ATTENTION LOLSMITHS

Unless you have something really mind-blowingly original--and I mean that with the utmost seriousness--please stop doing jokes that basically boil down to "Men and women sure are different huh lolololol". The same goes if you replace "men" and "women" with "white people" and "any ethnicity other than white people."

It is hack material and it is not funny anymore and seriously shut up about it. I will close the webpage, change the channel, close the book, or leave the area because you have made it apparently obvious that you are now out of material and must fall back on the same exact generic crap that every lame unfunny hack has done since THE DAWN OF TIME.

This goes double if the joke elaborates into "men like sex and sports and women like shoes and feelings" or some variation. (Apply your own racial flavor, if you so choose.)

That is all.

Rape Humor: You're Doing it Wrong

I have, as usual, been wasting my weeknights watching Comedy Central shows. In an odd enough twist of fate, not one but two shows dealt with rape as a central premise for jokes in the fresh new season. Loath as I am to say this usually, South Park got it wrong. And if you can believe this, The Sarah Silverman Program got it right. Let me explain these things one at a time.

South Park: DOING IT WRONG
The season premiere of South Park opened on Cartman having nightmares about the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, and raving to his friends the next morning, that the Chinese were going to take over. Kyle started and then said he couldn't do this today, Stan reminded Kyle that he was supposed to call Cartman "racist or something," and Kyle went home. For a glorious moment, I thought they were going to break the Fourth Wall. But alas, no.

The reason Kyle couldn't deal with Cartman today is because he had not been able to get over (apparently) witnessing the rape of his friend. For about five minutes we suffer, wondering who got raped. (Was it Butters? C'mon, it's always Butters.) Kyle has a horrible flashback which depicts to boys in a movie theater and we finally see who it was who was "raped": Indiana Jones. The boys run screaming out of the theater, one of them vomiting on the pavement outside and wailing things such as, "Aliens don't belong in an Indiana Jones movie!" And, alright, whatever, it's cool and "edgy" these days to use the word "rape" in that context, and the buildup was alright. There were a few throwaway gags that were actually, you know, funny, such as the good ol' Lifetime Rape Movie of the Week cliche of staring out into the sunset on a lake while talking about it in the most overwrought way possible. And this was, alright, not Trey and Matt's best work, but not too bad.

Until Stan started to "come to terms" with the "rape." Viewers were "treated," I guess, to an imaginary scenario in which Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas physically rape Indiana Jones. Two other characters had little visions like this, each one different, each one pretty graphic as far as basic cable goes, and each one just uncomfortably long. I don't mean uncomfortably long in the, "This was funny at first, now it's too long, now it's so long it's funny again" way; I mean uncomfortably long in that, "Wow, this was just umcomfortable, and now it's gone on for like an eternity and I hope there's a really good payoff." There wasn't a really good payoff. There wasn't ANY payoff. It was pretty much just three rape scenes which, I can imagine, would be pretty triggering for any survivors of rape who happen to actually like South Park. (I'm surprised it hasn't been on Feministe yet, really.)

The joke was not about how rape was bad or how rapists were terrible people, but how, even if Spielberg and Lucas are represented as evil demons, watching Indiana Jones get raped is FUNNY. But honestly, I watched it, three times, and it really really wasn't.

(To this episode's credit, the subplot about Cartman and Butters storming P. F. Chang's was fantastic and classic, "Cartman's not only a horrible racist but a total idiot" humor. That should have been the main plot, with the rape sequences being replaced with more Lifetime Movie clihes, I think.)

The Sarah Silverman Program: DOING IT RIGHT
The start of Sarah's domino effect of ridiculousness in this episode is her sister Laura's mention that she has vaguely Asian features because their Russian ancestors, ages and ages ago, were raped and pillaged by Mongolian invaders. This is not too unusual; lots of people were pillaged by Mongolians back in the day, but the silliness arises from the exaggerations in the show, as always. Sarah flashes back to her father singing a lullaby to her as a child. The last line is, in contrast to the rest of the happy song, a deathly whisper of "Your ancestors were raped by Mongolians." The ridiculousness builds up through the show, resulting in Sarah at one point screaming "rape" when her Mongolian landlords increase her rent. Jay rightfully chews her out for ever, EVER yelling rape when she wasn't in danger. Sarah, always kind of a horrible person, dismisses his arguments about "semantics" and goes on a rampage of ill-advised cartoonish crap, culminating in her purchase of a billboard with her sister's smiling face on it, declaring "Descended from a Mongolian RAPIST." The Mongolian Board of Tourism is, naturall, not pleased, and take Sarah to court. Sarah countersues for the rape of her ancestors.

The trial is where I realized the stark difference between the rape jokes in these episodes. The...prosecution? I don't know, who's the lawyer who's not working for the woman countersuing an entire country for rape? Well, whatever, the lawyer for the Mongolians produces a picture of a Russian peasant woman from, you know, way back when. She's got a long skirt and a babushka and the general frumpy look associated with "Russian peasant." The lawer presenting this picture notes that the woman's ankles are exposed, and that thusly, she is wearing the equivalent of one of Britney Spears' outifts, and so obviously, "She was asking for it."

