Reddit Rape Joker: “Let’s all use this as a learning experience.”
Every few days, it seems, Reddit has some thread asking the regulars there what horrible thing they would do if they could get away with it. And invariably someone says rape.
The good folks in ShitRedditSays recently highlighted one such comment, from a fellow calling himself nickfromredcliff. As you can see from the edits to his comment below, poor Nick felt somewhat embarrassed and even affronted by the attention.
When I checked his comment again this morning while writing this post, I found he’d edited it again. Gone was his plaintive plea for tolerance; in its place, a bunch of new rape jokes. (You can find a screenshot of his original comment here; at the time it had 39 upvotes.)
Let’s all use this as a learning experience.
And while we’re at it, let’s have a toast for the douchebag.
Posted on May 14, 2012, in creepy, douchebaggery, dozens of upvotes, hypocrisy, misogyny, music, oppressed men, rape jokes, reddit, that's not funny!, video, YouTube. Bookmark the permalink. 115 Comments.
Ever notice how the same guys who are “only joking” when they say messed up shit about raping women are the same people who get HORRIBLY OFFENDED when people make “tiny dick” jokes or “castration jokes” or anything that might possibly IMPLY that said guy’s genitals might be the topic being “joked” about?
Cognitive disconnect much?
Also, I’d totally go for the “I’d wish to never get sick or infected with any disease ever” if I was going to fly out into HYPOTHETICAL LAND. I’d certainly be more adventurous sexually if I didn’t think that I could get infected with HPV et al (which can cause cervical cancer, is small enough to go through condoms and is fatal to women) so easily.
But then again, being able to fly- that would be even cooler. *whooosh*
I love you Futrelle. I love this vid.
When it comes to jokes, everything is fair game for me. This includes the things that personally, deeply affect me. I mean, it’s just the way I was raised, to handle difficult situations with humor. This is why we joked on my aunt’s death bed. We kind of have this inability to show our pain in public. But I’m also conscious of my company. I’m not about to throw a horribly offensive joke out to someone I don’t know and hope it sticks. It’s reserved for people who I know understand that what I’m saying is a joke.
So I can’t quite get angry at jokes. On the other hand, the dude on reddit was not making a joke, or at least not OBVIOUSLY making a joke. So when he said that, of course it wasn’t taken as a joke. And what pisses me off is that he tried to get a pass by claiming it a joke. Jokes are funny, that wasn’t funny. That was stupid. There wasn’t even really a way to take it as a joke. He was just back peddling.
whoa whoa whoa
No virus is “small enough to go through condoms”. Viruses cannot get through a latex condom, this is a myth the Christian right made up to scare people away from sexual activity. (Stuff can go through lambskin condoms though, this is why they are pretty much useless.) The reason why condoms are only about 70% effective against HPV is because HPV can be transmitted through skin-to-skin contact rather than just through body fluids and since a condom only covers the penis and not the entirety of the male genital region it can still be passed on.
http://cervicalcancer.about.com/od/riskfactorsandprevention/a/condoms_HPV.htm
I also dunno if what you meant by “fatal to women” is that cervical cancer is fatal to women, or if HPV is fatal to women. HPV infection doesn’t really do much by itself, it’s only insofar as certain types cause cancers that it is fatal. Cervical cancer is probably the most common and most fatal thing it causes, but it can also cause cancer elsewhere, and anal, penile, and oral cancers can affect men.
kladle, protection wise HPV is rather like herpes isn’t it? In that it’s not that condoms don’t offer protection, but that they live on/in the skin and thus it’s more about skin-to-skin contact than sex.
