Reaction

This post is getting some serious readership. I’m very glad that I was able to write something that resonates with so many people.

I’m very depressed that it was about rape.

Day Off

This is my only day off in forever. Am I seriously going to spend it like this?

Just kidding. We all know the answer is YES

I totally met the Pork Chop Sandwiches kid in a Wendy’s during drag racing night. He sounded just like that. Me and the bear were sputtering into our pork chop sandwiches, FTW.

That Last Post

This story illustrates nicely the damned-if-you-do social scenario women find themselves in that I was trying to describe in that last post.

I’m sure if the woman had instead chosen to be meek and shame-faced, and had been willing to quietly accept whatever condescension the officer wanted to pitch her way, coupled with any legal consequences and some perhaps less aggressive fondling, she would have been able to go on her merry way secure in the knowledge that A) at least he didn’t rape her and B) she would never be able to prosecute the sexual assault, nor get support from others she describes it to, because she “let him” do whatever he would have done.

Instead, she spoke up, got loud, got assertive, did all the things women are not supposed to do in social interactions, and as a result was sexually assaulted, with the officer helpfully pointing out that he felt he had a right to sexually assault her because she was “acting like a woman.” If she’d been acting meek, that would have been “acting like a woman”, too, because women are quiet and weak, dontcha know. But instead she defended herself got hysterical, which is also how women act, because women are crazy and unable to control themselves, dontcha know. And either way, they need to be punished for being a woman, and acting in the way women do. Which is, you know, the same way that men act, only men get to act those ways without their actions being dismissed as irrelevant because Exhibit A: penises exude stupid, Exhibit B: you have one.

So, here’s how it goes:

Act in the way women are supposed to act — passive and subservient — and you will be mistreated and assaulted because you are weak and easy to assault. Afterwards, it will be your fault for “letting” him.

Act in a way women are not supposed to act — aggressive and dominating — and you will be mistreated and assaulted because you are not making an attack on your person easy for your attacker. Afterwards, it will be your fault for “provoking” him.

And, bonus prize: however you act, there is a corresponding negative descriptor to make your actions specifically female: hysterical (justifiably angry), passive (minimizing danger), bitchy (assertive), shrill (speaking out loud), crazy (setting boundaries), dyke (sexually unavailable). And when every action you take, every behavior you engage in, can be neatly and quickly reduced to a negative attribute of your gender, this reinforces the rightness in having attacked you.

Because at the core of it, that is the fundamental reason women are attacked. Not because they deserved it, not because they earned it, not because they provoked it, not because they failed to prevent it.

Women are attacked because they are women.

Women are attacked because they are women, and the cultural definition/classification of women designates them simultaneously as an invasive species and available receptacles for sex; pairing the two leads very obviously (and intentionally) to unleashing hostility and beating back the invasion via “sex.”

If a woman dares to invade a “man’s” space (even if that space is the public arena)

or if a woman dares to demand certain rights in her presence (such as the right to choose, or not choose, her sexual partners and be left in relative peace about her decision, or the right to not have her space invaded, or the right to not have her body or gender insulted),

and if the definition and purpose of a woman is a creature that is supposed to be available for the sexual consumption of men,

then an appropriate way to quiet invasive demands and successfully reacquire the invaded space and rights is to humiliate, frighten, and injure her sexually. This is a socially acceptable (and extremely effective) way that a man can reaffirm his inalienable rights to space, attention, resources, and respect based on being male (and capable of rape), and her lack of inalienable rights to space, attention, resources, and respect based on being female (and rapeable).

It is only when women demand things that women ought not have because they are female that they are raped, and our justifications for rape clearly reflect this:

Why was she outside, at that time of night? (women shouldn’t be outside)
Why was she wearing that? (women shouldn’t wear unapproved clothing)
Why was she hanging out with him? (women shouldn’t be in the company of men)
Why did she yell at him? (women shouldn’t raise their voices)
Why did she date him if she wasn’t going to have sex with him? (women shouldn’t deny men sex)
Why was she so mean? (women shouldn’t set their own boundaries)
Why did she drink with him? (women shouldn’t imbibe in substances)
Why did she go to that party? (women shouldn’t be out of doors, dressed in unapproved clothing, and in the company of men unless they are there to provide sex)
Why did she fuck all those other guys, if she didn’t expect something like this to happen eventually? (women shouldn’t have veto power over who does and does not have access to her vagina)

