This is not to say that others can’t talk about rape or make jokes about rape, that it’s a completely verboten topic. But people who haven’t been raped need to graciously accept that they might be called out on having said something ignorant or offensive; if they aren’t willing to deal with the fact that there are rape victims *everywhere* who have more authority to talk about what rape actually is, then they’ve got no call to be cracking shitty jokes, or defending them as inoffensive and misinterpreted. And, too, I think rape jokes often operate on the premise that the joker *isn’t* in fact surrounded by rape victims, that rape *isn’t* as prevalent or devastating as it is. That kind of basic disregard for an epidemic proportion of women is at the heart of the reason why people feel they can make rape jokes, or why they’re funny: because they feel the experience of women isn’t worth considering.
A woman walks into a rape, uh, bar