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Lindy West
7/12/12 1:30pm •
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Hello, precious flowers. I know it's been a difficult couple days for all of us,
what with certain people interrupting certain other people (so rude!) and certain
other people suggesting that said interruptors deserve to be hilariously gang-
raped (so edgy!). In case you're not caught up: comedian Daniel Tosh made
some rape jokes at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood, a female audience member
informed him that "rape jokes are never funny," in retribution Tosh said it
would be hilarious if she were gang-raped right there in the club, then Twitter
went fucking nuts. If you want more information, just google
"UUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH" and click on whatever.

Daniel Tosh Is Sorry He Told a Female Audience Member That She Should Get
Hilariously Raped
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How to Make a Rape Joke https://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke
Professional sayer of stupid shit Tosh.0 jackanapes Daniel Tosh says a lot of
things that…

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At this point, the conversation has devolved into two polarized camps: outraged
feminists arguing that "rape jokes are never funny," and defensive comics
wailing about how the "thought police" is "silencing" them. (The owner of the
Laugh Factory disputes the account, explaining that Tosh made a rape
"comment" and not a rape "joke," but that's pretty much irrelevant to the
larger point here.) Here's the problem: everybody is wrong. I actually agree with
Daniel Tosh's sentiment in his shitty back-pedaling tweet ("The point I was
making before I was heckled is there are awful things in the world but you can
still make jokes about them #deadbabies"). The world is full of terrible things,
including rape, and it is okay to joke about them. But the best comics use their
art to call bullshit on those terrible parts of life and make them better, not
worse. The key—unless you want to be called a garbage-flavored dick on the
internet by me and other humans with souls and brains—is to be a responsible
person when you construct your jokes. Since the nuances of personal
responsibility seem to escape so many people, let's go through it. Let's figure
out rape jokes.

Male comics: this is not an issue of your oppression. You guys know that
"thought police" isn't a real thing, right? (I mean, not anymore—it was the first
thing to go in the recession.) At no point in time will some shimmery grandpa-
of-the-future say, "When I was your age, Timmy, we had these things called
'jokes.' But then they came for our rape humor and our racism, so comedy died
and chuckles were abolished." I'm pretty sure there are a couple of jokes out
there that don't involve a lady getting raped. Like 100 at least! Hooray, comedy
is saved! Nobody is taking away your right to talk about rape, make jokes about
rape, or use the word "rape." No cunty feminist killjoy is citizen's-arresting you
and taking you to brain jail for your shitty rape joke.

It's unlikely but, say, after all this public outrage, Daniel Tosh actually does get
fired from Comedy Central. A person being removed from a position of power at
a private company (Comedy Central is not the U.S. government, FYI) after the
public speaks up is not an affront to freedom—it is integral to freedom. If you
make things that people do not like, people might stop buying your product.
That's the deal.

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In case this isn't perfectly clear yet: You can say whatever you want.

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How to Make a Rape Joke https://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke
You can say whatever you want. You can say whatever you want. You can say
whatever you want.

You can say whatever you want.

That said, a comedy club is not some sacred space. It's a guy with a microphone
standing on a stage that's only one foot above the ground. And the flip-side of
that awesome microphone power you have—wow, you can seriously say
whatever you want!—is that audiences get to react to your words however we
want. The defensive refrains currently echoing around the internet are, "You
just don't get it—comedians need freedom. That's how comedy gets made. If
you don't want to be offended, then stay out of comedy clubs." (Search for
"comedians," "freedom," "offended," and "comedy clubs" on Twitter if you
don't believe me.) You're exactly right. That is how comedy gets made. So
CONSIDER THIS YOUR FUCKING FEEDBACK. Ninety percent of your rape
material is not working, and you can tell it's not working because your audience
is telling you that they hate those jokes. This is the feedback you asked for.

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If people don't want to be offended, they shouldn't go to comedy clubs? Maybe.

But if you don't want people to react to your jokes, you shouldn't get on stage
and tell your jokes to people.