We have a lot of reasons why we justify each individual attack, and they can all sound like very individual, circumstantial, specific reasons. In addict land, that’s called “superficial logic,” something that sounds deceptively good on the surface, but immediately falls apart as soon as critical questions are asked. And all our specific circumstances for each individual attack come down to insults and justifications based in gender. Women are attacked because they are acting like women (didn’t fight back). Women are attacked because they are not acting like women (fought back, provoked him). Women are attacked because they were acting like worthless women (short skirt, let him kiss her).  Women are attacked because they were acting like virtuous women (cock tease).

Women are attacked because they are women, and there is no 100% guaranteed way to be a woman who cannot be justifiably attacked. Even if a woman does all the right things, to be the most valued and protected class of woman available, they are still women. Wives can be (and are) raped by husbands, even if they were virgins until getting married, even if they cook three meals a day and never raise their voice and keep trim and in shape and don’t leave the house without an escort.

This is all an ultra-depressing thing I am saying here: if you are born a woman, in this time and in this place, that is reason enough to expect that you will be attacked someday. I doubt there is any woman out there who could read this and not understand, at some level, what I’m saying. Even if you’ve never been raped, you’ve been belittled, you’ve been groped, you’ve had your boundaries invaded in some way, at some time, because you were a woman and he was a man. Even if you didn’t consider it a big deal, or it didn’t damage you (much), or you just laughed it off. You knew it was happening — and couldn’t be stopped — because you were a woman, and he was a man.

But I am saying this ultra-depressing stuff because I want to emphasize a crucial piece of it: Being a woman is reason enough to be attacked. There is nothing women can or cannot do that will aid or end their attacks; every action they take or do not take is only further proof of their womanhood, and thus further justification for being attacked. There is no way a woman can create or end an attack. There is no fault a woman can truly bear for her attack. Her crime was simply being.

I can’t repeat this enough.

Women are attacked because they are women.

Any reason or justification given for the attack is just another euphemism for “she was a woman.”

Women are not to blame for their attacks unless we are willing to blame them for being born women.

Hint: We are, and we do.

Another post about rape

By the by, I consistently use that title because I mean for it to operate as a trigger warning. I write a lot about rape, but sometimes I write about other things, and I don’t want anybody taken off-guard transitioning from “help computer” into wtf rape-talk. Case you were wondering.

I was re-reading my five billion goddamn posts about rape and force, and I realized (surprise!) there is a more succinct way for me to express what I was thinking. I tend to go on and on, circling a subject, trying to get out everything in my head that possibly relates to it, and then sometimes find I didn’t really address the subject at all. So, here is what I wanted to say in those five billion posts about rape:

If women are raised being told by parents, teachers, media, peers, and all surrounding social strata that:

• it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (”mean bitch”)
• it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (”crazy bitch”)
• it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (”stuck-up bitch”)
• it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (”angry bitch”)
• it is not okay to have (or express) conflicted, fluid, or experimental feelings about yourself, your body, your sexuality, your desires, and your needs (”bitch got daddy issues”)
• it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (”dyke bitch”)
• it is not okay to raise your voice (”shrill bitch”)
• it is not okay to completely and utterly shut down somebody who obviously likes you (”mean dyke/frigid bitch”)

If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.

Women who are taught not to speak up too loudly or too forcefully or too adamantly or too demandingly are not going to shout “NO” at the top of their goddamn lungs just because some guy is getting uncomfortably close.

Women who are taught not to keep arguing are not going to keep saying “NO.”

Women who are taught that their needs and desires are not to be trusted, are fickle and wrong and are not to be interpreted by the woman herself, are not going to know how to argue with “but you liked kissing, I just thought…”

Women who are taught that physical confrontations make them look crazy will not start hitting, kicking, and screaming until it’s too late, if they do at all.

Women who are taught that a display of their emotional state will have them labeled hysterical and crazy (which is how their perception of events will be discounted) will not be willing to run from a room disheveled and screaming and crying.

Women who are taught that certain established boundaries are frowned upon as too rigid and unnecessary are going to find themselves in situations that move further faster before they realize that their first impression was right, and they are in a dangerous room with a dangerous person.

