@PE, I'm under 30, and many of my friends are younger still. Rape jokes just aren't a thing in my groups I guess.

If you don't like what someone else posts first paint the poster as extreme and isolated in their views, and then portray yourself as a measured objective observer who has considered all reasonable alternatives to the viewpoint you support.
Use this technique anytime that someone else presents a fact or argument that frustrates or trumps one of your own posts.
This post represents a viewpoint and is not based on any person fictional or real. Any attempt to connecte the viewpoints in this post to anyone real or fictional is pure coincidence.

asdfghjkl;

they're not a thing in my groups either. holy crap. the implication that I somehow associate with scumbags because I don't live in a bubble is really starting to get irritating. and I know it's not you saying the latter part semck, more like krellin, but as I apparently need to clarify it... no, my groups don't make rape jokes/references/etc. and I don't associate with people who do. that doesn't mean the vast and I mean VAST majority of the 14-30 male crowd today doesn't make them.

"You're really reaching here to make your point. I wish a free speech absolutist could make their argument without resorting to the slippery slope fallacy or nonsensical hypotheticals."

But I am not a free speech absolutist.

"I get it that you don't think any speech is offensive, and that people who are abused on the basis of their race, gender, or orientation should just suck it up"

I have never said that.
Whatever. I should stay out of this debate. Apart from the one very tame and tired joke I gave as an example I don't think I have ever heard rape joke.

@PE, OK, maybe so. I wasn't really arguing one way or the other, and I have no reason to doubt you. I just intended to set the record straight on having one foot in the grave. ; )

Oh. LOL. Sorry about that!

If rape jokes exist then its a very recent phenomena. Unless there has been a very recent spike in rapes then it's safe to say that the opening post is a load dingo's kidneys.

My friend has just been charged with 'date rape', his defense being that it 'wasn't an actual date'.

lol NigeeBaby. I guess this is the thread where we put all the rape jokes right? Or am I missing stuff again?

trollolol

Spyman and Octavious, I'm probably guessing you don't go on 4chan (though then again, it *is* 4chan) or reddit.

Our ability to laugh in the face of extreme adversity keeps us sane sometimes ...... the Brits are so good at this, in the 2nd World War we lost over 500 soldiers who officially 'laughed themselves to death', several of them actually 'laughed their head off'

People, it's doesn't have to be a joke to either create a cognitive dissonance for you or reaffirm the rapists in their belief that all men are rapists. The simple fact that the word rape is now used as something positive (besting the other guy) is intolerable, especially since the meaning branches out from the original one. Such an atmosphere definitely doesn't help with fighting the rapists' acceptance of rape. Unless you have a reading disability matching that of krellin, who needs everything spelled out only to ignore it, you surely get that.

All people are murderers.......potentially; the fact that we pay our govt a tax to do it for us doesn't absolve us from the responsibility.

I have to admit some scepticism about some of the claims in the opening post.

1 in 6 women are raped
6% of men are rapists
Rapists think all men are rapists

These are some extraordinary claims... and you know what they say about extraordinary claims?  Extraordinary evidence please. This seems to be a powerful internet meme, and there does *seem* to be a couple of sources cited, if you search hard enough. But considering the magnitude of this problem I would expect to find something a bit more solid. More discussion and debate by academics. After all, if this true, this could be our number one social problem. Most people would rate rape as second only to murder in its heinousness. 

This link discusses a variant claim - 1 in four women have been raped
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html

There is also a discussion on the 1 in 6 claim on randi.org

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=185005

I am not categorically saying the stats are wrong, but I am doubtful (as I am about most amazing claims I out about on the internet).

typo... claims I *find out about on the internet

To be fair and present both sides here is source which seems to support the claim of the high incidence of rape.

http://www2.binghamton.edu/counseling/documents/RAPE_FACT_SHEET1.pdf

If I laugh at a rape joke, that does not mean I condone the practice, it simply means I find the joke funny. For example, spyman's joke with the nuns was funny.

