There's a thought, somewhere in my head, trying to get coherent enough to become an essay. About rape. About rape being about sex, no matter how many people try to tell us it's about "violence and power." Pistol-whipping is about violence and power, and nobody claims the victim asked for it. Nobody thinks it's maybe-kinda-understandable if your ex pistol-whips you. Rape is controversial because it ties to sex, ties to intimacy and sanctity, and being a perverted attack on those concepts doesn't eliminate those ties.
And about rape jokes, and sex jokes.
We mock what we fear, what we hate. Mockery makes it smaller, less scary. Mockery, done right, *eliminates* fear. What amuses us does not hurt us--or if it does, the hurt is less painful.
I don't know what they fear so much that they tell such awful violent hateful jokes about sex. But if you listen to some of the jokes, you can hear the undercurrent of abject terror... and that has to be faced, has to be acknowledged and reached, before any changes will happen. No amount of lectures or even deeply touching horrific stories will make them stop (by "them" I mean "all those generic guys what tell those stories," not "these two radio dudes"); they're running from something much bigger and stronger than public disapproval by strangers.
Thoughts not finished. Not sure where that idea's going.
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Date: 2007-05-12 07:07 am (UTC)And about rape jokes, and sex jokes.
We mock what we fear, what we hate. Mockery makes it smaller, less scary. Mockery, done right, *eliminates* fear. What amuses us does not hurt us--or if it does, the hurt is less painful.
I don't know what they fear so much that they tell such awful violent hateful jokes about sex. But if you listen to some of the jokes, you can hear the undercurrent of abject terror... and that has to be faced, has to be acknowledged and reached, before any changes will happen. No amount of lectures or even deeply touching horrific stories will make them stop (by "them" I mean "all those generic guys what tell those stories," not "these two radio dudes"); they're running from something much bigger and stronger than public disapproval by strangers.
Thoughts not finished. Not sure where that idea's going.