Women who are taught that refusing to flirt back results in an immediately hostile environment will continue to unwillingly and unhappily flirt with somebody who is invading their space and giving them creep alerts.

People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored. They don’t wonder about all those daily social interactions in which women are quieter, ignored, or invisible, because those social interactions seem normal. They seem normal to women, and they seem normal to men, because we were all raised in the same cultural pond, drinking the same Kool-Aid.

And then, all of a sudden, when women are raped, all these natural and invisible social interactions become evidence that the woman wasn’t truly raped. Because she didn’t fight back, or yell loudly, or run, or kick, or punch. She let him into her room when it was obvious what he wanted. She flirted with him, she kissed him. She stopped saying no, after a while.

These rules for social interactions that women are taught to obey are more than grease for the patriarchy wheel. Women are taught both that these rules will protect them, and that disobeying these rules results in punishment.

Here’s a situation every woman is familiar with: some guy she knows, perhaps a casual acquaintance, perhaps just some dude at the bus stop, is obviously infatuated with her. He’s making conversation, he’s giving her the eye. She doesn’t like him. She doesn’t want to talk to him. She doesn’t want him near her. He is freaking her out. She could disobey the rules, and tell him to GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER, and continue screaming GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME every time he tries to step closer, or speak to her again. And then he will be all, “I was just talking to you! WTF!” and everybody else will be all, “Yeah, seriously, why’d you freak out at a guy just talking to you?” and refuse to offer the support she needs to be safe from dude. Or, the guy might become hostile, violent even. Ladies, you’ve seen that look, the “bitch can’t ignore me” look. It’s a source of constant confusion, as soon as you start budding breasts, that the man who just a moment ago told you how pretty you are is now calling you a stupid ugly whore, all because you didn’t get in his car.

OR

You could follow the rules. You could flirt back a little, look meek, not talk, not move away. You might have to put up with a lot more talking, you might have to put up with him trying to ask you out to lunch every day, you might even have to go out to lunch with him. You might have to deal with him copping a feel. But he won’t turn violent on you, and neither will the spectators who have watched him browbeat you into a frightened and flirtatious corner.

So we learn the rules will protect us. We learn that, when we step out of line, somebody around us might very well turn crazy. Might hurt us. And we won’t be defended by onlookers, who think we’ve provoked the crazy somehow. So, having your ass grabbed at the bus stop, having to go out to dinner with a guy you fucking can’t stand, maybe even having to fuck him once or twice, it’s a small sacrifice to avoid being ostracized, insulted, verbally abused, and possibly physically assaulted.

It’s a rude fucking awakening when a woman gets raped, and follows the rules she has been taught her whole life — doesn’t refuse to talk, doesn’t refuse to flirt, doesn’t walk away ignoring him, doesn’t hit, doesn’t scream, doesn’t fight, doesn’t raise her voice, doesn’t deny she liked kissing — and finds out after that she is now to blame for the rape. She followed the rules. The rules that were supposed to keep the rape from happening. The rules that would keep her from being fair game for verbal and physical abuse. Breaking the rules is supposed to result in punishment, not following them. For every time she lowered her voice, let go of a boundary, didn’t move away, let her needs be conveniently misinterpreted, and was given positive reinforcement and a place in society, she is now being told that all that was wrong, this one time, and she should have known that, duh.

For anybody who has ever watched the gendered social interactions of women — watched a woman get browbeaten into accepting attention she doesn’t want, watched a woman get interrupted while speaking, watched a woman deny she is upset at being insulted in public, watched a woman get grabbed because of what she was wearing, watched a woman stop arguing — and said and done nothing, you never have the right to ever ask, “Why didn’t she fight back?”

She didn’t fight back because you told her not to. Ever. Ever. You told her that was okay, and necessary, and right.

You didn’t give her a caveat. You didn’t say, “Unless…” You said, “Good for you, shutting up and backing down 99% of the time. Too bad that 1% of the time makes you a fucking whore who deserved it.”

Nobody obtains the superpower to behave dramatically differently during a frightening confrontation. Women will behave the same way they have been taught to behave in all social, professional, and sexual interactions. And they will be pretty goddamned surprised to come out the other end and find out that means they can legally be raped at any time, by just about anybody.

