Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
You made a joke.
Rape Academy
- Thread starter DaveC426913
- Start date
That works since you can define "broken" how you like.
But in any case, I think a good goal would be to unbreak people, and change how we teach kids so they don't break in the first place.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
The point is: it's not a "them over there" thing. You can't wall them off on the other side of the street and say it's somebody else's problem. It's the population.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
I recounted a joke, for argument's sake.
Also, don't get me wrong. I'm not proffering a zero-tolerance policy for all off-colour personal humour everywhere. It's not like I'm judging you as a perv every time you make a crack about women in the company of your friends. I'm not black and white on this.
There is a time and place and audience for the kind of humour that is not intended for public consumption.
What we're talking about here is public, widespread, institutionalized sexism. In the workplace, at the club, in the media, everywhere.
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
Perhaps a concrete example is helpful in such discussions. Here is a sexist joke, in the sense that it may rely on sexual stereotypes. See what you think:
A mother is in the kitchen making dinner for her family when her daughter walks in.
“Mother, where do babies come from?”
The mother thinks for a few seconds and says, “Well dear, Mommy and Daddy fall in love and get married. One night they go into their bedroom, they kiss and hug, and have sex.”
The daughter looks puzzled so the mother continues, “That means the daddy puts his penis in the mommy’s vagina. That’s how you get a baby, honey.”
The child seems to comprehend. “Oh, I see, but the other night when I came into your room you had daddy’s penis in your mouth. What do you get when you do that?”
“Jewelry, my dear. Jewelry.”
A mother is in the kitchen making dinner for her family when her daughter walks in.
“Mother, where do babies come from?”
The mother thinks for a few seconds and says, “Well dear, Mommy and Daddy fall in love and get married. One night they go into their bedroom, they kiss and hug, and have sex.”
The daughter looks puzzled so the mother continues, “That means the daddy puts his penis in the mommy’s vagina. That’s how you get a baby, honey.”
The child seems to comprehend. “Oh, I see, but the other night when I came into your room you had daddy’s penis in your mouth. What do you get when you do that?”
“Jewelry, my dear. Jewelry.”
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
That would be a lewd joke. Not sure I'd call it sexist.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
But it's saying women are gold diggers at heart. Is that not demeaning them?
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Are they? Because of jokes?
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Right. I heard a joke when I was at university, it's a rape joke. A joke about rape, just to be clear.
Female student runs into police station.
"Officers I've just been raped by two Engineering students."
Police. "You know them?"
Victim. "No."
Police. "How do you know they are engineering students."
Victim. "I had to do all the work."
I remembered this trying think of Stephen Hawking jokes (no luck so far )
At the time I did not get the joke although I thought it was funny. Why? I did not realise there was in jokes about different departments, so targeting Engineers to me was fun intimating they were lazy to that extent.
What sort of idea would that put in someone's head? Rape is trivial so we can make jokes about it? I don't think it's trivial, I think it's a heinous crime but I find that joke funny.
Thoughts?
Female student runs into police station.
"Officers I've just been raped by two Engineering students."
Police. "You know them?"
Victim. "No."
Police. "How do you know they are engineering students."
Victim. "I had to do all the work."
I remembered this trying think of Stephen Hawking jokes (no luck so far )
At the time I did not get the joke although I thought it was funny. Why? I did not realise there was in jokes about different departments, so targeting Engineers to me was fun intimating they were lazy to that extent.
What sort of idea would that put in someone's head? Rape is trivial so we can make jokes about it? I don't think it's trivial, I think it's a heinous crime but I find that joke funny.
Thoughts?
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
What is more relevant is sexism and sexist jokes. The 1970s was awash with sex in humour via TV in the UK and the Carry on films are a good example, Yanks will not be able to relate to it. I have no idea what they would make of it now because it's so alien and they had no equivalent to my knowledge.
Today watching it (in my head) it's crass, teenage, obvious cringe jokes, slap stick (not funny) full of innuendo and overtly sexual.
Some parts are funny from memory but it hasn't aged that well.