We also often use other strong words in our vocabulary. Just search the forum, look how many times we say: "After what Italy pulled on me, I was totally going to kill him", or "He's going suicidal against Turkey, and rightly so" or something similar. That doesn't mean we condone murder, or we encourage suicide.

The text is nice, but it's using a common rhetorical fallacy:
"You. The rapist's comrade.

And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore, not abiding it in your presence, not greeting it with silence…

Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim."

Sorry, but I am not feeling sick to my stomach. My stomach is doing just fine. No intention of throwing up here. I would be disturbed if the number quoted there were true, but I have a hard time believing it. So you conclude that I'm not really opposed to rapists in general.

My point is that being a rapist is different from condonig rape, which is different from joking about it, which is different from contributing to a culture where rape jokes are tolerated, which is still different from allowing other people to suspect that you are maybe not opposed to living in a society where teenager joke about rape. The latter you can accuse me of. If you accuse me of the former, it's downright slander.

The writer this text has great rhetorical skills, but her point fails to hold. I am not responsible if other people (the rapists of this world) happen to believe I am their friend.

For a few years I drove a night-shift taxi, and have heard young women make rape jokes. Soooo.....yeah, it takes all sorts to make a world. Why so serious? :P

Bas has it right. Their might be some kind of genuine point in what the feminists are saying, but they fill their argument with so much rhetoric that the average person will get bloody annoyed and stop listening long before the point hits home. In this sense they are doing more harm than good. Feminists are therefore clearly rapist's comrades.

Once again the people on this forum make me feel nauseous. Listen everyone, these are the facts that need to be spelled out here.

1 Rape is bad.

2 There is a segment of society, WHICH INCLUDES RAPE SURVIVORS, who are extremely upset by people trivializing and making light of what is a terrible, terrible crime.

3 Triggering rape survivors is a shitty, terrible, awful thing to do.

I'm sorry, you making some idiotic joke about nuns who discover "it's not rape if you enjoyed it!" does not overrule someone else's desire not to be reminded of their own horrible, ordeal. Even if it's less than 1 in 6. Even if it's 1 in 60, statistically I still probably know at least 2 or 3 rape survivors.
Why are so many of you arguing it's not such a big deal? What do you gain from being able to tell jokes about rape, that outweighs the experiences of people who have ACTUALLY BEEN RAPED?

"I am not responsible if other people (the rapists of this world) happen to believe I am their friend." - uhhhhhhhh... What?
Listen, if I know a guy and I don't like him very much, but I hang out with him a few times a week, take all his calls, and frequently discuss the things which we have in common, and then he introduces me to someone as "his friend Mafialligator", who's fault is it that he thinks we're friends? You are responsible for your actions, and if people interpret your actions as giving them support, you need to think about that. You do contribute to the world around you. Not in a huge way, but in a way, now, what is it you want to contribute? Do you want to contribute something that is frivolous and fun and not a big deal, but does, slightly, have the effect of making people think rape isn't a big deal? Or would you rather your contribution to society make rape LESS acceptable? I know which side I come down on.

"But I am not a free speech absolutist."

Spyman, but you insert yourself into every single debate in which some issue of offensive speech comes up, claiming that it isn't offensive and/or if it is offensive it shouldn't be censored, or that people are hypersensitive and think everything is offensive. I can't count how many times you've made this kind of argument. So if you're not a free speech absolutist, why do you always make this argument? Why do you complain about 'political correctness' any time people say offensive speech should be stopped or that people shouldn't make these kinds of statements?

@PE -- What a lying assole:

>>the implication that I somehow associate with scumbags because I don't live in a bubble is really starting to get irritating. and I know it's not you saying the latter part semck, more like krellin, but as I apparently need to clarify it... no, my groups don't make rape jokes/references/etc. and I don't associate with people who do. that doesn't mean the vast and I mean VAST majority of the 14-30 male crowd today doesn't make them.

So...wait, you do NOT associate with ANYONE that makes rape jokes....but you claim to have *intimate* knowledge that all teenage boys make constant rape jokes? And you know this HOW??? Good god, if you logic was any more faulty...You pull stuff out of your ass as fast as Putin does when you get cornered in a lie, don't you?