I am focusing on women here. I tend to do that, being one and all, but let’s mention something about men. If men have been raised to behave aggressively, to discount what women and weaker men want and feel and say, to obtain power and social standing through force, to deny emotions exist, to feel that women are fundamentally a different species, to set a boundary and keep it NO MATTER WHAT, to make a decision and stick to it NO MATTER WHAT, to feel entitled to sex, to feel they will be ostracized and possibly physically attacked if they don’t acquire sex with women, to feel under threat of harassment and attack if they don’t constantly maintain a hyper-masculine exterior, to prove their manhood through dangerous and degrading physical activities…

if you have seen men behave in this way, and encouraged it, and thought it was normal, so normal you didn’t even see it…

then you never have the right to say “He couldn’t possibly have done that” when you hear that your brother raped somebody.

That wasn’t concise at all. What I mean to say is:

The way men and women interact on a daily basis is the way they interact when rape occurs. The social dynamics we see at play between men and women are the same social dynamics that cause men to feel rape is okay, and women to feel they have no right to object. And if you accept those social interactions as normal and appropriate in your day to day life, there is absolutely no reason you should be shocked that rape occurs without screaming, without fighting, without bruising, without provocation, and without prosecution. Behavior exists on a continuum. Rape doesn’t inhabit its own little corner of the world, where everything is suddenly all different now. The behavior you accept today is the behavior that becomes rape tomorrow. And you very well might accept it then, too.

A woman walks into a rape, uh, bar

A woman walks into a rape, uh, bar.

She rapes the rapist, “Hey, rape kind of rape do you think I should rape?” The rapist rapes, “Don’t ask rape! I’m just a rapist!”

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Welcome to a post about rape jokes.

Let me tell you a thing you might not know: the inability to hear rape “jokes” without flashbacks, Hulk rage, and “air quotes” is one of the enduring parting gifts of a rapist.

Here is how this goes:

It is a lovely summer day. You have some beers, and you and some friends are sitting on a front porch in the breeze and the sun, shooting the shit. You start talking about politics, and then the Army. You mention that you have considered joining the Army in the past, but won’t, because you can’t pledge loyalty to an organization that discriminates against gays (a round of agreement ensues, so hugely moral are we), and as a woman, you can’t reasonably aspire to join an organization that is far more likely to brutally rape you (and brutally cover it up) than the general population.

One of your friends says, “But isn’t that actually a benefit of the Army? Hur hur hur.” Oh, how you wish your friend were an ardent feminist, so you could interpret his comment as a dry observation of the brutal truth, framed humorously to prevent suicide all around. But no, you know he is making a funnay, the punchline being you and every woman you know.

Several options flash through your head.