Would “without any of the consequences” include the bill? If so, back to college for me! Maybe philosophy this time, since wtf good the degree is in practice would be moot… (that’s nothing against philosophy majors, I just don’t know wtf you’d do with it besides teach)
yeah, HPV is similar to herpes in that respect.
don’t knock philosophy majors >:{
a philosophy degree is totally useful for things like…
arguing on the internet
making your existential crises much more entertaining
increasing your cynicism about politics
attracting attention from crackpots who enjoy “metaphysics”
looking like a pretentious douchewad every time you read a book in public
winning debates with your mom by appealing to your degree in philosophy
more seriously though i see a lot of people go from philosophy to computer science or law. if i remember correctly phil majors tend to be pretty successful in general in a lot of fields.
kladle — thank you for the answer, and I wasn’t trying to knock philosophy majors, just questioning wtf you do with the degree career wise…as a stepping stone to, say, law school makes a lot of sense though. It certainly makes life more amusing or I wouldn’t have said I’d get a degree in it if I didn’t have to worry about the cost
Heck, my existential crises already come with a joke about how I’m meta-analyzing my meta-analysis, and that’s with only a couple of philosophy courses, definitely more entertaining. Unfortunately my debates with my mother are more things like…pre-abortion transvaginal ultrasounds, she supports them, because abortion is murder >.< — I doubt a philosophy degree would help in debates with fundies, they much prefer appeals to god/the bible/authority.
I love you Futrelle. I love this vid..
@Puella Sapiens: You made such a good point. It seems a way too common mistake to think that a) raping a woman always leaves her completely damaged and traumatized, and b) this is why rape is bad. These presumptions are really damaging.
I hadn’t given them much thought until I read a blog by a rape survivor who claimed that she hadn’t been particularly traumatized by the rape, and argued that this is also an okay way to feel. People react differently to the same thing. It’s okay to be traumatized after a rape, but it’s absurd to think that you have an OBLIGATION to.
The idea that rape equals complete traumatization for the rest of your life means that if somebody is in okay psychological shape afterwards people might not believe them just because of this. It also means that some people are more scared of becoming “rape victims” than of rape itself, and that’s also completely fucked up. She linked to another blog where a woman described ending up alone in a house with a guy who started to seem a bit threatening. Her response was to start having sex with him with pretend enthusiasm - not because she wanted to, but enthusiastically getting into it meant she wouldn’t become a RAPE VICTIM. And she was terrifed of the prospect of being a RAPE VICTIM for the rest of her life, since we all know that rape victims are completely traumatized, unable to enjoy sex etc forever. And I can kind of understand where she’s coming from, as often we’re told this about rape victims.
I was also in a discussion on an internet board about these new drugs that, taken after a really bad event, can prevent emotional memories. Like, if you were raped and took this drug, you’re still gonna remember the events, but in a pretty disconnected and unemotional way. I argued that if these drugs are safe it should be the victim’s choice whether to use them or not. But some people argued that this would be wrong, since if rape victims could choose not to be traumatized this would mean rape was no longer a bad thing, and they thought rape ought to be considered a bad thing. That’s so fucked up. Not respecting somebody’s bodily autonomy IS bad, regardless of whether this person is traumatized afterwards or not.
RE: Le John
Just because you fantasize about doing something doesn’t mean you’d ever actually do it. You realize the difference between, “I imagine this,” and “if I could, I’d do it,” right?
RE: Dvarghundspossen (what does your name mean, btw?)
I admit to feeling extremely leery of those drugs, but then, I’m a dissociative. I walked around for a couple years completely unaware anything was wrong, and it wasn’t till I got together with my husband that the whole mess crashed down on me like a ton of bricks. The emotions were totally disconnected; I just thought I was insane.
And in my opinion, forcing someone to like something is a double violation, because taking free will from someone is the ultimate crime, in my opinion. Even if it has just “good” effects.
I think an anti-trauma drug, if safe and effective, should be an option for survivors, but personally I wouldn’t take it. I think I’d rather have painful emotions than feel like I should but can’t.
The idea that this would lead to more lenient sentencing for rape is so messed up. That’s like trying to plead down a battery charge because your victim got medical attention and therefore isn’t permanently injured.
Ooooohh! You donate blood! Regularly, even!
Quick! Someone get this man a Nobel Prize!!