This fetishization of not censoring yourself, of being an "equal-opportunity

offender," is bizarre and bad for comedy. When did "not censoring yourself"
become a good thing? We censor ourselves all the time, because we are not
entitled, sociopathic fucks. Your girlfriend is censoring herself when she says
she's okay with you playing Xbox all day. In a way, comedy is censoring yourself
—comedy is picking the right words to say to make people laugh. A comic who
doesn't censor himself is just a dude yelling. And being an "equal opportunity
offender"—as in, "It's okay, because Daniel Tosh makes fun of ALL people:
women, men, AIDS victims, dead babies, gay guys, blah blah blah"—falls apart
when you remember (as so many of us are forced to all the time) that all people
are not in equal positions of power. "Oh, don't worry—I punch everyone in the
face! People, baby ducks, a lion, this Easter Island statue, the ocean…" Okay,
well that baby duck is dead now. And you're a duck-murderer. It's really easy to
believe that "nothing is sacred" when the sanctity of your body and your
freedom are never legitimately threatened.

According to the CDC, one in four female college students report that they've
been sexually assaulted (and when you consider how many rapes go unreported,
because of the way we shame victims and trivialize rape, the actual number is
almost certainly much higher). That means that if you're a comic performing to
a reasonably full room, there's a pretty good chance that at least one person in
the audience has been sexually assaulted. If you didn't know that, fine, now you
do. Congrats. So when you make a joke in that room that trivializes rape or
mocks rape victims, you are deliberately (because now you know!) harming those
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How to Make people.
a Rape Joke
On purpose. Not because you're a rapist—you're probably not—buthttps://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke
because you're selfish and amateurish and lazy and scared.

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The reason that "rape jokes" become such a contentious issue as opposed to,
say, "cancer jokes" or "dead baby jokes" (yawn) is because rape is different
from other horrors in some very specific ways.

Say you knew for a fact that in any given audience there was at least one person
who had been mangled in an industrial threshing accident—JUST STICK WITH
ME HERE—and that we lived in a culture where industrial threshing victims
were routinely blamed/shamed for their own death and/or disfigurement
because they wore the "wrong" overalls, and people were afraid to report
threshing accidents because the police department just employs a bunch of
threshing machines in badges and little hats anyway (and everyone knows
threshing machines protect their own), and historically humans were sold into
marriages with threshing machines where they could just be tossed in there and
chopped up willy-nilly. Oh, and also 90% of the comics in the show (yourself
included) are threshing machines too, but since you're this young, liberal brand
of threshing machine with newfangled safety guards and you fervently don't
believe in mangling humans, you think it's fair game for you to make "jokes"
about idiot humans getting their faces and limbs shredded by those more
sinister other threshing machines. But do you really think that isn't going to
traumatize the fuck out of some humans? Even if you're "joking"? If you care so
much about humans not getting threshed to death, then wouldn't you rather
just stick with, I don't know, your new material on barley chaff (hey, learn to
drive, barley chaff!)?

Part of progress is constantly reevaluating yourself and owning up to your shit.

Here, I'll start. I made a rape joke once and I genuinely regret it. Two years ago,
in my review of Sex and the City 2, I wrote:

SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working

hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it's my job—and
rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car.

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I chose "rape" on purpose at the time—because it's gendered and jarring and I
wanted to convey the severity of my disgust, as a woman, with that fucking
garbage movie. But if I wrote that review today, would I write it the same way?
Nope. I would probably write "bludgeoned." Because right now, as I see it, there
is no systematic cultural influence that leads to the mass bludgeoning of people.
I would not be contributing to a culture of bludgeoning. I, Lindy West, am sorry.
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How to Make
So, acomics.
Rape Joke
This doesn't mean that everyone is obligated to be the https://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke
savior of mankind. You can be edgy and creepy and offensive and
trivial and, yes, you can talk about rape. Doing comedy in front of a
silent room is scary, and shocking people is a really easy way to get a
reaction. But if you want people to not hate you (and wanting to not be
hated is not the same thing as wanting to be liked), you should
probably try and do it in a responsible, thoughtful way. Easy shortcut:
DO NOT MAKE RAPE VICTIMS THE BUTT OF THE JOKE.

Here are four "rape jokes" that, in my opinion, work:

1. Borat

"In Kazakhstan the favorite hobbies are disco dancing, archery, rape,
and table tennis."

