I'm never sure how much what I read on the Internet is the same as what other people read on the Internet, but I follow
Andrea Grimes on Twitter, and she recently posted:
So, I clicked through and read
this horrible story about a woman who fled a comedy show after Daniel Tosh joked about how it would be funny if she - the woman in the audience, who paid money to attend his show - were to be "raped by like, 5 guys right now?"
And then of course, Twitter blew up - or at least my version of Twitter blew up - and I was reminded of
this salient piece that addresses men - well, people in general really - who don't think the rape jokes are a problem. I don't remember when I first read it, but it hit a nerve.
"Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape."
Now, I'll confess to be dubious about the statistic "6% of college-aged men will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys." And you'll notice that the link in the original article is broken. So I searched just that statistic. The best info I could find was from
a men's rights site that purports to transcribe the questions. Taking the site as its word, and in all fairness, the first question is pretty awful. I'd love to know the statistical breakdown of the remaining three questions that all characterize sex with someone "who did not want to" (i.e. rape). But there's no way to know.
I don't really have a whole lot of commentary on this one, other than to say, rape isn't funny, jokes about it serve to support rape culture, and you all should read these links.
