The Rape Joke That Ruined My Super Bowl
I just wanted to eat my weight in chips and queso and make fun of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but instead my brain and I spent Super Bowl evening dwelling on a rape joke. Specifically, this rape joke:
Don’t try uploading the Game to Pornhub because we don’t allow rape.
— Pornhub Katie (@Pornhub) February 3, 2014
It showed up in my Twitter feed after a person who I follow and know in real life to be funny and pleasant retweeted it. Reading it among all the positive excitement that comes with seeing my hometown football team finally win a Super Bowl, was a harsh, shitty dark spot that I couldn’t shake.
While these days rape jokes don’t generally phase me much (and it’s impossible to decide whether that’s a blessing or a curse), what caused this specific joke to stick in my head for the rest of the night wasn’t the joke itself (which was retweeted over 30,000 times, by the way), but rather the person’s reaction when I questioned his retweeting of it. “C’mon, dude, retweeting a rape joke?” I asked. “Not having this discussion right now,” he said.
Not having this discussion right now. Right. Because there’s a game to watch and guacamole to eat. I just wanted to watch a football game, too, dude. I didn’t want to discuss rape culture either. But by retweeting that joke, you just did start this discussion. So let’s talk.
Unlike you, I don’t get to choose when rape culture does and does not exist. I, and every other woman, don’t have that privilege. I am reminded of it every single day. I have been verbally harassed about my body at bus stops on a daily basis; my hips and thighs are critiqued by yelling strangers as I cross the street; my ass has been slapped by a passerby at a crowded music festival; my boob has been grabbed by a belligerent drunk man who cornered me on the bus at 9 am while half a dozen people pretended not to see.
And I don’t even have to leave the house to be reminded that my body and my sexuality are not my own! Once, while watching TV in my first floor apartment, a man attempted to expose himself through my living room window and the only reason he ran off was because I loudly called out to my boyfriend, who was in the other room.
This is what it feels like to be a woman every day. The fear of rape and sexual assault is real, every day.Â
According to RAINN.org 346,830 women were raped in the U.S. in 2012. That’s 950 women a day. That’s 158 women during the four hours it takes to watch the Super Bowl. I wonder how they would feel about you putting rape culture on pause so you can share a shitty joke that compares their sexual violation to how Peyton Manning was feeling the moment Malcolm Smith intercepted his pass to Knowshon Moreno.
These are the things that that rape joke brought up, a rape joke you probably retweeted on a whim. And now, because of your dumb retweet, I couldn’t even get stoked about a stupid football game without having to also digest the fact that the very real rape culture isn’t an epidemic but rather a punchline used to mock the losing team.
But you’re right, we’re “not having this discussion right now.” And that’s a goddamn problem.
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