You Had To Be There: Rape Jokes

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I ask him whether he thought it odd that the prime minister's office got involved. "I think it is, but I don't know who fuels that fire," he says. "The great thing about comedy is it's not accountable. Is there a prefect of comedy that decides what can and can't be said? It wasn't broadcast. People came to the gig, and two people out of 9,000 that weekend – and I've told it to 100,000 people so far on the tour – said, 'I didn't pay to hear this kind of rubbish.' But they did pay to hear that: they paid to be in that room with that group of people. They found one joke offensive because it applied to them [he thinks they had a friend or family member who had been wounded], but everything else in the show that was horribly offensive they laughed at."

He forgot to wrap his Whopper. 50. After death, what is the only organ in the female body which remains warm? They believe it is only based on physicality, but I opened their minds to the fact that sexual harassment can also happen through words, and the way one sees things,” he said. An anti-rape poster designed by one of Isaac’s students. It reads ‘Rape is Rape – Don’t mislabel it’ [Courtesy of Stephen Isaac] Isaac also explained that he invited his students to produce posters on sexual harassment that he then shared on social media. There is a special irony in a major stand-up comic becoming the butt of jokes based on allegations of misogynist behavior. It marks the rise of feminist comedy in the mainstream and the weakening of rape culture. There is no more clear changing of the guard than this. Not only was his show cancelled, but his tour was also axed. A spokesperson for Academy Music Group (AMG) said the company thought about the future of Dapper Laughs 'Full Length' live tour in light of the criticism. They later confirmed all 12 dates on the tour had been cancelled.There is no easy answer to this question. It depends on a lot of factors, including the person telling the joke, the context in which the joke is told, and the audience that is hearing the joke. Some people might find a certain rape joke to be funny, while others might find it to be completely offensive. It all comes down to personal opinion. Ruth Davison, the chief executive of Refuge, said: “Not only have the Metropolitan police again been found using horrific, misogynistic language, some officers appear to be bragging about committing domestic abuse themselves. So within the context of rape jokes, what are we laughing at? – what we really believe about rape and rape victims? Or are we laughing about our own prejudices, or the myths that surround rape? Are we laughing at the victim? The rapist?

On the other hand, other research has found that people who laugh at rape jokes are not necessarily more likely to condone sexual violence. In one study, for example, participants who found rape jokes funnier were not more likely to agree with statements such as “rape is often excusable” or “a woman who goes home with a man on their first date deserves whatever happens to her.”The IOPC said the behaviour was part of an offensive Met police culture, not just rogue individuals. “We believe these incidents are not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’.” I would love to be able to walk around and go to school, without hearing someone make an insensitive joke about rape. One of the most infuriating things to experience is when people say, “Can’t you take a joke?”, “Lighten up!”, or “You don’t have a sense of humor!”. These jokes have absolutely nothing to do with your sense of humor, and everything to do with the normalization of rape in our culture today. I am not sure that a lucrative career in rape gags is more helpful than a failed one, but the rape hum seems eternal. And why not? As the US comedian Sarah Silverman says: "Who is going to complain about rape jokes? Rape victims? They barely even report rape." In other words: when everyone has calmed down from whatever happened before the joke was made, there is less tension in the room, and it’s easier to laugh about it . No! Let me tell you!” his mother retorts. “At this very moment, there are gunshots all around us. The neighborhood is a pile of rubble. Your two brothers were beaten within an inch of their lives last week, and I have to keep your sister in the house so she doesn’t get raped!”

When presented with a series of sexist jokes, men harboring high levels of hostile sexism reported greater rape proclivity in moderately violent rape scenarios if a woman told the jokes than if a man told them. This rape proclivity was not limited to the specific woman described in the scenario, but generalized towards women as a whole. Or what about the Filipino comedian who made a gang-rape joke about a local newscaster, or the “just wait, it’ll be all over soon” reference at the E3 video-game convention, or the Emma Watson “rapey” debate in “This Is the End”? 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.

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Ain’s experience showed her teacher’s misogyny was far from unusual and #MakeSchoolASaferPlace grew. Women and girls shared harrowing personal accounts of sexual harassment – from slapping and pinching to rape threats and body-shaming – all perpetrated by male students and educators. 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.

The IOPC said those officers who knew about the messages had been afraid to challenge or report it, and those who did were “harassed, humiliated and excluded. Challenging sexual harassment led to additional problems. Four women have come forward to accuse Russell of sexual assualt between 2006 and 2013. The allegations have been investigated by The Sunday Times as part of its joint investigation with Channel 4's Dispatches programme. Sound too strong for a discussion about jokes? Comedian and psychology instructor Wheeler has a routine in his act, drawing on his academic studies, that shows just how deeply comedy – and gender roles – can cut, while also making a point about rape jokes. And the response is, of course no one can imagine that,” he says. “Because that’s what privilege looks like.”Rusell has denied all allegations and insisted that his relationships have all been consensual. Among the claims, is that the star raped a woman in Los Angeles on July 1 2012, which happens to be the exact same month he was legally divorced from singer Katy Perry. Their marriage lasted two years between 2010 and 2012. Stephen Isaac, a 35-year-old biology teacher at Methodist Boys Sentul, a government secondary school for boys in Kuala Lumpur, recently made national headlines for discussing sexual harassment and Ain’s case during a biology class. Comedy ideally brings people together’ says PJ, ‘that’s where the magic is’. People go to comedy nights to escape their boring/awful/depressing/traumatic lives, not to be reminded of it. He told me about how jokes about the recession in 2008 fell flat due to the audience not wanting to hear about something they were trying to get away from for one night a week. It wasn’t funny for them. Targeting potentially vulnerable audience members does not bring people together. It isolates.