1. Say Nothing. Hope the conversation does not continue extolling the virtues of rape, making saying nothing harder. Hate yourself for saying nothing. Notice girl sitting on the porch of the house next to you who has heard what was said. Notice her similar reactions. Hate yourself more for saying nothing, because she has probably been raped, too, because you don’t know any woman who hasn’t. Hate your friend, because he doesn’t know that every woman he knows has been raped. Have minor flashbacks of what was done to you. No feeling the sun, the breeze now, just his hand on your shoulder to get leverage. Simmer with stopped-up rage that this thing he did, his hand on your shoulder, has just been joked about as fun and exciting. Simmer with stopped-up rage that you said nothing then, too, even though that’s not really true. You just said nothing that was listened to, deemed important. Like your silence and obvious rage is being ignored now. Stop enjoying the day. Stop enjoying the company of your friend. Make a mental note to withdraw from others before they can casually, “jokingly” remind you of your rape. Feel bad. It’s not like they know you were raped. Feel angry. It’s not like you’re ever going to tell them, now. Feel alone and angry. Assume bitterly that you will feel this way forever.
2. Be Edgy! Jump in with some even MORE offensive humor! Run with the rape joke! Make it even more rape-y! Now your friend will never guess you have been raped. Bonus prize: if he ever finds out, he will respect you for not making a “big deal” out of your rape, for not making it the centerpiece of your life and his on a hot and lazy summer day. Settle in with the smug knowledge that you are not like those other broken, damaged, traumatized victims. Withdraw from “those” kinds of victims, who might try and drag you down into their hysteria with them. Throw them to the goddamn wolves. Throw your flashbacks to the goddamn wolves. Toast to rape!
3. Initiate a Very Serious Conversation, out of nowhere, like. Tell your friend that joke was not funny. Tell him rape is never funny. Keep talking after his face has pinched up in resentment and disgust, because you are RUINING his day and his BEER and his FUNNY. You know you are actually ruining his sense of himself as a good and decent person, but you cannot communicate that to him, because he is smug and disengaged, and you are shaking and stuttering and trying to explain the experience of women to a man who has grown up among women, known women, loved women, and somehow doesn’t know this already, which means he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t care. Feel vulnerable. Feel angry that you feel vulnerable. Consider stopping mid-sentence, getting up, and walking away. Promise yourself that after this you will never speak to this friend again. Immediately break the promise, because you know if you don’t, he will tell everybody that you stopped being friends because you are Andrea Dworkin all of a sudden.
4. Initiate A Very Serious Conversation Version II: Follow version one, except also disclose to your friend (who thinks rape is funny and exciting) that you have been raped. Be surprised, all over again, that this does not immediately change his perspective, the way it changed yours. Realize that to him, rape is conceptual, even when it has really happened, even when it is real. Wonder if he has raped, without knowing it, because it was just a concept. Realize you now wonder this about every man. Are you Andrea Dworkin? Do you have any right to ruin this lovely summer day by dumping your rape on everybody? Did he? After this, will he now tell everybody that you FREAKED OUT just because you were apparently “RAPED” and you can’t GET OVER IT when it was just a JOKE, SERiously? Will everybody know you have been raped? Will everybody think you are a humorless rape-bot from now on? Feel like shit afterwards. Be reminded that you cannot trust anybody, now. Because you were raped. Because you are Andrea Dworkin. Because you didn’t prosecute. The reasons don’t matter anymore; the result is the same. You are Angry About Being Raped, which just compounds the stain of Being Raped. Add in Unable To Take a Joke, and you are officially Female.
5. Find Some Other Way. Can’t count on this one; sometimes an alternative pops into your head, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you manage to say “Rape is funny!” and laugh away in such a sarcastic, biting voice that it communicates everything you wanted to say, and you all move on. Or you do what I did, which was threaten to break my beer bottle on the railing and stab my friend in the fucking neck with it if he didn’t shut his fucking maw. Ha ha! I said. A joke! Not really, man. Ha! Am I kidding? Am I? Fun-nay. The simmering rage remains, the distrust, the wondering if you should speak to this person ever again, the flashbacks. But the day moves forward rather than grinding to a screeching halt.

All us Raped And Very Excitable types (RAVE! Awesome) can spend an entire lifetime trying to explain to the general population that Rape Jokes Aren’t Funny. And I can think of a thousand reasons RJAF, ranging from the Sober and Serious epidemic of rape that really! truly! exists, to the fact that I’ve never heard a rape joke that actually meets the criteria of “funny” or “joke.” Which is the bigger question to me: not why aren’t rape jokes funny, but why are they funny? What is the punchline? What is the humor? What is the part that is supposed to make me laugh? And why is that supposed to make me laugh?

As far as I can tell, the “joke” is usually that it wasn’t really rape at all, or it wasn’t a “real” rape, or it was a fun rape, or it was a deserved rape. Which, seeing as how rape victims get to hear that shit, completely seriously (and with completely serious consequences) from their rapist, friends, family, and cops, you might see as how it doesn’t come off as a joke so much as it comes off as same shit, different day. And, as far as I can tell, the “funny” of rape jokes seems to depend on 1) the same part of the brain stem that thinks farting in public is funny – that is, the part of the brain that operates in befuddled and childlike amazement at the doing of things that ought not be done because they horrify Ms Manners, or whatever externalized visualization of a degraded superego one has, 2) the assumption that your audience secretly thinks rape isn’t such a big deal and is yearning for you to tell them so, 3) nervous laughter.