It is part of our entertainment heritage, the first was 1958 and the stars all became national treasures, Sid James, Barbara Windsor, Terry Thomas, Kenneth Williams, Bob Monkhouse.
I think this is the kind of entertainment the modern feminist attitude to men, sex, sexism and rape is based on.
Today watching it (in my head) it's crass, teenage, obvious cringe jokes, slap stick (not funny) full of innuendo and overtly sexual.
Some parts are funny from memory but it hasn't aged that well.
It is part of our entertainment heritage, the first was 1958 and the stars all became national treasures, Sid James, Barbara Windsor, Terry Thomas, Kenneth Williams, Bob Monkhouse.
I think this is the kind of entertainment the modern feminist attitude to men, sex, sexism and rape is based on.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Yes I mentioned reading the room a while back.
Murder is heinous, too, but it's unabashedly all over the place in literature, plays, movies/shows, and computer games especially (where participants directly get a rush from committing the bloodshed by proxy). Doesn't seem to have the prominence that sex does in jokes, though.
Curiously, I keep hearing about all kinds of sordid material in "fan fiction" of the sci-fi & fantasy stripe. Which is odd, since supposedly most of it even today is still written by women. Have never sampled it -- either old or new, so I don't know what's really transpiring there.
Instead of sex workers and dominatrixes turning to creative, alt-publishing ventures later in life, maybe it could be a radical feminist motive to illustrate via stories how vile and criminally reprehensible men are. That is misinterpreted by superficial onlookers as attention-garnering exploitation.
I just don't know. Formal sources apparently do not reference and investigate that characteristic or sub-current of FF specifically, so the information and reputation is purely through unfiltered non-establishment discourse. (Vaguely akin to Jack Kerouac exploring in the late 1940s-1950s various "underground" cultures that the mainstream either ignored or pretended didn't exist.)
- FanFiction#history: Unlike other aspects of fandom, women were the primary authors of fan fiction; 83% of Star Trek fan fiction authors were female by 1970, and 90% by 1973. One scholar states that fan fiction "fills the need of a mostly female audience for fictional narratives that expand the boundary of the official source products offered on the television and movie screen."
Last edited:
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
Well, that one is transgressive, so one would have to read the room for sure. Even then, though the punch line is funny, I would be tempted to change rape to mugging in retelling it. As it is, you have a woman assisting in her own rape, a concept that is more than just a cringe. And does trivialize the experience, so....echhh. No, don't think I'd want to tell that one.
Mine was, as you observed, was sexist in that it called on the notion that women are transactional about giving sexual favors. Less cringey, but still one to read the room first. And as DaveC426913 notes, it's pretty lewd.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
What it does is normalize rape as funny. This smooths the way to some people (men) thinking that their own attitudes toward women are not as bad as all that.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
I think it dehumanises engineers.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
It's in bad taste, near the knuckle, pushing the boundaries, that's what comedy is.
Anyone with any moral compass would grimace a little, they may find it funny if they were STEM student, I did.
I did not reassess rape in anyway, no normal person would.
Disabled people? No, disabled people are not attacked at the same rate women are raped.
But note that there are some things we have agreed as a society to not do anymore because they are harmful. For example you won't (publicly) hear jokes about "dumb n*ggers" any more because we've agreed, as a society that that sort of racism is a problem. Even if it's "just a joke." I think we should apply that sort of thinking to the issue of violence against women as well.
That is VERY close to the "black people use the word n*gger so why can't I use it?" argument.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
I would never use it, Chris Rock explained that one.
If going by the view at the bottom, then... Whether preying on physical or cognitive vulnerability, humour seems to fundamentally be about perversely recruiting threats or hollow aggression for social bonding. Even genuine sadistic laughter falls into the latter if there are like-minded psychos nearby joining in on their mutual enjoyment of suffering.
While humour revolving around self-deprecation does not target someone else, society does get alarmed at those indulging in self-harm, with the maximum example being suicide. IOW, even when the joker is the victim, it's still utilizing "attack" in amusement context for generating connection and camaraderie.
