rape joke

by Patricia Lockwood

Genres: Poetry

Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Debby Rubin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The joke is, there’s nothing funny about it.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart wrenching, horrifying, brilliant, relatable.

[Hiba Said · Rating 4 out of 5]

Regaining agency through shifting the narrative of humour in the normalisation of rape culture into the confrontation of sexual trauma and the wider conditions that refuse to inhibit violence against women. Lockwood expunges the notion of female fault and their positions as the crutches of the “bit”. Instead, she offers a spectacular recognition of rape culture as the true joke: a joke that it can be made, that female suffering can be capitalised on, and a refusal to plunge oneself into the pit of male brutality as a passive subject of his “joke”. To laugh at sexual violence positions one alongside the aggressor. Her work wittingly demonstrates the power of humour in adapting the mode weaponised in degrading women and victims of sexual violence into a mechanic for confronting trauma and the nature of complicity.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tragic tale about the author being raped as a teenager. Nothing funny here, but that it the point!