Rape Humour: a guide for male chauvinists.

Hey misogynists!

Do we all know why we’re here? Rumour has it you’ve all been struggling with the concept of a taste and decency in your jokes and I’ve taken it upon myself to explain to you where the line is, OK?

Don’t get me wrong, I like “dark” humour, I really do. I’m not one of those people who thinks of Michael McIntyre as the height of avant garde comedy but equally I don’t squeal with delight every time Frankie Boyle mentions dead babies or  Kerry Katona’s vagina. Dark humour has to have a point if it’s going to be funny; there’s no point screaming about skull-fucking the still warm corpse of Claire Rayner and thinking it means you’re making some big, controversial, ground breaking point; people are only laughing because they’re not sure what else to do. Finding the funny side of upsetting, troubling things is important and necessary, but only when it is done with a view to subvert the situation and make the traumatic absurd, not just to revel in the joy of saying things that make people wince. And never was this clearer than with jokes about rape.

I think I became reasonably au fait with most kinds of rape jokes this summer. I was working with two boys (and truly, they were boys despite their appearance and age) for whom rape was second only in the hilarity stakes to eating shit; a favourite dilemma of theirs was “Would you eat Cheryl Cole’s shit if it meant you could fuck her?”  but “Would you rape your mum for ten grand?”  was another perennial favourite that deserves a  dishonourable mention. Questions that will echo through the ages, I’m sure you’ll all agree. It really did become incredibly irksome and predictable repertoire but at least I feel I can now speak with a degree of authority on the subject.

So, listen up! Here’s a step-by-step guide to what’s OK, what’s funny and what just makes you a fucking awful excuse for a grown man who deserves to have his scrotal sack stapled to an office chair. Violation doesn’t seem so amusing now, does it?

Thumbs up :

1)      Wanda Sykes “Detachable Vagina” routine:

OK class, first things fist, if any of you are thinking “harharhar, Wanda Sykes could jog naked through a prison and she’d not get raped.” Allow me to take a moment to explain why you’re all morons. Let’s be crystal clear, rape isn’t a crime of passion, it’s about power and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can all stop having ridiculous conversations about what someone was wearing or their sexual history, it simply is not relevant.

As to why this is funny and not offensive. It’s not seeking to trivialise or banalize anything, it’s finding the humour in a horrible state of affairs (that many women simply don’t feel safe doing various activities because of the very thing that makes them female).

2)      When The Onion gets the point so perfectly.

Oh I do love you, The Onion. See Frankie Boyle, this is OPAQUE humour that is worthwhile and well crafted, it can be done.

3)      Anyone who has had the experience of rape trying to come to terms with it through humour and finding the ridiculous in the ghastly.

Humour is cathartic and it can be so healing to deal with things through laughter. I’ve had a google looking for examples of this, but I’ve struggled to find any. I suppose that’s because this kind of humour isn’t done for validation or a great big pat on the back for being “such a top jokes-smith!” It really is done amongst friends for the quiet satisfaction of knowing that this isn’t something that’s broken you. I think that’s probably a more valid reason for invoking this subject than making that rabid Mock the Week Audience clap like the pack of howling dogs they truly are.

So as we can see, there’s a relatively small selection of times when it’s an acceptable topic.

Now here’s a far from exhaustive list of examples that are not permissible that I came across at my time in one of the call centres this summer.

Thumbs Down:

1)      “Which man would you really like to be raped by?” as a question directed to anyone, but especially any female co-workers.

Pretty sure you need to go away and look up “rape” in the dictionary. There’s been a fundamental lack of understanding somewhere along the line. Perhaps that is where all this trouble stems from? Bit less time watching South Park, more time learning English, eh lads? I know you also hated it when I used the word “prolific” amongst others, claiming it was “gay”, but sometimes a rudimentary comprehension of English can really work in your favour.

2)      Getting right into your female colleague’s face and whispering “What would you do if I raped you?”

I mean, this is barely a joke. It’s only included because of the pants-pissing and back-slapping that went on after this was hissed at me, meant they found humour in it somewhere. This is just  a threat/harassment really, isn’t it? And no, I’m not some “humourless bitch” who’s “too sensitive” because I went fucking insane at those who said it to me. I’m just not and if you can’t see why that’s the case, then I’ll just have to fetch the staple gun right now.

3)      Telling a different female colleague who’d had her drink spiked, but not been attacked, that she “must have been a bit upset that the date rapist obviously didn’t fancy her enough to see it through”.

Again, YOU HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD THE BASIC PREMISE OF THE CRIME.

Anyway, I like to think I won a small victory in changing attitudes when one of the boys was boasting about how he’d made his girlfriend scream and cry by wiping his dick round her face whilst she was sleeping. Not in a sexual way, you understand, just in a sort of humiliation way. So I said “commit much low level assault of an evening?”

And his eyes raised upwards in pensive fashion and he uttered the words:

I suppose that is assault, isn’t it?

All hope is not lost after all.