.
In all fairness to the blogger in question, I honestly don’t think she intended to normalise or trivialise rape in itself- she was merely making fun of herself, perhaps just with, as you say, some unthought-out words. I’ve heard a LOT worse- ie, jokes-mostly told by men- actually describing the brutal act as a humorous scenario! These i find absolutely fucking disgusting, and BEYOND offensive. There is no way I’d lump this girl in with assholes like that!!!
Your post is an eye-opener though-very thought provoking, as i said. I never joke about rape, but it does make me wonder, where do we cross the line? There are so many other things that we could say concerning any number of given subjects,with the chance of offending SOMEBODY. The last paragraph of your post brings up so many questions. Who indeed can make a rape joke? If you’ve been raped does it mean YOU can joke about it and that’s ok? (I don’t mean you personally!). Black people can call each other the “N” word, women can jokingly call their girlfriends “bitches”. If I wear a white hoodie, and my friend says i look like a member of the Klu Klux, and I chuckle, does that mean i think the Klu Klux Klan, and all the atrocities they have meted out on African Americans in the past, are funny??
Gah! What a kettle of fish! The problem with “humour” is that it is generally built apon the misfortune of others.Think about any of your favourite jokes or comedies; chances are they feature somebody getting hurt somehow- physically or otherwise.I find “Little Britain”s Lou and Andy hilarious, but does that mean that I think disability carers are a big joke? Of course not! Nun jokes are offensive to Nuns. Steve Irwin jokes are deeply offensive to his family. Jokes about politicians are offensive to politicians, etc etc.
The reality is, the world can be a pretty fucked up place.No matter what we do,inevitebly SOMETHING that slips out of our mouth (or keyboard)will offend somebody someday.We may deeply hurt somebodies feelings- we may have our feelings deeply hurt. Unless we NEVER speak aloud our minds,opinions, and feelings, this is completely unavoidable.
However this post HAS made me realise that this particular subject really does need some public discussion. I was a little irked by the post you discuss here- but little enough to shrug it off in favour of the other, funnier content. Perhaps that in itself is a bit of a worry.
Thanks for making me have a good old think!
– reposted to avoid original commenter’s avatar coming up and retain anonymity –
For the purpose of this comment, I’d rather remain anonymous. I’m too scared to come fully clean and admit what happened to me, or who I am.
But I completely, completely agree with you. No rape joke is ever going to make me laugh; why should they make anybody laugh? They’re distasteful in the strongest sense and are a grand insult to women; victim, survivor or neither.
I’ll never forget the horrible, disgusting feelings I felt that I hadn’t for years when, around Xmastime this year, I was around a friend’s house, with her boyfriend and mine, and she was laughing her face off at some awful Irish comedian just making rape jokes. This is why it’s just not funny. It never leaves you.
i am a bit confused because i don’t think i read the post in question, but your story sits deeply with me. you are such a strong, confident, able woman, poppy. kudos to you for having the balls to be so open with the world about your experiences. you are beautiful.
Thank you for writing this. I identify with a lot of it.
@Gem – It has taken me a long time to be strong enough to speak up when something hurts me. I think many humans, particularly women, are socialised to just accept everything and keep their feelings to themselves. And one thing I have learned, is that just because my experience wasn’t as “bad” as other women’s, doesn’t mean that the trauma I experienced was invalidated. It took me a long time to get over the guilt for feeling bad about my experience, and you have every right to be upset about things such as this.
@Ms Constantine – Thank you for the linkage! I too used to make “soap in the shower” jokes until I read an article about the huge numbers of men raped by both guards and prisoners in jail. They are given no support and often are left with diseases, and it’s still socialised as being somehow part of their punishment. I guess it was a wake-up call, because even though there is still a stigma against seriously talking about women’s rape, men who are raped, especially criminals, are never given any serious attention.
@cuileann – Thank you. Hugs are always welcomed :)
@Shannon – Don’t feel bad! Rape jokes are so normalised in our society that most people are unaware of their effects on some people. I wasn’t actually going to write this post after commenting on the post in question, but the person who wrote it didn’t even bother asking me what I meant by my comment, so I just thought “fuck it!”.
@Michelle – I love when people share their opinions, so feel free to! I agree with what you mean, about if it were a problem that affects men. It DOES, in prisons, but that’s ok because you know they’re criminals and deserve it anyway (sarcasm).
@birdie – Thank you. I had no idea that the ramifactions of rape went far beyond the actual act until I experienced it myself. I think unless you experience something like a tragic death of someone close, an eating disorder, etc., it is very difficult to understand how much you live with a traumatic experience.
@simi – I love your comments simi, they’re always so interesting! I do agree that the woman in question didn’t mean any harm. I think my post wasn’t totally a reaction to her but just that I am sick of rape always being joked about as if it isn’t anything serious (like how I am sick of people using the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory way). I agree that most jokes would be offensive to someone and where does the line start and stop?
anonymous commenter – I think you have to be either a very poor comedian or a very good one to be able to make rape jokes. The majority are the former. It’s the whole myth about rape being “edgy” and “pushing the limits” when it is so normalised it doesn’t take a brave person to make a joke about it. One would have to be very talented and, I hazard to say, have experienced it personally to be able to push the limits with rape humour in any way. And you’re right, it never leaves you. I didn’t realise that until I read the post I mentioned and everything came flooding back.