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Okay. Why is that funny? Who is the butt of the joke? Rape victims?
Nah, I'd say that the butt of that joke is Kazakhstan, or, at least, the
caricature of Kazakhstan that Sasha Baron Cohen has constructed—a
borderline-medieval old world racist mud-hole. He's satirizing the
casual misogyny of a certain set of crusty old anti-Semitic post-
Soviet eastern European men in stinky suits. And I have no problem
with that. Though I could be wrong! Again: no such thing as joke
police! Culture evolves! Hooray! (This joke is almost certainly
offensive to Kazakhs, but someone else can be in charge of the anti-
Kazakh-joke manifesto.)

[Update: As several smart people have pointed out, I missed

something obvious in my reading here. The point of Borat is that he
gives people the opportunity to expose their own prejudices—the fact
that anyone is willing to take this character seriously is extremely
telling. Duh.]

2. Louis CK

"I'm not condoning rape, obviously—you should never rape anyone.

Unless you have a reason, like if you want to fuck somebody and they
won't let you."

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Here's why this joke doesn't make me feel like shit: Louis CK has

5 of 8 spent 20 years making it very publicly clear that he is on the side of 2018-11-25, 2:31 p.m.
How to Make a Rape
making Jokebetter. The oppressors never win at the
things https://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke
end of his jokes. That's why it's easy to give him the
benefit of the doubt that this joke is making fun of
rapists—specifically the absurd and horrific sense of
entitlement that accompanies taking over someone
else's body like you're hungry and it's a delicious
hoagie. The point is, only a fucking psychopath would
think like that, and the simplicity of the joke lays that
bare. That said, Louis CK is possibly the greatest
comic in the world, but that does not mean that he is
always right. I think even Louis CK would tell you
that. And I guarantee you he puts himself and his
audience through at least this level of scrutiny on
every joke. That's why the jokes are good.

3. John Mulaney

"Late at night, on the street, women will see me as a

threat. That is funny—yeah! That is funny. It's kind of
flattering in its own way, but at the same time it's
weird because, like, I'm still afraid of being
kidnapped."

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Comedians are just people telling stories about the

world, and it is okay to laugh at horror and talk
candidly about ugliness. This is one of the best "rape
jokes" ever, because it's an honest commentary on
our fucked-up cultural climate. The butt of the joke is
John Mulaney. The woman running away from John
Mulaney is not being mocked. This is a joke about
how scary it is to be a woman and how easy it is for
men to be oblivious. This joke is helpful.

4. Ever Mainard

"The problem is that every woman in her entire life

has that one moment when you think, 'Oh! Here's my
rape!'"

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How to Make a Rape Joke https://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke
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Pretty simple: This isn't a joke about

women getting raped—it's a joke
about the way that rape culture,
which includes rape jokes, makes
women feel. It's like the difference
between a black comic telling a joke
about how it feels to have white
people treat you like you're stupid all
the time vs. a white comic telling a
joke about how stupid black people
are.

So there you go. See? Nobody is

saying that you can't talk about rape.
Just be a fucking decent person about
it or relinquish the moral high
ground and be okay with making the
world worse.

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I'm not a comic, but I've done

comedy (and told jokes I regret), I've
lived with comics, I've dated comics,
I write jokes for a living, and I've had
both transcendent and crushing
experiences in comedy clubs. I'm not
saying all of this because I hate
comedy—I'm saying it because I love
comedy and I want comedy to be
accessible to everyone. And right
now, comedy as a whole is overtly
hostile toward women. I remember
the (brief) vicarious thrill I felt the
first time I saw Anthony Jeselnik say
abusive things with shameless cheer,
and I was an Adam Carolla and
Howard Stern apologist for years. I
get it. But I'm a grown-up now, I'm
slightly sheepish about my younger
self, and I'd wager that in 15 years
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How to Make a Rape
most of theJoke
rape-joke https://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke
apologists will be
embarrassed that this
conversation even
happened.

Hey, Men, I'm

Funnier Than
You
Oh, great! Let's
talk some more
about how
women aren't
funny. Science
has performed
yet…

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