The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

I like to think of myself as having a pretty good sense of humor. I like to laugh, and I like to make other people laugh. One of my earliest memories is of a childhood attempt to drink orange pop through my nose at my sister’s birthday party. What can I say? Sometimes you have to suffer for your art.

My favorite joke of all time is really more of a groaner. It has a long build up, and it is, I kid you not, about a talking duck. I can’t tell the joke without cracking up. Nobody else ever laughs at it. It sometimes hurts my feelings that nobody else loves this duck joke. And yet, you know what I don’t do? I very rarely threaten physical harm to the people who don’t find my joke funny. I don’t think I’ve ever threatened to rape someone for not laughing at it. What’s up with that?

I was having kind of a crappy day yesterday. I’m on vacation, recharging at the end of a tough year. So I was watching old episodes of Xena and screwing around on Facebook, and I stumble across a post by the inestimable George Takei. For those of you who might not know, George Takei is awesome. After making a name for himself as Mr. Sulu on the original series of Star Trek, he has garnered a whole new set of fans through his subversive, goofy, and provocative comedy, often aimed at bigots and homophobes. Yay!

Last night, however, he posted a joke that really rubbed me the wrong way.

I’m told that it was from a TV show that I’ve never seen, and that the context tempers the wording somewhat. I honestly don’t care much. The initial joke struck me, and a significant minority of other readers, as being sort of insensitive, effectively minimizing and normalizing date rape and engaging in victim blaming (the discussion of women’s culpability for what happens to them after drinking will not be addressed in this post, feel free to go at it in the comments). A number of people made comments indicating that they didn’t find the joke funny and why, many indicating that they were a little disappointed in George Takei for posting it in the first place.

Honestly, I don’t give a crap about the joke itself. It wasn’t my cup of tea. Fine. But there are three types of jokes: those that reinforce cultural learning, those that subvert and call into question cultural learning, and those that are purely silly without much larger meaning, usually playing into very simple ironies and defying very straightforward expectations.

Do I think that some subjects are purely beyond the pale, and totally inappropriate as fodder for comedy? No. I think that everything is fair game. I just wish people would pay attention to their comedic intent. When you make a joke about a sensitive subject, are you trying to promote a particular idea, to subvert an existing idea, or are you just voicing the dominant cultural narrative? So, sure. I think rape jokes can be funny. Assuming they’re about subverting the dominant cultural paradigm about rape. As an aside, Takei himself has made what I consider to be a funny and subversive rape joke before, playing not on actual rape, but on the homophobic fear of predatory gay lust.

So yeah, I was a little put off by this post by someone who I thought really understood how to use humor to promote social change. But what really made me lose all hope for humanity was the comment section (as per usual). Keep in mind, this is Facebook. The majority of these people were posting these comments with their names and pictures right there, publicly and without anonymity.

The comments ranged from “I don’t get what’s wrong with this”, to “I didn’t get that she was passed out, but if she’s drunk it’s okay,” to “Who cares if she’s passed out, drunk sluts FTW,” to “I miss my frat house,” to “Commenter X needs to get laid,” to “Commenter X must have been raped, ha ha,” to “humorless feminists should get raped,” to “what’s wrong with you, bitch, you need me to fuck you until you bleed?” All but that last one were coming from both male and female commenters, by the way. Why on earth would this stuff be acceptable to say under any circumstances? How secure in your sense of women as second class citizens would you have to be to want to put those sentiments out in public with your name attached to them? Why is this simply accepted as what happens when someone says “rape jokes aren’t funny?” This is certainly not what happens when someone says “talking duck jokes aren’t funny.”

It happens because this is NOT subversive humor. What is subversive is objecting to this line of humor; people who try to undermine the dominant cultural narrative must be beaten down. It happens because people will defend their perceived right to rape. And people will defend their right to think that rape victims deserved it, and thus were worthy of ridicule. I get why people do that, ridicule rape victims. It makes them feel safe, it distances them from suffering. When I was raped the most upsetting aspect of the situation was the knowledge that I was now a part of a club that I had never wanted to belong to, that I now had to think of myself as wearing the “rape victim” label, as having diminished agency. So I can see why you might want to see rape victims as having brought it on themselves. I can see why you might want to say this kind of reprehensible crap about people who have the gall to… what? Not laugh at a joke?

I get it. I really do. Nobody wants to give up their power, or their sense of safety. And I don’t mean to be sanctimonious, but a joke like this reinforces cultural narratives about rape. And spawns discussions like that comment section, which normalize victim blaming around rape. And makes guys like that feel even more comfortable threatening women they disagree with, with rape. And nothing bad happens as a result of those threats. How can that not reinforce the idea that rape is a consequence-free action? That is how these jokes perpetuate rape culture. So maybe we shouldn’t let rape threats in comment sections and online harassment of female commenters slide. Maybe we shouldn’t look the other way when people victim blame in comment threads. Maybe we shouldn’t laugh at rape jokes. And maybe we should think twice about whether our comedy serves our values or whether it works against them.