Last week, US comedian Daniel Tosh sparked a furore when, warming up his audience for a 'hilarious' rape joke, he was heckled by a woman yelling, 'rape is never funny'. Tosh's response is a subject of contention. The woman claims he said, 'Wouldn't it be funny if five guys raped this woman, like, right now?' However, the club's owner says Tosh scoffed, 'Looks like this girl's been raped by five guys.'
Either way, the response cuts to the heart of what is fair game for comic fodder. Some feminists say it is never funny to joke about rape because, statistically speaking, there are bound to be rape survivors in every comedian's audience. Other writers and comedians came to Tosh's defence, crying censorship.
Taking to Twitter to defend himself, Tosh wrote, 'there are awful things in the world but you can still make jokes about them #deadbabies'. In this he is correct. Comedians can serve a higher purpose than simply making us laugh. My favourite comedian, Bill Hicks, used comedy as a medium for exposing society's worst ills. Hicks aimed to enlighten as well as entertain as he told what he perceived as the truth.
But what is the 'truth' about rape, and can we ever laugh at it? A friend of mine, Zach Rhinier, works as a stand-up comedian in New York City. When I asked him if it is ever okay to joke about rape, his response echoed that of many feminists, 'Only if it mocks the rapist, but not a victim.'
Tosh's brand of humour fails because it ridicules women rather than rapists and the culture that allows rape to flourish. Tosh's TV show, Tosh.0, frequently takes aim at women. In one notorious segment, 'Lightly Touching Women's Stomachs While They're Sitting Down', Tosh plays clips of women being touched non-consensually, including their confused reactions, and then encourages male viewers tape themselves doing the same.
Make sure the woman is seated, stresses Tosh, so that 'she's aware that you are in fact feeling a roll'. The point is to shame women for not living up to society's impossible beauty standards. Worse still, Tosh encourages men to ignore any protestations: 'Be careful, because they like to pretend they don't love it'.
Where have we heard that before? Tosh is