Daniel Tosh "Rape Joke" Controversy

[Venetia]

I FINALLY found out about what the Daniel Tosh "rape joke" controversy was all about. And that was IT?

Why are people acting so sensitive about it?

I'm with George Carlin. You can make a joke about anything. Including that. If people don't laugh, it was either delivered wrong, or the audience's skin is too thin.

Life's too short to be offended by everything.
It doesn't demean victims to make a joke about something awful. It doesn't make the act any less awful.
People make jokes or off-color comments about MURDER all the time, and no one bats an eye. Don't you think MURDER destroys lives too?

Laughter is a good thing. People need to learn to do it more often :/
Or atleast meet everyone halfway and lighten up.

What do YOU think about it? Put your opinions of the comedian himself aside -- pretend it was said by anyone else, even your own favorite comedian.
It's their job to say shit that others wouldn't. And nowadays, there are so many other contenders, some feel they need to turn to the ultra-lewd to get by. It's not ACTUAL STATEMENTS that they're making. They're characters, up on stage. They're playing a part. It's very seldom that who they are on stage and who they are everyday are the same person.
(not to mention: he said it to a HECKLER. Comedians are SUPPOSED to tear hecklers apart, or they themselves get torn apart up there!)


For those who have no idea what I'm talking about:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/daniel-tosh- ... ew-series/
http://www.uproxx.com/webculture/2012/0 ... rape-joke/
from the chick's friend's POV: http://breakfastcookie.tumblr.com/post/ ... omedy-club
Plus, the thousands and thousands of Facebook updates from people going "Rape isn't funny" etc. (sigh)

 

[Jason]

...

:doublefp:

 

[Venetia]

...

:doublefp:

idgi, is that aimed at me bringing it up for debate, or the controversy, or what? (this is not rec room)

 

[Jason]

It's aimed at the entire controversy and how it's actually news worthy lol... silly people

 

[united washcloth express]

He made a joke about boning a baby once and no one cared.

Don't see why people care now~

 

[Ellie]

A few months ago, on his show, Tosh instructed his mostly male audience to sneak up on women, “lightly touch” their stomach while they’re sitting against their will, and tape the reactions. He ended the segment by informing viewers to “be careful” because the women “like to pretend they don’t love it.”

Yeah ok I'm on the anti-Tosh side.

http://breakfastcookie.tumblr.com/post/ ... omedy-club

I mean jesus christ, what

 

[Jason]

Lol Wyatt I don't see anything wrong with that myself...

 

[Toams]

What you think is funny may not be seen by everyone as funny, everyone has different standards, and reacts differently to certain things.
I think stuff is only funny if all parties agree it is.

Personally, I don't think the real concept of 'rape' is funny at all.

Really, I fail to see how that is funny. I mean it's easy to make jokes about it and laugh, but if anyone present has ever been affected by that shit they know the impact it can have.
This is boiling down to different discussions altogether though, about comedy and society. In this case it's more about society and modern-day visions on 'respect'.

I mean sure there have always been different 'gradations' of comedy, some harsher and darker than other, and maybe because of today's all time low-level of respect (my opinion), the stuff that used to be dark is now becoming mainstream.

I get that some people don't like that, and can't take it, but the best thing that girl could've done would be walking out without saying a word. You cannot call a comedian out during a show, that man is only there to please the big audience, not to satisfy just one listener.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean your words don't have influence.
If you're playing a big audience, it's easy to overlook a small individual's reaction.
Try the same thing in a crowd of three. See what the effect is.

Also, it would really NOT have been funny if that girl would've been raped by five men.
I really encourage people to see both sides of this thing.

You can dismiss it as 'yeah well people shouldn't be so uptight', I partly agree on that, but I also think the people that think it isn't funny are half-right.
You have to reach a certain compromise between distinguishing the 'joke' and reality, which can only be reached if all parties agree. ('okay well if it's a joke.. ' )

If you think it's sick, try and see it as a joke, like something people don't mean.
If you think nothing's wrong with saying a girl should get raped, try to think about when it'd REALLY happen.
If you think there's nothing wrong with people getting raped, try to get help.

I wonder if there'd be less rape if people wouldn't be associating it with 'funny' thoughts.