Cause, you know, it’s not like other people donate blood AND manage without being total douchebags.
*facepalm*
RE: Cliff
I think I’d rather have painful emotions than feel like I should but can’t.
Yeah, I’ve had that happen due to my brain’s own defense mechanisms. It’s… pretty awful, actually. And I still have it better than Sneak, who spent a couple years having traumatic memories sucked out of zer head as they came in, causing zer to go around in circles of, “I’ve forgotten something? What did I forget? Wait, I remember! It’s… *blank stare* I’ve forgotten something? What did I forget?”
Like, other people want them, go ahead, but HELL FUCK NO for me.
A boat? Hey, I’ve seen a boat. This way, it went this way, follow me! . . . Stop following me.
I’ve always felt so bad for Dori
Re: Gingersnaps
I don’t recognize the reference.
Finding Nemo
Oh! DUH!
*is smrt*
I call the It’s Just a Joke!™ defense the Nigel Tunfel defense because of this scene:
She should be made the smell the glove.
Relevant portion starts at 3:25ish.
I’ve said before that I’d love to do a lecture on “humor” using nothing but Nigel Tufnel quotes.
Dvär:
That’s a little circular; if there were a way to make rape not be a bad thing — for the record, I don’t think there is — it wouldn’t be bad, so to say no one should use this hypothetical whatever because rape is bad doesn’t make sense.
Just another thing Euthyphro applies to.
Finding Nemo. Dori can’t remember anything — in the context of a kid’s movie it’s supposed to be cute, but it’s most likely traumatizing.
Anywho, anyone ever notice how “learning experience” is almost never “I learned to not say dumb shit” but rather “You should learn to not call me out when I say dumb shit, you Nazi!”???
@GingerSnaps: almost always. Other acceptable definitions of “learning experience” include “I learned something so you’re not allowed to be mad at me anymore!” or “I could have learned something, except you’re mean, so it’s impossible to learn because my feelings are hurt. Good job.”
When someone raped me, I was surprised how numb and unaffected I was about the whole situation. I cut the rapist (someone I know and who used to be a friend) out of my life completely and refused to return his calls, etc. I didn’t want to press charges, I didn’t want to directly have to go on about it- but eventually I started having nightmares and I sometimes still do- the sense of someone using your body against your will is the part that really bothers me on an intimate level, and it’s had some lasting effects.
But no, just because some guy raped me doesn’t mean that my LIFE IS OVER. Or that my life is destroyed. Or that I’ll never have a positive relationship with a man ever again (obviously not, since I’m married and love my husband very much).
I think that, to some extent, those rape myths actually ENTICE some rapists to rape- I mean, because for their inflated ego/power trips, they can convince themselves that after raping a woman, she’s HIS forever, and no one will ever get her undamaged.
Yeah. Everyone I know who has experienced these things has gone on to be functional, including in the bedroom. It’s a traumatic experience for most people, but trauma affects everyone differently, and it doesn’t Ruin You Forever as a general rule.
In something I was writing recently, I had to explain (and find studies to support) the concept of people going on from sexual assault to living relatively normal lives relatively quickly after the fact. Because I discuss asexuality all the damn time, people seem to really love walking up to me and informing me that I must have been raped (or that most asexuals identify that way because they were raped). Oh, and because that (thankfully) has never happened to me, really it’s that I just don’t remember it. (Remember, kids: if you remember it, it happened; if you don’t remember it, you’re repressing! Ta-da! There isn’t a way for this person to be wrong!) Anyway, I read several case studies about the phenomenon and yes, nearly everyone who’s had a traumatic sexual assault experience goes on to be normatively sexual, though of course many to most do experience lasting effects. It’s not like once this happens to you, you’re broken.
If I could do anything illegal without consequences, I would park on the street ALL YEAR ROUND. And on the one-way streets! And in the faculty-only lots! PARKING ANARCHY.