A note about nervous laughter. When I was in seventh grade, our social studies class was doing our day and a half of African-American history. Which, as most of you know, goes like this: slavery (it was bad – also, Africans didn’t really exist or have lives before they were slaves) → Civil War (Lincoln was totally a sweet guy) → Reconstruction (Lincoln was so totally totally sweet) → Somehow Jim Crow? (how’d that happen?!!) → Martin Luther King Had a Fucking Dream (let’s all tear up) → FREEDOM AND ICE CREAM BARS FOR EVERYBODY! (whooooooo no more racism EVAR)

At some point, our teacher started to talk about lynchings. I don’t remember what he said, but suddenly everybody in the class started giggling. Not “what a funny joke – lynching!” giggling, but nervous giggles. “I can’t believe it” giggles. “Really, just fifty, forty years ago?” giggles. “In America? Are you sure?” giggles. Years later, in college, I read about the rift that began in SNCC during Freedom Summer, when during a training video on voter suppression, white workers started giggling at the fat Southern white dude on the screen. To them, he was a stereotypical representation of a laughable and ridiculous Southern character. To the black workers, he was a very real and very brutal enemy. That was the kind of laughter we had. The only representation we’d seen of race relations in America were overblown, saccharine, ham-fisted portrayals of Fat Southern Man defeated by Plucky Black Kid and the I Have a Dream speech washing over the credits. So to think about lynching, I think it was too big, too horrible, when all we had seen of it was bad drama, and we all started giggling.

Though not all. One girl, a girl who up until that moment I don’t think any of us realized was the ONLY black girl in the class, one girl stood up and fucking SNAPPED: “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ALL LAUGHING AT?” she shouted. “MY GRANDADDY WAS LYNCHED.”

The teacher sent her out of the room, ostensibly because she said “fuck,” and then, all shamed-faced, told the rest of us (white kids he felt comfortable talking to now that the black girl was gone) that he understood we weren’t giggling because we thought lynching was funny, but we had to remember that this was real stuff: we were talking about real lives that had been destroyed. Plenty of kids in class were still indignant, all “that didn’t mean she had to scream at us!” but the teacher just held his line: you’ve got to remember that you’re talking about real people who died. The part I wish he’d mentioned: that we also have to remember we’re talking about real people who killed.

That was a bit of a side tangent, but I think it’s got some similarities. Like, let’s try this: WHY THE FUCK DOES ANYBODY NEED TO BE TOLD RAPE JOKES AREN’T FUNNY is kind of like WHY THE FUCK DOES ANYBODY NEED TO BE TOLD GIGGLING ABOUT LYNCHING IS JUVENILE AND CRUEL. Or, here’s another: laughing at/telling rape jokes is a pretty clear indicator of how little you can personally identify with the very real consequences of a very real act, just like laughing at/telling lynching jokes is a pretty clear indicator that you’re so so so white, and have never known and will never know somebody who was lynched (though you might know somebody who did the lynching). But, let’s boil this down to its common denominator: laughing at torture that has historically been directed at one class of people who were not allowed access to societal protection or defense is a very clear indicator of where your loyalties lie.

And before it comes up: ignorance is not a defense. Ignorance of the prevalence of rape, of the possibility that you are making a joke in front of a rape victim, and ignorance of the vastness of racism, is only a further indicator of just how much more fucked up and shitty the experience of the victim you are joking at has been. And refusing to see that ignorance for what it is, and own it, and make a commitment to educate yourself, is the second very clear indicator of where your loyalties lie. And don’t think that’s lost on the people who have to hear your nervous giggles.

It’s also, let’s not forget, a pretty clear indicator of how this whole oppression thing works. If the torture and abuse of real people were to be taken seriously as a horrible offense, well, we might not do it. So, something has to be made not serious for the situation to become funny, and you’ve got two options: the abuse and torture, or the subject of the abuse and torture. Usually, we choose both! Rape is fun, and women aren’t real.