@mermaid – Thank you. I have never talked about it fully “in real life”, only told my boyfriend that I had been raped (and I didn’t need to say anything more, nor did he, he just held me tight and stroked my hair and told me that he loved me). I didn’t realise how poisonous it was, bottling it all up, until I wrote this post. I felt so much better now having finally got it out of me, and I am so glad I have so many lovely people like you, pretty lady, to support me.
@softestbullet – While I was writing this I thought that even if I get mean comments, if it helps one woman or man not feel alone then it was worth it.
I fully expect that what I am about to type will be taken negatively by some, in fact many. I also feel that I’ll earn much ire for restating things that have been said too often. Still, I’ll type what I type because I feel it important to have it typed.
First off, I applaud you in every way imaginable for coming over and telling something so important and… well, telling… about yourself, that I’m sure for the longest time was very hard to even think of. I’ve certainly not lived as long as my name implies… I have however lived a lot. And I can say from experience that the best way to recover from any emotional trauma is first to tell someone you trust, then, if you can, make light of it with people close to you, then tell others in the hopes of teaching them; I’ve learned this mostly through trial and error, learned both the easy way and hard. Seeing that you’re carrying out this path, I can’t help but take my hat off, clap may hands, and say, ‘Good job to you. Good job.’
As far as the rest of the post though, I have to admit some confusion. I did study feminism in college, and for a time regularly debate feminism: of the past, its extremes, its great accomplishments, and its recent developments, good and bad. That being said, I try to limit my debating of it more now. I, unfortunately, am graced with a mind that engages in multiple lines of thought simultaneously as well as the habit of seeing both sides of issues and arguing them. I’m sure you can imagine benefits to these aspects; all the same, when I come to particularly charged topics, which crop up a fair deal in feminism, I’ll frequently have 3 or 4 strong, fast moving, heavy trains of thought crash and derail, leaving me with either a mental shouting match I have trouble stopping, or a migraine (as you can imagine, I also tend to shy away from religion for similar reasons.) However, this is one of the few places where I undoubtedly have near-unilateral agreement. In fact, until I read the last bit telling of how you’d used some humor of the incident, I couldn’t think of a beneficial use at all (and, until I read the soap in the shower example in your returned comments, I had a hard time of actually thinking of examples.) I’m a man who enjoys my injury jokes (especially when I’m the butt), dead baby jokes, live baby jokes, Helen Keller jokes, religious jokes, jokes about family living or dead, language jokes, puns (which I wouldn’t have listed except for their unpopularity with many) and can even see the humor in the occasional race or culture joke. That said, I can’t for the life of me think of a funny example of a rape joke (and you can use that to sikowanalize me all you want (and yes, you do get extra kudos for the reference.))
Further, allow me to state an amount of confusion… how could any boy (I use that term deliberately) con their girlfriend into sex without any kind of birth control and then tell her with a straight face that she has to take a morning after pill because an abortion would be traumatizing to HIM?!? Was THAT supposed to be a joke? Honestly… first of all, it’s rarely if ever HIS abortion, and in this case never as makes it perfectly clear that he never wanted the kid in the first place, but was obviously either too lazy or too much of a lowlife scum-sucker to go out and get condoms! Secondly… actually I don’t think I need to or can make a second valid point as the first one covers all the bases. Please, tell me though that this illogical immature asshole has been removed from the gene pool before he can father (to use the term as loosely as possible) any more idiotic, self-serving, manipulative, incubus-like vagina-leeching crotch-spawn copies of himself that serve no purpose beyond severe damage to intelligent folk like yourself. Because this is one boy who makes me ashamed to have a Y chromosome and the testicles to prove it. I apologize for the imagery and, to be frank, aggressive and insulting nature of this last paragraph, but it’s people like that who really spin my head and pain my brain with non-existence of logic.
All that being said, I thank you for providing me with a topic related to feminism that doesn’t give me a headache (for the most part.) And, I congratulate you and wish you the best in your new life. May you continue to use what you have learned to help those still struggling.
–Old Gus
@Old Gus – Thank you for your kind words, and I am glad you enjoyed my piece. I too am guilty of making offensive jokes (oh, Helen Keller jokes) and I really don’t have an answer for whether they should be told or not. Maybe it is also about context – I make these jokes among friends who understand that I mean no harm and who won’t be offended by them. The joke in the post that I mentioned may have been funny if she had told it to her friends, but in a blog that many young women read? I personally feel that was an inappropriate place.
As for the boy – I am always willing to believe that people change, as I know that I have. From what I have heard through mutual friends he is still a total ass who can’t keep a girlfriend (they eventually realise he is not good enough for him) and I personally know, and know through friends, of women he has mistreated. I say mutual friends, but they have all, including his once best friend, stopped associating with him because he is such a disgusting piece of work. My one regret was that I was not strong enough at the time to lay charges – even if he didn’t get convicted, it would at least have gone on his record that he had had a rape case against him.
Poppy, thank you for a very thought-provoking post. I am sorry for what you (and other women) have had to endure.
What’s wrong with a little rape joke? Sometime they can be funny. I thought that was the point of humor? If you can’t make fun of what disturbs you then what’s the point?
Look, I made a rape Joke here.
This one’s acceptable.
[link removed]
I think you missed the whole point of my post. And since when did you become the ultimate authority on what is ‘acceptable?’ Oh that’s right, it is totes hilarious to laugh at cultural differences, because English is the Sole Language in the world and all other languages that have words that mean something obscene in English are worthy of laughter. Please take your Anglo-centric humour elsewhere.