(via victimblaming)

Let’s talk numbers:

Aileen Wuornos killed seven men in one year. That looks like this:

☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠

This is the number of prostitutes who were killed that year:

☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠

For every ☠ by Aileen, there were ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠  by men like the ones she killed.

[ More by Daphne Gottlieb in Dear Dawn. ]

victimblaming:

Michael Agresta has a long, lovely piece at the Atlantic about how that move cost O’Connor her American career, in part because we just couldn’t get our heads around the reality of the child abuse she was protesting. Now, of course, we all know better—about Catholic institutions in Ireland and…

If you need a LOLSOB, Kate Harding has joined tumblr.

Don’t Get Raped.

I’m glad that there are some brave feminists on the internet who aren’t afraid to stand up and say that they like rape jokes. I’m rarely a fan of absolutes. “Rape is never funny!” strikes me as about as productive as saying, “Nobody wants to have an abortion.” It blocks out the voices of people for whom rape jokes or abortion have been an overwhelmingly positive thing, something which has allowed them to move past a dark time.

Curtis Luciani gets this, as he closed his article on Daniel Tosh’s outburst.
“But causing pain is quite a different fucking matter. Your job as a comedian is to take us through pain, transcend pain, transform pain. And if you don’t get that, you are a fucking bully, and I’ve got zero time for bullies.”

Kate Harding just posted 15 Rape Jokes That Work. All of these comedians get it. The butt of their jokes is rape culture and rapists, not victims and would-be victims of sexual assault.

Lindy West wrote a great take-down of the portions of internetlandia that tried to mansplain away Tosh’s failure. She closes with 4 more rape jokes that work. One is repeated on Harding’s list, so let’s just bring the tally to 18.

Twitter user @marykaeowens sums up the problem succinctly: “I want men to be as scared of making rape jokes in front of women as white people are of saying “nigger” in front of black people.”

Talented comics have long been doing race humor to expose injustices rather than perpetuate racism, and the same is true for rape jokes. You absolutely can touch these issues, but you’d better be smart, you’d better be good and you’d better understand. The problem with Tosh and his defenders is that they just come off as heartless and rapey.

breakfastcookie:

This is something that happened to a friend of mine in her own words.

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…”

Another shitty hack misogynist did this to me the last time that I went to Comedy Cellar, when a friend and I went to see Azis Ansari. Because we were there to see a specific comic who was going on after the hack asshole, I sat & grimaced as he alienated most of the audience by telling men (on dates with their wives & girlfriends) that they should come over and jerk off on me, because I have big tits.

This went on for about three solid minutes. I watched them tick away on my phone. And I wish I’d thrown something at him or stormed out, but… Azis Ansari. We paid to see someone we admire. I just didn’t realize that being threatened with sexual assault was part of the price of admission. You never see that in Louis CK’s show when he tapes there.

Most of the comedy I see is in alternative venues or bigger concert halls. In the former, I usually know or am familiar with the performers. In the latter, there’s more care about who gets to take the stage. I don’t go to comedy clubs as often as I’d like, largely because of experiences like Tosh’s unfortunate audience member had, and like mine with Comedy Cellar. When I spoke with some comedian & performer friends, many of them women, they had similar anecdotes. Many of them also choose to do their shows in alternative venues rather than comedy clubs.

So, I suppose the moral is to leave the clubs for Axe wearing neanderthals and support  venues which promote comedians capable of more sophisticated thought.