 

[Toams]

also this:

While many of his jokes do have very misogynistic premises, they are all clear jokes that are meant to be so overtly offensive that you step back and laugh but also realize "holy shit, people actually think this for real!".

 

[Venetia]

I think stuff is only funny if all parties agree it is.

That's impossible. My sense of humor is EXTREMELY different from even some of my closest friends. There is NO WAY to perform adult comedy in front of a group of hundreds-to-thousands of people, and not offend some of them, or hit a hot button or two.

I wonder if there'd be less rape if people wouldn't be associating it with 'funny' thoughts.

nope. there's always been rape. always. it's obvious that it's a big deal, a bad thing. if it's not to someone, it's not because they heard some jokes about it. if a person is so maladjusted to society that they construe laughs about awful things to be acceptable, and does it, they were probably too messed up in the head to have avoided doing something horrible anyway.

if someone jokes about shiv'ing someone in the back, the audience is expected to take it as a joke: not real. It's funny because it's absurd to act blase about something so violent or awful.

The comment Tosh made wasn't nice. However, heckling someone in the middle of their stand-up isn't nice, and comedians are expected to retort in the most crude way possible to defuse the situation. What did you expect him to do, apologize, and completely change his routine on the spot?
The girl who heckled Tosh had never seen his stand-up, and didn't know what he regularly performed. If she were so thin-skinned, and crude as to stand up and heckle instead of simply politely leaving, perhaps her friends shouldn't have taken her?? It's not like Tosh has EVER been non-crude--EVER.

And have you ever been to a large-scale comedy show? They usually warn you via flyers or signs or notices in the lobby, that the comedian will be performing potentially rude or offensive material. They sometimes even put it right on the show tickets. Considering how offensive Tosh usually is, I'm sure they did this here, too. If someone who's easily offended ignores all of this and is offended anyway, whose fault is it??

Imagine you're doing a show in legitimate theatre, a showing of Phantom of the Opera, and in the middle of your singing "Music of the Night", someone in the audience stands up and goes "HEY, I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE WHO SING ABOUT BEING SAD OR IN LOVE!". What the fuck do you do?

In plays, security comes over and escorts hecklers out, and bans them from the theatre. With stand-up comedians, though, they famously do nothing, to see how the comic reacts. They are EXPECTED to flip out. If they don't, they're pussies that invite more heckling.


What's most frustrating here is that it seems like the people who get most offended about this type of stupid shit are those who ARE NOT INVOLVED IN ANY WAY or have NEVER BEEN PERSONALLY AFFECTED ABOUT THE TOPIC.

And if people can't learn to laugh about something bad that HAS happened to them, when it's generally introduced by someone who doesn't know you, and is not directed specifically at you, then they can't or won't heal. Because Tosh wasn't speaking truthfully, and the only person who would take it as such is a dumbass.

I'm not saying people should never get offended about anything, I'm saying that a comedian making a joke (i.e., doing their job) about a thing is GOING to offend SOMEONE, or else it's "soft humor", which is only ever funny to ultra old people and the extremely tame/bland (minority).

 

[Glitchfinder]

I think the first article you linked referred to a reasonable middle ground.

Now, I realize that you can't make a joke without offending people. However, I have long maintained that the best jokes are the ones that make even the butt of the joke laugh. In point of fact, I've maintained for years that if you want a good joke about ANY stereotype, you have to ask someone with a sense of humor who falls under that stereotype. Want a good lawyer joke? Ask a lawyer. Blonde joke? Ask a funny blonde. Fat joke? Ask a fat guy. (Just make sure the person actually has a sense of humor first) That said, there are some jokes you can't do that with. For example, dead baby jokes (must I elaborate?) and rape jokes both involve parties who either cannot be asked, or who could potentially be made worse by such jokes. As such, jokes that fall into a category like that need to be treated carefully. Did tosh step over the line? Absolutely. Did the person who heckled him do the same? Definitely. But, as Ven has pointed out, comedians are expected to step well over any line that the audience draws for them, and that's exactly what a heckler is doing by heckling the comedian.

