On rape jokes

1 in 4 people.  1 in 4 refers to the number of reported sexual assaults of women on college campuses during their undergraduate years.

This happened. In a nutshell, a comedian, Daniel Tosh, made some sort of rape joke, a woman (COURAGEOUSLY, by the way) stood up and said that, "actually, rape jokes aren't funny," to which Tosh responded along the lines of, "wouldn't it be hilarious if this woman got gang-raped right here."

Then this good article (and several less good ones) was written.

Some key quotes from the Jezebel article include:

• "The world is full of terrible things, including rape, and it is okay to joke about them. But the best comics use their art to call bullshit on those terrible parts of life and make them better, not worse."
• "We censor ourselves all the time, because we are not entitled, sociopathic fucks. ...A comic who doesn't censor himself is just a dude yelling." (*Could be "herself" and "a chick" yelling...)
• "It's really easy to believe that "nothing is sacred" when the sanctity of your body and your freedom are never legitimately threatened."
• "It's like the difference between a black comic telling a joke about how it feels to have white people treat you like you're stupid all the time vs. a white comic telling a joke about how stupid black people are."

The author of the article also has a paragraph that explains the importance of the *context* of sexism and patriarchy that surrounds this joke, by making up an analogy that might help people understand it at some level.