Also for those of you who don't think this sort of thing happens, I was at a party the other day, with people I would not normally be hanging out with, and one of the guys at this party made a short allegedly humorous explanation of how rape is a compliment. It wasn't a joke in the traditional, setup-punchline format, but he was trying to get a laugh. Thankfully two other people (as well as myself) said that it was fucked up and not funny; I would not have felt safe standing up to that on my own in a room full of frat boyish bro types.

Now you're all going to say that I was just hanging out with some particularly awful people, and this case was an exception etc. and maybe so (though I certainly won't be doing that again). But don't say it doesn't happen.

Also as to the one in six thing, bear in mind that figure includes not only violent rape where someone is attacked on the street, and drugged rape, but also things that some people would (wrongly) argue isn't REALLY rape. Things like instances where a woman consents to one kind of sex, but not another, but her date goes for it anyway; instances where a woman withdraws consent halfway through, but her date doesn't stop; instances where a power differential exists such that consent cannot be said to meaningfully exist; instances where sex is coerced non-violently; or instances where a woman is too intoxicated to meaningfully give consent. Now a lot of people (including Whoopi Goldberg) like to say that this doesn't really count as RAPE rape in the same way that a violent attack or drugging would count, but that's bullshit. Sex without consent is rape, end of story.

(I have a lot to say on this topic, because there is a lot of bullshit about rape out there in the general culture and it really, really, really makes me fucking angry.)

Rape doesn't always refer to sexual intercourse. It's definition includes pillage or plunder (the old phrase "rape, pillage, and plunder" is actually very redundant) and its origin helps to clarify it.

Origin:
1250–1300; (v.) ME "rapen" < AF "raper" < L "rapere" to seize, carry off by force, plunder; (n.) ME < AF "ra"("a")"p"("e"), deriv. of "raper"

So using it to refer to any forceful taking of anything is a valid use (e.g. the rape of the rainforest).

Definitions of words are based on usage, not etymology. It may once have been true that rape came from rapen, raper and rapere, and meant taking things in a general sense. But not anymore. Get with it.

@Mafialligator: That's the ugly thing most people don't want to admit about rape. All this talk about "violence" and "power", but just under half of rapes occur in the rapists' own home where the victim has entered of her own free will. Just under half occur in the victims' homes instead, after having freely invited the rapist inside.

Nobody wants to talk about that, because if you *do* talk about it you're accused of "blaming the victim" and "slut shaming"-- but it *needs* to be talked about, because awareness is the most important part of self-defense.

Most rapists aren't sociopaths or "violent sexual predators" and they're not even especially, abnormally, misogynistic compared to the Internet gaming nerds you're talking to-- who make rape jokes and talk about raping each other and would be too scared to rape anyone that hadn't already been dead for three days.

They're relatively normal guys who don't think of themselves as rapists at all and don't see anything wrong with how they treat women-- they don't hate women in general, they don't hate their victims, and they probably don't even see themselves as powerless. They're spoiled, entitled douchebags who think their "yes" means more than someone else's "no".

Which really does highlight the problem indicated by the OP. They believe these things because they were *taught* these things, and because the forces in our society that teach these things are more pervasive than the forces trying to teach women to defend themselves and men not to attack them in the first place.

Saw a study once comparing random quotes from British "lad mags" with quotes from convicted sex offenders. Wasn't too hard to tell the difference after awhile... because the sex offenders showed more self-restraint.

@ Viktyr - You make a good point, but I do have to say, if you're making this point in a way that can be construed as victim blaming or slut shaming you need to be careful. Women are allowed to invite men into their homes. Women are allowed to have consensual sex with whomsoever they please, as often as they please (assuming their partner is also game, obviously). The point is, even if they do invite a guy back to their place and he rapes her, it's ENTIRELY HIS FAULT. Not hers. Make that clear, and no one will say you're victim blaming, trust me.