Just a joke.

There was a nasty rape joke on an episode of 'Mock the Week', and so I complained and got an e-mail back basically telling me it was a comedy show and some people found some things offensive that others found funny and you wouldn't want us to censor the comedians, would you?, and we value your views, honest. Which was a little dispiriting.

The joke was from Frankie Boyle, whose main appeal seems to be offending people. My main problem with the joke he told, and others like it in the past, is that it is not presented as a joke about rape, but as a joke about him having sex with a woman, and the punch line being the offensive surprise that it's not consensual. These kind of jokes legitimise the idea that rape in certain situations, particularly within a sexual relationship, is not really rape and therefore normal behaviour. Despite the fact that a majority of rapes are perpetrated by partners or ex-partners of their victims.

And yes, it was just a joke. But it's a joke which reflects the kind of mindset that rapists have, and which presents it as the normal male mindset. Which is fucking dangerous.

It's insulting to men how are aren't rapists, but worse than that it supports the view point of those men who are, and makes them thinks it's OK. The message it send out is that the BBC, and that big-name comedian, and those audience members who laughed along, are on his side. This was only one joke, but it's a joke that's part of a culture which allows rapists to feel morally justified in their actions. This is not an isolated incident.

The UK has a ridiculously low rate of rape convictions, and the mentality of trivialised rape, and victim-blaming promoted by this kind of humour is part of that. The same people laughing along at that joke were potentially sitting on a jury at a rape trial the next day. And yes, there will be other things informing whatever preconceptions they bring to that trial - but when the rest of society is sending screwed up messages about sexual violence, and our sex education system doesn't adequately address these issues, no wonder dangerous ideas about rape are so common.

Those ideas are also causing problems for women who are raped and do not recognise what happened to them as rape, and therefore don't get the help they need to cope with it, and blame themselves.

The final aspect to this, and the one I focused on in my complaint to the BBC, is the impact of this kind of comedy on sexual violence survivors, as Melissa McEwan discusses here. For a comedian to feel it worthwhile to risk triggering a sexual assault flash back to get a laugh, and for the BBC to defend that, are both symptoms and causes of a society which refuses to consider the needs of victims, and what can be done to make their recovery easier. This is not just about crossing the line into being offensive, it's about doing harm to people who have already suffered huge trauma.

So, I'm going to keep complaining about this kind of thing, in the hope that at some point, it will make a difference.

(On a side-note there's a tangentially related article here by always brilliant Heather Corrina about how men can prevent rape, which I meant to link to ages ago.)

(Also, at some point I shall have another rant about the fact that the panelists on shows like this are nearly always white and nearly always male.)