Different reactions are okay, but implying that because you weren’t traumatized and/or didn’t have an emotional breakdown that that is the right way for victims to be and to feel is very messed up. If someone does stop their normal life to deal with trauma, that’s okay, it’s also okay if they don’t.
I had emotional issues for years and years from having been molested, and I still have a strong enough physical reaction that the last time I saw him the dog I was with (who my family jokes would lick a robber and try to get them to pet him) had to be restrained to stop from attacking him.
The fact that I was traumatized isn’t license to dismiss everything else about my life or my self concepts.
DSC:
Cliff has mentioned this in the context of BDSM. Even if kinkiness were the result of trauma -even when it is — that doesn’t make it less genuine; that applies, mutatis mutandis, to most other things.
That’s an awesome dog.
My brother showed me a picture of my rapist to ensure me that his new girlfriend is ugly and wow we all hate her, but all I could think was that I wanted to give her ALL the hugs. I don’t know if that’s a normal reaction or not, but it’s the way I reacted and it was organic, so I have to assume that at least *some* people act that way, But everyone is different.
@darksidecat
I was not attempting to minimize the breakdowns and variety of reactions that various people can encounter if they are raped, but I was surprised at my own personal reaction to the experience.
All my life I had been told by society, by media, even by other rape victims (you know, in those sex ed classes they had you take in high school which inevitably had a “guest speaker day” about how “Rape Is Bad MMKAY?”) that once rape occurs, you’re going to cut yourself, you’re going to cry and sob and freak out and not be able to function for weeks if not months if not years. I was told how women who are raped are broken, damaged and can never have consensual sex without recalling the rape incident.
ETC ETC ETC.
So when it happened to me, I was somewhat shocked that I didn’t react that way. For awhile, I couldn’t believe that I had been raped because my life wasn’t over, because I wasn’t irrevocably broken like I had been told I would be. Some people around me didn’t believe I had been raped if it came up because I didn’t have bruises or vaginal tearing (needless to say, these people are no longer friends). Some even accused me of having cheated and just “crying rape” because I had regretted the sex. I think that what really fucked me up the most about it was OTHER PEOPLE’S REACTIONS to it, not the act itself.
And most of the nightmares that I did have about the rapist involved him being at a party or a gathering with my friends and no one believing me about the rape and him just going around like nothing had happened- like he was totally justified in doing it and society supported him. In the worst nightmares, he’s sitting there, being all kind and nice to me and acting like, no, he didn’t violate my body because he wanted to do things to me and I did not want to do things with him. *sigh*
Doing this does not mean a person is “broken” or “damaged” or trash, or inferior in any way. It doesn’t mean that it’s okay to dismiss a person’s life, experiences, self concepts, etc. either. Conflating a rape victim saying that this was their experience with saying that all rape victims are “broken” or somehow damaged goods is extremely problematic. Not that the latter narrative is totally nonexistent, but discussions of different trauma reactions is not the same thing and shouldn’t be discussed as if it is.
Being more or less traumatized are both okay, and neither one should be seen as the “proper” way to respond to rape or molestation.
But this fucking narrative that if you have been raped and you were traumatized then you are “broken” or that you can’t be treated with respect around your self concepts, thoughts, feelings, opinions is seriously messed up (not saying that you were completely doing this).
The fact that I was traumatized doesn’t make it okay for people to do bullshit psychoanalyzing nonsense. My opinions and self concepts aren’t somehow made inferior by that fact. I can have been molested and have been traumatized and should still be respected when I tell people to fuck right the fuck off if they are using the “molestation causes X” or “you must have been molested because you are X” nonsense at me. Every single time I hear “I wasn’t molested and I’m gay” it makes me want to scream that I was, and it doesn’t make my authority over my own queerness any less legitimate.
I agree, even if you didn’t mean it this way Nanasha saying stuff like
sounds kind of like you’re conflating those types of reactions with being broken and damaged when they’re really just as legitimate reactions as feeling numb or going along as normal or whatever.
