Hilarity

There are some topics that, when used in jest, I won't tolerate. One is when someone says "kill yourself." When I was in high school, and my friends said that as a form of "fuck you," I got them to say "severely maim yourself" instead. The idea being of course, that should that person listen to your advice, only the second one gives you a chance at their forgiveness.

One is calling people "retarded" when you mean stupid. It's a horribly offensive term, and the only person who appears stupid is the person who thinks those two words are synonymous.

And of course, jokes about violence against women. I used to run with a guy who asked me once, on one of our runs, why I could use "kill" in jest, and clearly, I was okay with talking about maiming people, but use "rape" in the context of "that test raped me" or "he totally raped me in Call of Duty," or just good ol' fashioned "shut up and make me a sandwich" or this or this and my tolerance is gone. And it isn't because, as so many critics like to say, because I have a "stick up my ass" but rather because things like domestic violence and rape are so pervasive, and yet so misunderstood.

It's not because I don't have a sense of humor. It's not because I'm ultra-PC, or that I hate any joke that may offend someone somewhere maybe. It's because as of right now, people don't understand rape. It's because we currently live in a culture that not only allows these crimes to happen, but a culture that embraces it and normalizes violence against women.

As long as rape myths prevail in headlines and articles about sexual assault victims, as long as people believe that women use rape as an excuse for drunken sex, as long as people honestly believe women belong in the home and not the workplace, as long as violence against women is sexualized in the media, well then as long as that is culture we live in, I will not tolerate these kind of jokes.

Eventually, I hope, this country, and maybe one day, this world, will not view women as a marginalized minority (when in fact we are the majority), and one day rape and violence against women will not be the poisonous epidemic that it is now. One day, domestic violence calls will be the exception and not the norm for police calls.

And when that happens, you can make all the rape jokes you want. Because when that happens, I'll know that not only the speaker, but anyone within earshot is looking at rape as they do murder - a violent crime. And once we can see the joke as JUST a joke, and not a symptom of the rape culture in which we all live, well then, maybe I can feel differently. Honestly, though, I  believe that when we reach that point, these rape/domestic violence jokes won't be quite as "funny" as they are now.

Until then, I'm going to look at any and all phrases that regard violence against women as something to laugh at as problematic.

People laugh at rape when it's a serious problem. And that's why I can't laugh at rape when it's a joke.