to think that rape jokes just aren't funny?

[EvilVampireFrog]

And to wonder why professional comedians are using them as a staple part of their act?

Went to a comedy night at the weekend, 10 comedians doing 10 mins each.

6 of them used rape jokes.

9 of the 10 were men.

I am just thinking about this - the comedy I really enjoy is pretty offensive to religious people - Tim Minchin, for example.

So I appreciate that people find different things funny.

I can't understand why jokes about rape/ sexual assualt are EVER funny though. I was at a loss to understand why I was sitting stony faced, while almost everyone else in the room was roaring with laughter.

(My friend had a titter, then caught my eye, and caught himself on!)

AIBU? Am I in such a minority here?

When I was still at 6th form college a couple of years ago there was this girl in our circle of friends, but I couldn't stand her. She was telling us about what she did at the weekend, she'd been mucking about in the park and was covered in grass and grass stains, she caught the bus and the driver asked what she had been doing to which she replied "Oh I've just been raped hahahaha" And my response to that?
Me - "Hahahaha (fake sarcastic laugh) yes because rape is just one big joke isn't it? My auntie was raped twice, the second just 3 weeks after the first, and in her own home. My best friend was raped at 15, 9 months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Still think rape is funny?"
Her - "Mumble sorry mumble mumble "

yanbu

and what rhubarb said

if these "comedians" were making "jokes" about the rapists and not the victims, it would be different

the "laugh" is misplaced, I think that is what makes many people uncomfortable with rape, incest, child abuse etc etc being seen as a source of good olefashioned fun

and what pisses me off is that, to some people, if you fail to find it funny that you are the one with a SOH failure

I don't think anyone has the right to decide what others may or may not laugh at. I enjoy humour that pushes at taboos; the shock value of "you can't say that!"

I don't like the sort of humour that comes from mocking people, e.g. imitating a person's voice, or calling on people in the audience to laugh at them. I find that much more offensive than drawing up a hypothetical situation and taking the piss out of it.

Therefore, I don't watch things that I don't find funny - nobody has to.

But humour has been used to render the subject powerless. In wartime Britain we took the piss out of Hitler to disarm him, to make him seem less of a threat. That's what rape jokes are doing, they are debasing the subject and perpetuating the notion that being a woman equals having sex. If people laugh at a rape victim then what does that tell you about how rape is viewed in society?

I note that many comedians would poke fun at the catholic church and the child abuse scandals, but they would be laughing at the church, NOT the children who were abused. Because everyone knows that child abuse is never and can never be the fault of the child. Because children are NOT put on this earth to satisfy sexual cravings. Yet it's ok to suggest that women are?

yy Rhubarb, I think you've got to the heart of it

YANBU to not like them.
YABU to think other people won't find it funny.