*sigh* I come back from dinner and find people acting like I am being a jerk and minimizing rape experiences. This is not what I was attempting to communicate at all.
I wasn’t telling you what *I* think, I was telling you what I was *TAUGHT* in various sexuality classes and sex-ed courses in school, as well as dominant narratives that came from my parents (my mom especially- it’s fairly likely that she was molested/raped as a young girl from some of the stories she used to tell me).
That was why I was so surprised when my experience was different.
I had been taught for so long that rape was a monolithic sort of crime that there was no room in those teachings to outline the fact that there are different types of rape or different degrees of severity or different reactions per different people. Even my *college sociology class* portrayed rape as being ALWAYS coupled with violent physical assault (cuts, bruises, etc) and basically all of the case studies were women who were raped by people they didn’t know, which, as you all know, is a very small percentage of all rapes.
@LBT: My name was originally invented for the Swedish dog owner boards I attend and my Swedish blog. It means “the toy dog posse”. Nowadays I also have a GSD, but when I first started attending boards I only had toy dogs. I used to live in a neighbourhood where most people had big dogs and pit bull type of dogs, and when I came walking my toy dogs one neighbour would go “here comes the toy dog posse!”. That’s where the name comes from.
Anyway, I agree that it would be terrible to force somebody to have or not to have a certain emotional reaction. It would be terrible to force somebody to take emotional-numbing pills, but also pretty terrible to force somebody NOT to take them if they were accessible and that person had made up zir mind that zie wanted them. There’s a Boston Legal episode where a raped teenager has really made up her mind, she wants this drug. Her dad, however, is completely convinced that for her own good she needs complete and vivid memories of the rape, so he drags the case to court and wins, with the help of our “heroes”. That ep really made me cringe.
@Hershele: I agree the argument was circular.
@Cliff: Exactly. When it comes to other crimes nobody argues that it would somehow be allright if the victim weren’t permanently damaged, or not even damaged at all (imagine for instance that somebody steals my car, and this causes me NO traumatic emotions whatsoever, and I’m so rich that I can just buy a new car - it’s still a pretty serious case of theft).
@Nanasha: I also think that stories about how COMPLETELY BROKEN FOREVER rape victims are may actually encourage rape. I bet that for some people it’s a real ego kick to hear that between your legs there’s a SOUL-DESTROYING SUPER-WEAPON.
How about you not fucking suggest that rape victims who were traumatized discussing their trauma encourages rape.
@Nanasha, you conflated rape victims whose reactions were different than yours with being “broken”, you were dismissing other people’s different reactions, conflating people with different reactions to rape myths, etc. That’s the problem, not that you were discussing a variety of reactions or rape myths.
@darksidecat
Uh, no. No I did not. I was specifically relating my own personal experience and contrasting it with the experience that I had been TOLD BY EVERYONE AROUND ME that “all rape victims experience,” which led to my resulting confusion and shock.
Everyone experiences trauma differently, and no one should feel minimized by that.
Now excuse me, I need to go pet my cat.
@Snowy:
You took that quote out of context. You forgot to include this part:
“[b]All my life I had been told by society, by media, even by other rape victims[/b] (you know, in those sex ed classes they had you take in high school which inevitably had a “guest speaker day” about how “Rape Is Bad MMKAY?”) that once rape occurs, you’re going to cut yourself, you’re going to cry and sob and freak out and not be able to function for weeks if not months if not years. I was told how women who are raped are broken, damaged and can never have consensual sex without recalling the rape incident.”
I was reiterating the things that had been TAUGHT TO ME by OTHER PEOPLE about what rape was “supposed to be like.” These are not actual beliefs that I hold as an enlightened and educated adult, but they still permeate our culture, and they still highly stigmatize rape victims who do not fall into that narrow definition of what our society has decided rape “is”.
100% this!
