*Trigger warning*
I appreciate all of the conversation happening around LOLZRapeGate2012. I really do. Never has there been such a potent mix of characters – somehow strange and stereotypical — thrown into the same spotlight. Daniel Tosh, bloggers, rapists, Louis CK, Jon Stewart, Sarah Silverman, humorless feminists, and hilarious feminists alike are all finding themselves drawing, erasing, and then redrawing the lines of their boundaries around what it means to be funny, politically correct, and socially responsible. In my eyes, that’s a net positive, and in fact much of the dialogue that emerged from Tosh’s terrible “joke” has been really important and is certainly adding to the national, and maybe even global, dialogue around rape culture.
That being said, now might be a good time to remind you guys that offensive and terrible rape jokes also exist ON THEIR FACE. So while it’s all fine and good to debate the merits of so-called “grey-area” (forgive me) rape jokes, meaning those committed by people who ostensibly do not think earnestly raping people is a good idea, it’s also probably a good idea to keep in mind that there are people out there who genuinely do find the idea of actual rape funny.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Screenshot of the recently hacked site feminism.org via Buzzfeed.
Thankfully, I don’t have to remind you of that, because some misogynistic jackasses did it for me.
Last night, feminism.org was hacked. And the results weren’t pretty. As is often the case when internet anonymity meets misogynistic cowards, rape jokes in all their uglyy — and totally earnest — glory abound, along with gross racial slurs and derogatory, sexist language. A menu item on the site was changed to read “how to get raped 1 on 1″. Fake course descriptions offered include “[how to tell] rape jokes” (which, based on the extreme lack of humor displayed by the hacked site, could certainly not be taught by the hackers themselves). While the offensive content appears to have been removed at the time of this writing, the effect remains. The big takeaway? We can debate rape jokes all we want, but at the end of the day, it’s important to remember that there are people out there who use them because they actively hate feminism and women’s rights so much that they literally want to take them down.
More disgusting screenshots from the hack job over at Buzzfeed (*Trigger warning* and *NSFW).