So, here’s the thing: why are rape jokes funny? I’m asking this rhetorically, because I’ve never heard one that was, though I will leave open the possibility that somewhere out there is a rape joke that is hilarious (edit: I have personally been amusing myself with RAPE CHOP SANDWICHES lately, but that is my own bag). So let me amend: why are rape jokes supposedly funny? Looking at my experience in seventh grade, I think there’s a lot of similarities. What we grow up knowing about rape – if we haven’t personally experienced it – fits into a series of tropes, scenes, characters, and stereotypes that are ham-fisted and ridiculous. We are not meant to take rape seriously; it is meant to be a joke, a misunderstanding, something that happens to somebody else, out there, who possibly deserves it or even liked it. The rapist is a shitty frat boy with a scarlet R on his chest, or a crazy man in the bushes. The rape victim is drunk and stupid and has totally had sex before. Afterwards she is hysterical and crying and worthless, if she isn’t a man-hating feminazilesbot. Or, you know, maybe she gets a Lifetime show, which is an eye-rolling adventure in musical swells. Or, maybe she’s killed, so we can all focus on her muscular boyfriend who now has a reason to AVENGE.

There is very little in casual, accessible culture that depicts rapists or rape victims as multi-faceted, complex human beings — and they all are. They are not depicted as people who survive, who go on to read trashy novels and get angry in traffic and learn a new hobby and think about volunteering sometimes but never actually do and get their degree in marketing but actually go into accounting because the job market these days, you know, and if they had never left that one significant other their lives probably would have been different. And rape is not depicted as an event that has complex meanings and consequences for men or women. Rather, it’s depicted as sex to advance the plot, define a (male) character, and/or be a super sweet hidden porno in the middle of your movie. Aside from victim-blaming, rape in movies and books and TV doesn’t focus on what women remember from their rapes (can’t say what rapists remember), because rape is not meant to be depicted as an experience of women, to resonate with women, and to acquire an audience of women. These are scenes created by and for men to identify with, and they are created to depict rape as another exciting form of sex that can be had with women. I do not remember, I do not think about my boobs, or about physical pain, or what my face looked like. I think about his hand on my shoulder. I think about what the trees looked like as I stared out the window. I think about how bright the room was. But I guarantee you, go find some rape scene to watch, and you will have close-ups of boobs and a woman’s face contorted in pain and fear. Because rape, as depicted in culture, is a reflection of our current cultural mindset: women’s bodies, and women meek and fearful and in pain, are supposed to be sexually titillating to heterosexual men (whether they actually are is a whole different bag of rocks).

So when rape is not depicted as a serious act, something that affects real people, something that women live with for the rest of their lives (because women aren’t real people), of course it’s not considered a serious topic. The stereotypical representation of rape is as serious as a fat waddling Southern man with a belt the size of a hula hoop. So when we trot out rape a a topic, unless the audience has personal experience with rape, we are all thinking of the Lifetime channel, or some hot hot scene from a movie, or angry-faced women on the news marching down the street all frumpy and queer. Of course it generates nervous giggles, and “edgy” humor, and is allowable conversation for not-so-secret misogynists — that’s what the cultural depiction of rape is meant to do. Humor that is degrading or offensive to oppressed populations has always operated as a pressure release valve for the things we know we are not “supposed” to say or think anymore. You might not be able to say you really don’t think 1 in 4 women are actually being raped, and if they are, they probably deserved it, and there are some circumstances where rape is okay – but you can sure as shit make a joke about it! And if somebody objects, well, here’s the built-in beauty of an oppressive system: that somebody is probably going to be a member of the oppressed class you are mocking. And it’s very easy to dismiss the opinions of oppressed populations. If we valued the thoughts, feelings, and desires of oppressed populations, we wouldn’t be able to rationalize and minimize the rape, torture, and murder of them.

I have another story. When I was a junior in high school, one of my classmates was murdered. I didn’t know him very well. We’d gone to the same school since junior high, he was dating a friend of mine, and it was a very small school, so even though I didn’t know him, I was hit pretty hard with the sudden loss of him. We found out later that he was murdered in a random drive-by shooting. The real shitkicker was, my best friend had lost her virginity to the guy who drove the getaway car, and knew the shooters (she didn’t find that out till they got arrested). They wanted to start robbing folk, and figured it was best if they killed them after. They didn’t rob my classmate; he was just target practice.

My classmate was murdered while riding his bike down a peaceful road next to a river. Found by a jogger. He bled out pretty quick. The hospital didn’t know who he was – there was just a shoe with his name scrawled on it. When he went down, the shooters later testified, he said “ow.” And he lay there, saying, “Ow,” not really knowing what had happened, bleeding out on the pavement.

