I'd like Daniel Tosh to explain his "wouldn't it be funny is she were raped" joke in the wake of... [View all]

[alp227]

Last edited Sat Jan 5, 2013, 01:44 AM - Edit history (1)

stories like the Delhi gang rape case and others I've seen at DU. A warning, some details that follow are VERY graphic. Do not read if you've just finished eating dinner.

Background

Last summer, talentless comedian Daniel Tosh generated much buzz over this remark made at a show after a blogger at tumblr wrote about it:

So Tosh then starts making some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc. I don’t know why he was so repetitive about it but I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find them funny and never have. So I didnt appreciate Daniel Tosh (or anyone!) telling me I should find them funny. So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”

...

After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” and I, completely stunned and finding it hard to process what was happening but knowing i needed to get out of there, immediately nudged my friend, who was also completely stunned, and we high-tailed it out of there.

As the Atlantic Wire reported:

On Twitter, Tosh cited "out-of-context misquotes" in a tweet that linked to the post on Cookies for Breakfast, before saying "I'd like to sincerely apologize." He followed up: "the point i was making before i was heckled is there are awful things in the world but you can still make jokes about them. #deadbabies."

Of course between the initial tumblr post and Tosh's non-pology of course the usual ignorant teenage boy and teenage man fans of Tosh swarmed message boards/online communities accusing the tumblr writer of making stuff up. Combined with the usual language I shall not repeat here.

I remember last summer battling Tosh-bots/MRA-bots/"free speech"-bots on the YouTube comments sections of the videos below. All they ever say is "anyone can be offended by anything"/"comedy has no limits because of free speech" without ever analyzing Tosh's statement (notice I say STATEMENT not JOKE) AT ALL. Those videos with the Tosh-bots are: a video "Tumblr Feminists" by The Amazing Atheist where that stupid man (I unsubscribed from Amazing Atheist's channel after learning of his reddit rape threats) rambles for 13 whole minutes without anything of substance. (Note: You may skip the extraneous posting of YouTube videos to the next section with a bold heading.)

For example this fuckwit at 1:53 starts by condemning rape as something that harms a person psychologically only to make a stupid strawman at 2:27 claims that tumblr feminists call rape "worse than genocide...worse than murder". At 3:30 he condemns the feminists as arrogant moral elitists but turns around at 4:00 to defend rape jokes in general (based on http://jezebel.com/5924437/is-it-wrong-to-call-this-20+year+old-who-punched-a-street-harasser-a-hero). 5:30 is where he starts to defend Tosh by dismissing the tumblr writer as a heckler who should've expected Tosh's tastelessness. Basically Amazing Atheist spent a whole 2+ minutes struggling with the simple moral issue that some topics are too dark for comedy.

The other video where I tried with no avail to reason with idiot commenters was at the Young Turks' video about the Tosh controversy:

And nearly 6 months later, we KNOW what Tosh was joking about.

If you can stomach it, read Tosh's joke again: "Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her..."

So let's see what being raped by like, five guys sounds like as Wikipedia describes the Indian gang rape (graphic detail ahead!) :

The woman's friend became suspicious when the bus deviated from its normal route and its doors were shut. When he objected, the group of six men already on board taunted the couple, asking what they were doing alone at such a late hour.

When the victim's friend tried to intervene, he was beaten, gagged and knocked unconscious with an iron rod. The men dragged the woman to the rear of the bus, beating her with the rod and raping her while the bus driver continued to drive. Medical reports later suggested that the woman suffered serious injuries to her abdomen, intestines and genitals due to the assault, and doctors say that the damage indicates that a blunt object (suspected to be the iron rod) may have been used for penetration...According to the International Business Times, a police spokesman said that the youngest attacker "sexually abused his victim twice and ripped out her intestines with his bare hands."[9] ...After the beatings and rape ended, the gang threw the two from the moving bus.

Or this story out of Alaska as posted on DU with 41 recs so far, sourcing a huffington post story:

A high school football player and his brother have been arrested by authorities in Alaska for allegedly raping a drunken teenage boy with a beer bottle at a raucous underage drinking party.

...

After someone removed the victims' pants and underwear, Anthony Resetarits allegedly took a 12 oz. Alaskan White beer bottle and inserted the full length of the neck of the bottle into the victim's anus. At least one juvenile male witnessed the assault, which was also captured on a camera.

Or the recent case of high school boys from Steubenville, Ohio who raped an unconscious girl at a party. Others who witnessed the incident never bothered reporting the boys to the police...of course because the rapists were on the school football team! As this NYT profile of the case details, sadly too many people in the Ohio town sacrificed basic morality for HS football player worship. Recently, video of the rapists LAUGHING ABOUT THE INCIDENT leaked online. In fact, much respect to fellow DUer trumad for posting about lecturing (261 recs!!!!!) teenaged sons about this case.

Or this outrageous decision by a court in my home state California to order a new trial for a man convicted of rape: "Because a 19th-century state law does not explicitly protect unmarried rape victims from attackers pretending to be a boyfriend, a California appeals court Thursday overturned a man's conviction for having sex with a sleeping woman."

So whenever you hear comedians like Tosh resort to using rape as comedy, remember these cases. This is what they joke about. Being held against your will around a bunch of sickos who will do everything from posting your ordeal on the internet to everything short of cannibalism. I wonder if Tosh is deep down inside embarrassed for that "wouldn't it be funny if she were raped" comment? What frustrates me is that SO. MANY. FUCKING. PEOPLE in this country lack such BASIC FUCKING MORALITY when it comes to women. Even in COLLEGES! (I say people because it's not just the typical over-entitled alpha male who often comments "sluts/non-virgins deserve it"...but sadly too many women follow that perverted patriarchal authoritarianism.)

In America, conservatives howl "MORALITY IS DOOOOOMMMEDD!!!!!" over the most trivial things like gay marriage, heavy metal music, video games, hell even black children being able to attend suburban schools (y'know because that's "FORCED INTEGRATION&quot .

In the Middle East, fucked-up-mentalist (yeah I said that) Muslims were willing to bomb cities and harm others simply over European political cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

In India, men AND women NATIONWIDE stood in solidarity with the rape victim nearly every day since the news first came out and sacrificed the new year holidays because the victim DIED.

But where was the picketing outside the Laugh Factory (where Tosh performed that controversial bit) after "Wouldn't it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now?" Or at the University of Notre Dame after Lizzie Seeburg committed suicide because the football players who raped her (and those players get a national championship game) got away with it?

sigh. THIS COUNTRY MAKES ME SO DAMN SICK sometimes.