Rebecca Solnit; If Rape Jokes Are Finally Funny It's Because They're Targeting Rape Culture

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/31782-focus-if-rape-jokes-are-finally-funny-its-because-theyre-targeting-rape-culture

Amy Schumer’s show on Comedy Central has featured a Cosby skit or two – one in which she’s his defense attorney trying to convince the jurors they love “America’s dad” and pudding and the rest of it more than they love truth and justice. It ends with a twist: an offstage Cosby sends Schumer a drink in thanks and she looks at it in consternation – and then tosses it over her shoulder.

But the pinnacle of all rape jokes at the rapists’ expense has to be the Amy Schumer show’s Football Town Nights parody of Friday Night Lights (the TV show about high-school football in Texas) an even more scathing parody of the logic of rape culture. The late April skit features a new coach trying to teach his boys not to rape, to their incomprehension and the resentment of the community. Schumer just plays a good wife to the coach, showing up mutely with larger and larger glasses of white wine as things go from bad to worse at his new job.

At the outset the football team in the locker room tries to find loopholes in the coach’s “no rape’ rule. “Can we rape at away games?” No. “What if it’s Halloween and she’s dressed like a sexy cat?” No. “What if she thinks it’s rape and I don’t?” Still no. “What if my mom is the DA” – district attorney – “and won’t prosecute, can I rape?” “If the girl said yes to me the other day, but it was about something else?” “What if the girl says yes and then changes her mind out of nowhere, like a crazy person?”

These arguments are exactly the kind you get on college campuses and comments sections too, the refusal to recognize the limits to men’s rights or the existence of women’s. It’s followed by an excellent, appalling scene in which middle-aged ladies spit at the coach for not letting “our boys” have their rightful rapes. The whole skit is a funny rape joke – about what irrational, any-excuse jerks would-be rapists are and how much communities support some of those jerks. It’s about, in short, not a joke about rape (no rapes take place in the skit) but rape culture. The tables have turned.

[ismnotwasm]

1. Thing about rape jokes

Is they're too often directed toward a rape victim's expense for a punchline. The only way they're "funny" is to target Rape culture. And usually not even then--and certainly not for many actual victims.

[roody]

2. Knr