My Zen Arcade

So, recently, my wife started making a stink about how rape jokes aren’t funny.
She also showed me a few skits and such (by guys I like) that used rape as a gag.
And, the fact is, she’s right. It’s not cool to make rape jokes.
But I honestly couldn’t tell you why. I mean, if it was a joke about a guy getting raped by a guy, we’d laugh without guilt. Or, say, a guy getting an axe to the head.
Funny stuff, I say!
Hell, I’ll laugh at a good Holocaust joke, and I’m Jewish.
Pretty horrible. So why is it different?
I thought about it, letting it stew in the back of my head for a while.
I think I have two reasons.
1. Ultimately, I’m a white male. That means I default to a higher, more privileged power structure than women, as a rule.
The stronger you are, the more you have to be able to laugh at yourself and take criticism. When push comes to shove, most humor is about taking power away from those that have it (which is why its funny to make jokes about assholes getting beaten, but not about children getting beaten, for example, or funny to make jokes about Christians (in the US) and less so about Hindus). I have power, you wanna make a joke about killing me, ok.

2. Rape, and general violence against women, is a real problem. It goes on every day, and the laws aren’t doing much to protect women. And there are people out there who want to relax even those laws. So, unlike an axe to the head, rape is something that women actually have to deal with and be concerned about. It would be like making that Holocaust joke during World War II.

So, when you make a rape joke, you are bullying someone smaller than you and using threats that very well might become reality.
Not as funny as it might be.