Daniel Tosh’s rape ‘jokes’ aren’t anything women haven’t heard before

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Comedy Central host and comedian Daniel Tosh landed in hot water last week, after one woman’s account of his attempt to tell jokes about rape ended with him responding to her heckling by telling the audience, “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?”

His not-really-a-joke response met with a firestorm of criticism, prompted a Twitter apology from Tosh and opened up a large discussion about which, if any, rape jokes are actually funny.

Having weighed in on that question in 2008 (an excerpt is here), the kind people at CBC’s “The Current” asked me to join them this morning to talk about both whether Tosh’s joke was funny (no), whether there’s a place to joke about rape (yes), how humor can be used by sexual assault survivors as a coping mechanism and where one can even begin to construct a joke about sexual assault (hint: not from a place of power over survivors or one that is simply repeating stereotypes about sexual assault, its survivors and how to supposedly avoid being assaulted).

My portion begins at 2:30, but the whole thing is worth a listen.

[Image via Andrew J Ferguson on Flickr, Creative Commons licensed]