For professional comedians, of course, it's a career, a livelihood. They provide the audience with a service that has arguably been contorted from "bonding" to "distraction" from everyday vexations. Albeit the spectators may still get a slight communal buzz from it even if they have no interest in establishing fellowship with each other.
The point being that humour in general would probably be interpreted as pathological and barbaric to reason-oriented Vulcans that are emotionally constrained. Our use of "human sacrifices" to facilitate tribal cohesiveness, even if the ritual beatings are bogus or illusory. Still, like liquor or recreational drugs, humans are not to stop doing it, and utopian impulses to end it would most likely abysmally fail in a similar vein to noble Marxist crusaders trying to squash capitalism.
The origins of humor
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/laughter-and-humor-101/202308/the-origins-of-humor
EXCERPTS: Laughter can be traced back roughly 16 million years to the common ancestor of both great apes and humans.
[...] It’s been well-established that modern Great Apes purposefully tickle other members of their social group. Tickling, while seemingly a rather innocuous component of physical play, does, in fact, constitute a rudimentary form of humor. It’s a means of intentionally creating a sense of physical vulnerability in another, thereby soliciting self-lifting laughter. It’s no different than telling a riddle to impart a sense of cognitive vulnerability or relaying a bit of embarrassing gossip to highlight someone’s social vulnerability.
Tickling another implies a sense of dominance over them and, simultaneously, one’s reluctance to take full advantage of it. These halfhearted attacks actually serve (in the long run, at least) to promote greater trust between the participants.
Outside traditional play bouts, however, there are, as most human parents and caregivers will attest, other motivations for tickling. It can, for example, be used as a way of distracting others. Is such a strategy employed by other Great Apes? It would seem so, as this exact behavior has been observed in wild chimpanzees. Jane Goodall (van Lawick-Goodall, 1971) describes two instances of mothers (Olly and Flo) distracting their young daughters (Gilka and Fifi).
_
While humour revolving around self-deprecation does not target someone else, society does get alarmed at those indulging in self-harm, with the maximum example being suicide. IOW, even when the joker is the victim, it's still utilizing "attack" in amusement context for generating connection and camaraderie.
For professional comedians, of course, it's a career, a livelihood. They provide the audience with a service that has arguably been contorted from "bonding" to "distraction" from everyday vexations. Albeit the spectators may still get a slight communal buzz from it even if they have no interest in establishing fellowship with each other.
The point being that humour in general would probably be interpreted as pathological and barbaric to reason-oriented Vulcans that are emotionally constrained. Our use of "human sacrifices" to facilitate tribal cohesiveness, even if the ritual beatings are bogus or illusory. Still, like liquor or recreational drugs, humans are not to stop doing it, and utopian impulses to end it would most likely abysmally fail in a similar vein to noble Marxist crusaders trying to squash capitalism.
The origins of humor
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/laughter-and-humor-101/202308/the-origins-of-humor
EXCERPTS: Laughter can be traced back roughly 16 million years to the common ancestor of both great apes and humans.
[...] It’s been well-established that modern Great Apes purposefully tickle other members of their social group. Tickling, while seemingly a rather innocuous component of physical play, does, in fact, constitute a rudimentary form of humor. It’s a means of intentionally creating a sense of physical vulnerability in another, thereby soliciting self-lifting laughter. It’s no different than telling a riddle to impart a sense of cognitive vulnerability or relaying a bit of embarrassing gossip to highlight someone’s social vulnerability.
Tickling another implies a sense of dominance over them and, simultaneously, one’s reluctance to take full advantage of it. These halfhearted attacks actually serve (in the long run, at least) to promote greater trust between the participants.
Outside traditional play bouts, however, there are, as most human parents and caregivers will attest, other motivations for tickling. It can, for example, be used as a way of distracting others. Is such a strategy employed by other Great Apes? It would seem so, as this exact behavior has been observed in wild chimpanzees. Jane Goodall (van Lawick-Goodall, 1971) describes two instances of mothers (Olly and Flo) distracting their young daughters (Gilka and Fifi).
_
Last edited:
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
It's the same thing.