Joking about Rape
I don’t remember how old I was when I heard a rape joke. It was in a movie. Someone was going to prison. They joked about how the guy would get it in the butt.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Who feels sympathy for a felon?
Of course, rape jokes in general were more common in our culture back then. Rape was more acceptable.
Remember “The Revenge of the Nerds”? There is a scene where the beautiful girl has sex with the main nerd because she thinks he’s her boyfriend. Later, when she finds out the truth — she doesn’t feel angry or violated. She seems happy. How is this realistic? Wasn’t she just raped?
Over time, we’ve become more sensitive to the rape of women. This is a good thing. We’ve got a long way to go, but at least we’re making progress.
But what about men?
Why do we still joke about men being raped?
I remember the first Police Academy movie. Rape is eluded to when the mean officer is lured to a gay bar and seen dancing with a beefy biker. We’re supposed to laugh. In pop culture, a raped man is the punchline of a joke.
Plenty of other movies and TV shows use male rape to get laughs. Prison rape, in particular, is supposed to be hilarious.
Animal House joked about it in 1978. Blood and Bone, in 2009, played it up for laughs. In 2018, Deadpool 2 made fun of it while Bill Maher joked about Michael Cohen being raped in prison. Dave Chappelle jokes about it. So do innumerable other comedians. Our culture mocks the pain of incarcerated men for cheap laughs.
Even when it’s not treated as a joke… in The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins’ character is frequently beaten and raped early in the film. At some point the abuse stops and the character simply… moves on.
I get that men are supposed to be stoic. But how is it realistic to assume that a man can be violently assaulted like this for years and just move on?
Yet this is what men are supposed to do. If they try to seek help for their pain, they will probably be ignored or laughed at.
Even prisoners joke about prison rape, as described in this horrifying article.
Is rape a part of the sentence? Does the punishment fit the crime?
Some people think that when a man is raped in prison, it’s simply part of his sentence. How is it OK, though, for a 17 year who has gotten arrested for a non-violent crime to be raped?
How would you feel if your son, in jail for having a joint, was brutally raped? Or if your son was sent to Riker’s Island for stealing a backpack? This is what happened to Kalief Browder, the subject of a Netflix documentary. Do you think that punishment fits the crime? Even if someone breaks into a house or beats someone up — shouldn’t jail be sufficient punishment?
We protested the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. We consider ourselves a civilized country that does not condone torture. Yet what is prison rape if not torture?
Juries that would sentence a man to prison for raping a woman will give a fine to man who rapes another man, as described in this article. What struck me while reading— the reason a prosecutor got angry was that women were being sexually assaulted in prison by the staff.
And that should get people angry. We should all be angry when women are being violated like that. But we should also be angry when men are raped.
Prisoners are human beings.
We should care about the men being raped because they are human beings. Often the men who end up in prison are victims long before they go to jail.
People who work in the foster care system know the horror stories. This article tells a few of them — about a little boy who was given away at the age of 5 by his heroin addict mother. Her boyfriend was beating him up. When he was 8, he saw another kid get shot in the head.
Another child grew up being violently beaten and seeing his neighbors shot and stabbed years before he was sent to prison.
Do these men deserve to be further tortured by being beaten and sexually assaulted by guards and their fellow prisoners?
How it affects the rest of us
Even if you don’t care about prisoners — you should care about the rest of us. Those of us who don’t break the law, who want to live in a peaceful society.
Because prisoners eventually get out of prison. And when they do, if they’ve been traumatized, they bring that into the outside world with them.
Do you think a man who was frequently violated in prison will be a better spouse, a better father, a better neighbor? Or, what about the man who was not violated, but instead did the violating? What do you think the power dynamics of the prison system taught him about how to treat other people? Do you think he might be more or less likely to try to replicate that in the greater society outside the prison system?
What about prison guards? Do you think that male guards who can easily procure sex from female (or male) prisoners will be kinder to their families? Or do you think the abuse of power might corrupt their souls?
What should be done
I am not someone who thinks we should be soft on crime. I think we need to protect victims. However, when a prisoner is assaulted in jail — he or she is the victim and should be treated that way.
I think we should have a zero tolerance policy for violent assaults in our prison system. I have no problems with creating a sparse, bare bones prison system where an inmate has just the basics. However, the basics should include being safe.
We should take steps to ensure that all prisoners, male and female, are protected. Violent predators among the prison population should be isolated. Abusive guards should be fired or charged and go to jail.
Finally, we should provide mental health services to prisoners. Instead of taking someone who might already be traumatized from experiencing violence and abuse and making things worse by subjecting them to more of the same, why not try to make things better? Wouldn’t society be a better place if prisoners left jail having more impulse control, for example, and greater emotional and mental stability?
My own experience
Many years ago, when I was being stalked, I had an opportunity to put my stalker in jail. He had broken into my house multiple times. He admitted this to me in front of a witness. I seriously thought about having him arrested. I even called the police to find out what my options were.
However, I ultimately decided not to do that. One reason — I didn’t want the guy to be raped in jail. He was a thin white collar guy, a nerd, an engineer. He could easily have been victimized.
I did make another choice which hopefully resulted in him getting the help he needed. Would I have made a different decision if our prisons were a safer space? Probably, yes.
I think it’s time we as a country took steps to make that happen. It’s time to stop the abuse of prisoners, both male and female, and it’s time to stop joking about sexual assault against men.
Rape is never funny, not even when the victim is a man.
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Previously published on medium
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