To all those who donât think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem.
I get it, youâre a decent guy. I can even believe it. Youâve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. Youâre upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something or connect you to doing something that, as far as youâre concerned, youâve never done and would never condone.
And theyâve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you canât let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?
So fine. If all those arguments arenât going anything for you, let me tell you this. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you donât want to hurt anybody, and you donât see the harm, and that itâs important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.
Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down-
6% of college age men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word ârapeâ isnât used in the description of the act.
6% of Penny Arcadeâs target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked.
A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. Thatâs not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?
Rapists do.
They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.
Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.
If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You canât tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. Itâs not like they announce themselves.
But, hereâs the thing. Itâs very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didnât mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.
And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?
That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.
You. The rapistâs comrade.
And if that doesnât make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesnât make you want to throw up, if that doesnât disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymoreâŚ
Well, maybe you arenât as opposed to rapists as you claim.