After that, it gets a little weird and kind of loses the whole "rape" thread, so I'll wrap up. In contrast to the South Park episode, the joke here was about the attitudes toward rape, rather than the act itself. Sarah looks absurd for screaming rape about a rent increase, and buying a billboard of her sister's face with the word "RAPIST" underneath it in bold letters. The idea that a Russian peasant woman was "asking for it" by the way she dressed is patently ridiculous--as is the idea that any woman is "asking for it," ever. The idea of someone being raped isn't funny; it's how people act toward the idea of someone being raped that's funny.

I have to update my list of People Who Have Made Jokes About Rape That Have Not Made Me Incredibly Angry. It now consists of TWO people.
-George Carlin
-Sarah Silverman (or at least the writers for her show)

And I'm Sittin' Here on Capitol Hill

Sometimes, things happen that are awesome. This is one of them.

I saw a commercial for it about five minutes ago, and it was marketed as "just in time for the election," and is apparently being sold with an election-tracking map so kids can keep up with which candidate is winning which state.

In case you're unclear on why this is awesome, let me tell you a little story about my childhood.

In whatever grade it was that we started to learn about government, I became enraptured with the idea. We could pick who we wanted to be in charge. It was up to us. And on that glorious day that I hit the age of eighteen, I could join the ranks of people who helped to choose who ran our country. I would play pretend, and my games would involve my imaginary character's eighteenth birthday, on which she was given a voting license by her mother or something, and this was the best possible present. (Clearly, I did not understand the rules of registering, but I think that knowing you need a license to vote at seven is fairly impressive, right?) Other kids wanted to be eighteen because they wanted to be grown-up, to drive cars, to stay up as late as they wanted, and, after puberty, because they could buy cigarettes and porn or whatever. I wanted to be eighteen because it meant that I would finally, FINALLY be able to vote.

Perhaps if kids watch this Schoolhouse Rock thing, they'll get excited about voting like I was. Perhaps they, too, will look forward to the day that they can decide who they want to be president or governor or mayor or senator or head of the PTA or whatever. Higher voter turnout by excited young people could only be a good thing.


Also tangentially related to the Bill on Capitol Hill is some crappy stuff. Here I'll quote from the fabulous Cara of Feministe and The Curvature who has said it much better than I could: "I have previously written about the dangerous proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule that would endanger women’s access to reproductive health care. The rule, if instated, would allow health care workers to prevent women from knowing all of their health care options, including those regarding birth control — and would call government-funded providers “discriminatory” for refusing to hire such people, thus removing their funding.

The comment period for the proposed rule closes on September 25th."

Seriously, go say something about it. (They even give you a form letter for us lazy folk who can't think of anything more eloquent to say than "L. E. SMASH" on this matter!)

Let's Talk About Abortions! Yay!

So I was poking around Feministe about ten minutes ago and found this. I had about two thoughts. The simple one was, "Samantha Bee is made of win." The one I'm going to talk about went something like this: "AAAAARGGGHH L. E. SMASH!" (Told you I was violent on the inside.)

What is it about anti-choice buttwaffles that makes me angry enough to punch babies and kick puppies? Honestly, I'm not sure what about them pushes me quite so far into Capslock Harry territory, but I do know why I get angry in the first place.

My paternal family is pretty solidly Irish Catholic, and throughout my childhood took a much bigger role than my maternal family in raising me. (This might have something to do with the fact that my maternal family largely migrated from Jersey to Florida while I was not yet a hatchling.) I've lived with my older sister through two of her pregnancies and developed love and emotions for one-month-old fetuses in her belly. I don't think I need to go on much farther here; the point is that I don't want to get an abortion ever. I wouldn't want my future daughter to get an abortion ever. I wish there honestly was never any need for any woman ever to get an abortion. (This fantasy could perhaps maybe happen someday if we could get some affordable birth control and comprehensive sex-ed already for the love of all that ever was or could be holy.) Technically, yes, I'm pro-life. Incidentally, this also means I'm anti-war, anti-death penalty, and basically anti-anything that involves a human life being taken away.

But you know what? I'm open-minded enough to know that my experience is not everyone's experience. My personality is not everyone's personality. My circumstances are not everyone's circumstances. This is why I'm pro-choice. I'm not pro-murdering-infants. I'm not pro-punching-pregnant-women-in-the-stomach. I'm not pro-mandatory-abrotions-for-everyone. I'm pro-choice.

I'm pro-choice because I can't pretend to know what everyone who considers an abortion is going through. I'm pro-choice because there's no real definition of when a fetus stops being a clump of parasitic cells and starts being a person. If they find that line, then I'll absolutely agree to no abortions past it, but until then I'm not about to call someone a murderer for doing something that could be equivalent to swatting a fly or using antibacterial soap. I'm pro-choice because I don't think, when a teenage girl gets pregnant because the condom broke, that the only option should be to shrug and say, "Well, there goes your youth." I'm pro-choice because having sex does not warrant a punishment, and a human child shouldn't be seen as one. Ever, by anyone.

As a white girl with enough money to buy condoms and birth control, and a decent enough education to know how to use them so they work, I choose to avoid having an abortion unless there is some kind of horrible emergency. That, right-wing wankers who make me froth about the mouth, is what pro-choice means.

(Fun fact: I wanted my next post to be about how David Bowie et al turned me pseudo-gay, but this came out instead. Don't worry, I'll get around to that too. Probably. Maybe.)