These were the things that ran through my head, day after day. Couldn’t get them out. And suddenly, I was completely and uncomfortably aware of how I couldn’t escape from murder. I had to stop watching television, stop cracking open books, stop checking the news, stop watching movies, because there I’d be, trying to relax, trying to forget THEY SHOT HIM HE SAID OW ALL THEY HAD WAS A SHOE, escaping into some movie about who-knows-what, when suddenly the movie fills with blood and gore and there’s a gun and somebody has to die because the plot has to move along. And I’d just get so sick. I was trying so hard to “get over it,” to “move on,” to get back to my normal life. But murder was everywhere. Violence was everywhere. I hadn’t seen, hadn’t realized before just how pervasive it was, and as a joke, as a plot device, as an afterthought, as a vicarious experience. But now that every drop of blood, every flesh wound, every attack immediately made me think of my classmate, immediately made me imagine him experiencing his death, his pain – I couldn’t watch any of that shit anymore.

And I thought of the boys who killed him. The paper reported that after killing him, “ow” became an inside joke. They’d drive around going, “Ow!” and laugh and laugh. That’s horrible, but I get that. They had just done a horrifying thing. They had crossed over into a new world, a world where you can kill people. They are alive one second, dead the next, at your hand, at your whim. That’s a different sort of world to inhabit than the one the rest of us live in, where that shit doesn’t happen, or if it does, it’s out there, somewhere. There’s a line in Lolita, after Humbert Humbert shoots Quilty. He is driving away, and thinks to himself: now that I have transgressed against the laws of man, why shouldn’t I transgress against the laws of traffic? And he begins to drive in the oncoming traffic lane. I view the joking of those boys the same way. They had transgressed against the laws of humankind; why not joke about murder? Why not laugh at his pitiful, dying “ow”? All the rules were unmoored, if they could do this thing. And I consider joking about rape, about torture, in the exact same vein. This is why rape victims get to choose how they want to joke about it, if they want to joke about it: only they live in that world without rules, without safety, unmoored from the reality the rest of us know. Only they get to know what’s funny about it. And this is why, for the rest of us, our jokes are crude, cruel, and ignorant: if you don’t know what the world is like on that other side, your jokes are weak sauce, they are jokes about how that other side doesn’t exist, isn’t important, isn’t real, isn’t horror. And you don’t know that, because you have the privilege of never going there, if you want.

For those of you who wonder why rape victims get all super sensitive about rape jokes ‘n shit, well, this is why. Before you’re raped, rape jokes might be uncomfortable, or they might be funny, or they might be any given thing. But after you’re raped, they are a trigger. They make you remember what was done to you. And if the joke was about something that wasn’t done to you, not in quite that way, you can really easily imagine how it would feel, because you know how something exactly like that felt. Rape jokes stop being about a thing that happens out there, somewhere, to people who don’t really exist, and if they do they probably deserved it, and they start being about you. Rape jokes are about you. Jokes about women liking it or deserving it are about how much you liked it and deserved it. And they are also jokes about how, in all likelihood, it’s going to happen to you again.

And until you’ve been raped, you don’t really wake up and see how much rape is out there for the casual consumer. You didn’t really hear those offhand comments when walking down the street – “oh, you know she totally made that up for attention” – you didn’t really notice that the sex scene in Blade Runner actually really looks like a fucking rape scene, you didn’t really hear how the TV news focuses on what she was wearing, and calls it “sex,” and digs for details about where and how he penetrated her, when you don’t really need to know that, do you? And you don’t realize how many of the people you know and love do not take rape seriously, because they have been sucking up all the same TV shows and movies you do, and they don’t think they know a real person who has been raped. Of course, some of them you might tell, and they can accept that, accept the secondary trauma, begin to start thinking of you whenever they see a rape in a movie, hear of one on the news, hear a rape joke. Or they can disqualify you as a real person. Guess which one happens most.

So, here is my challenge for those who want to tell rape jokes:

Ask every woman in your life if she has been sexually assaulted. Ask her to tell you her story. This means your mother, your sister, your girlfriend, your grandma.

Once you have heard all their stories, go watch a movie with a rape scene in it. One you didn’t mind before. One you thought people were overly offended by.

Now tell me a joke.