Rape Jokes Quotes

“People like Jim [a defender of punch-down rape jokes] desperately want to believe that the engines of injustice run on outsized hate—stranger rapes in dark alleys, burning crosses and white hoods—but the reality is that indifference, bureaucracy, and closed-door snickers are far more plentiful fuels.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“The fact that rape threats are a thing says a lot about how rape isn't a lapse in self-control but often a tool to punish & control others.”
― Steph Guthrie

“Rape humor is designed to remind women that they are still not quite equal. Just as their bodies and reproductive freedom are open to legislation and public discourse, so are their other issues. When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are “sensitive” and branded as “feminist,” a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for “woman who does not tolerate bullshit.”
Perhaps rape jokes are funny, but I cannot fathom how. Humor is subjective, but is it that subjective? I don’t have it in me to find rape jokes funny or to tolerate them in any way. It’s too close a topic. Rape is many things—humiliating, degrading, physically and emotionally painful, exhausting, irritating, and sometimes, it is even banal. It is rarely funny for most women. There are not enough years in this lifetime to create the kind of distance where I could laugh and say, “That one time when I was gang-raped was totally hilarious, a real laugh riot.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist