I walked down the hallway of my college freshman dorm; I found some other freshman playing Call of Duty. The room is loud and they are getting obnoxious, suddenly one shouts, “I’m raping you.” The rest of them laugh, as I relive the worst moments of my life.
I enjoy a joke as much as the next person, but rape jokes will never be funny, and the number of times people have told me not to offended by them is obscene. I just don’t think that some people realize what they are joking about. They are joking about me waking up in the middle of the night because I had a terrifying flashback dream even after twenty years. They are laughing about every anxiety attack I have ever had, they are joking about getting a normal life getting taken from me.
The worst part about rape jokes is that it normalizes something truly horrifying. It numbs the population, and makes rape okay. When people start to believe rape is okay it is as if they do not want to help victims. Victims already have a hard enough time getting a conviction or even an accusation for rape, so when people think it is okay, does not help. For the victims, having their gruesome experiences joked about makes them feel even more awful. Victims should be supported, not put down even further.
I make it a point now to say how I feel about these jokes. I don’t accept people who make them, and I let them know exactly what they are joking about. After this, people tell me to calm down and to not take it too seriously. The thing is that, to me, it is serious. It is serious because ever since I was five, it has controlled my life. I think about it all the time. I have to learn to live with it, which is the hardest thing I have have to do. For someone to joke about something that has plagued me, lets me know exactly what type of person he/she is and how much I do not want to be around them.
Humor diffuses tension and makes uncomfortable subjects less serious. Survivors often use it as a defense mechanism, but that is the point, they are survivors. They can joke about it if they want to because it is theirs to joke about. Just as my bruises are mine to poke at and yours to stay away from.