The most traumatizing aspect of mine (which involved being blackout to the point where I was completely incoherent, throwing up, unable to stand on my own, and very obviously unable to consent to anything) was that:
1. People who I thought were my friends were in the same house and let it happen. They did not have my back or take care of me like I would have taken care of and protected them in the same situation. They observed a stranger clinging onto me, leading me around, and molesting me, and shrugged it off to avoid messing up their fun party.
2. They later called me a slut for it and treated it like I consented and was the only responsible party (the rapist was a stud, I was a slut)
3. One of the guys who I thought was a close friend was actually jealous of the guy and decided that, to get back at me for daring to “friend zone” him when he never told me he even had feelings for me, he would tell everyone that I also had sex with him when I specifically did not. Leading this group of people to further mock me, and lump the one consensual sex act I had with a person in our group of friends in with a rape and non-existent encounter, as proof that I was a huge slut.
Yeah, the reaction by other people was so much worse than the actual assault. I barely remember the assault, but when people blamed me for what happened, well, I had to completely cut those people out of my life. I couldn’t handle it. And that is what gave me hangups about my own sexuality for years. Feeling like, even if I didn’t have sex (or didn’t have sex willingly) I would still be a slut.
Meanwhile MRAs try to tell me that the phenomenon of women not reporting their rapes isn’t real, that women aren’t shamed into keeping silent. When you’re shamed into feeling at fault for the rape, of course you’re not going to report it! These guys serious make me sick.
@Darksidecat: I didn’t mean it’s ever wrong to discuss your personal experiences. If more rape victims publicly discussed their personal experiences (I’m not implying that it’s a DUTY of course), people would come to realize that there is no “right” way to react, people react differently, and in most cases at least rape victims aren’t completely messed-up for the rest of their lives (and this is not implying that it’s WRONG to BE messed-up for the rest of their lives, one doesn’t decide how to react to such a thing).
What I do think is wrong is writing blog posts or internet forum posts or telling people irl with great confidence that ALL rape victims are damaged for life and completely destroyed by the event, that’s just the way it WORKS. That message is bad for several reasons, one of them being that rapists might be encouraged when hearing about the tremendous power they supposedly possess.
I wasn’t trying to take your quote out of context, and I definitely am not trying to act like you’re being a jerk. Sorry if my comment came across that way. I understand that what I was quoting from you was stuff that you had been taught. The problem I saw was that you were restating what you had been taught, which was that certain reactions = the person being broken forever, and how surprised you were that you didn’t have those reactions/weren’t damaged and broken forever. But you didn’t say anything about how having those other reactions doesn’t mean a person is broken forever, which maybe you thought went without saying. So I was just trying to point out that saying, “well I was taught x idea” without then saying “and x is a wrong idea” can come off as sounding like you do believe x idea yourself, or at least see nothing wrong with it. I’m glad that’s not the case.
Rape jokes break awkward tention in his experience? I hate to think about who he hangs around with.
It wasn’t a joke. He would do it. Women and girls aren’t fully human to guys like this. And there are a LOT of guys like this.
Men are a fucked up lot.
pujeemuhs: People are a fucked up lot. That one happens to be male.
IT WAS A JOKE GUIZ!!!
I MEAN I KNOW ITS MENTALLY LOGICALLY PHYSICALLY SCARRING *RAPE* BUT ITS A JOKE! BREAKING TENSION! AWWW…
Estelle Stewart: There is a wonderful Russian saying about this. Somewhat hard to translate, it basically goes something like this: “There is a bit of a joke within every joke.” The point is, a joke is never solely for shits and giggles; it also betrays the joker’s deeply held beliefs. When a person says he’d rape a woman if he could get away with it, I frankly fail to see what’s witty about it — unless he believes rape, in and of itself, is kinda funny. It doesn’t mean he disagrees that it’s “mentally logically physically scarring”; on the contrary, it’s quite possible that that’s what makes rape funny for him. I don’t advocate shutting anyone up (on the contrary, I prefer for people to have the freedom to reveal what they are really all about) — but the kinds of jokes you make, the kinds of things that give you joy and lighten your mood, tell me a lot about what you are like as a person.