Personally, I do have opinions on the matter. And I know they hold merit. However, seeing as I have never been personally touched by the issue at hand, my opinions on the matter are somewhat irrelevant. That said, that does not make them any less relevant than the opinions of someone who HAS been touched personally by this issue. It just means that my opinions are untouched by personal experience. The problem here, however, is that people are taking their own opinions too seriously with regards to a joke. That's like saying "I want a car that can't drive, and can only take me to the bottom of the ocean and back to the surface safely." In other words, you can't take anything regarding a joke seriously, because a joke is not intended to be serious, it's intended to poke fun at serious matters in a way that can't be taken seriously. If you want to fight the rape culture, do it in another way, or tell rape jokes that help bring to light the issues with the rape culture. Otherwise, let people like tosh show exactly how crude and thoughtless their jokes have to be due to a lack of material. (Though, to be fair, his joke still wasn't particularly funny.)

 

[RavenTDA]

This isn't the first time everyone has flipped out over a rape joke. Rape jokes imo aren't ever really any funny and when they are they aren't so LOL that it's worth the terrible backlash that it can spring up if you do it wrong. The first joke I think was tame and kinda made me "heh" (about the touching their stomachs). But I think what people are being uptight about it is, is that it's instructing people to do it. If he said he did it or was talking about a random person or just making up a scenario it's different. The fact that he TELLS people do it, you know one goddamn idiot out there is going to take it serious and do it and listen to every word of it. Because well people are stupid; it can't be helped.

The reaction to the heckler I think it just over the top and not funny at all. I understand why he did it but he really should have chosen to remark about something else. Hoping someone gets raped is pretty harsh even in a joking manner. People are able to take "lol I hope they get killed" as a less serious offense because it's the usual reaction people get and it's the most extreme. The problem here is that it sounds like he's really hoping it happens even in a joking setting. He also could have taken a more ironic approach and said something like "Wouldn't it be funny if she goes and rapes some random guy like right now?" Its less offensive than just "lol I hope she gets raped" because then at least with the irony gives it some grounds to actually be funny rather than lol rape, which because the joke was so hollow gives that effect.

More or less I'm in the middle ground on this. I don't like to censor people's jokes and there's a lot offensive jokes I find funny. There's some funny jokes about molestation and rape but in the end you gotta make sure you pull it off right. You screw it up and it could be the end of your career or a large blow. It's just not worth it. But if they HAVE to it'd be in their best interest to make scenarios NOT instructing and NOT towards a specific person. Tip toeing around that subject is always best to use yourself in that situation ie the dirty priest molesting you in your choir days or using an anonymous make-up person so that no one takes it serious. So much of comedy is about execution... this is just the same except if you screw up this execution you may be pissing off a lot more people than intended.

 

[Venetia]

Does anyone even know what the joke(s) were that led into the heckler standing up and voicing her opinion in the first place?
I've been looking and looking and can't figure out what caused her to feel the need to jump up and go on the defensive.

His saying "Wouldn't it be funny if she were raped ..." was a knee-jerk reaction to the heckling. It wasn't a written or planned joke in his stand-up.

How many times have YOU over-reacted to something unexpected, or said something you didn't mean because it was a "heat-of-the-moment" situation?

And what's funny is that Tosh is usually a very calm person when it comes to heckling. He famously stops his stand-up to personally escort hecklers out of the audience. I once saw a clip of him where these drunk dudes were being disruptive in the front row, so he dropped what he was doing so he could escort a veteran & his girlfriend from a further-back row to take the drunk dudes' seats.

Even in this situation, he handled it much more calmly than most comedians (said something nasty, but didn't even go on a tirade, or make a big 'thing' out of it). Have you ever seen Joe Rogan flip his shit at a heckler? Even "nice guys" like Louis C.K. have been known to go over the top in disarming hecklers. Sure, they probably all wish they could handle it as smoothly as Jimmy Carr, but that sort of calmness/wittiness under pressure is rare.


IDK, I feel for comedians. I'd like to see the people tearing Tosh down for his heckler-reaction try to get up on stage, reliably make people laugh the whole show, and also react in an inoffensive way to rude assholes who decide to disrupt their bit.

 

[Ellie]

It wasn;t a joke she heckled, it was him saying that all rape jokes are funny. She responded shouting no rape jokes are funny, and he said wouldn't it be funny if when this girl leaves here she's raped by five guys.

 

[united washcloth express]

But him saying rape jokes are funny was the joke D:

 

[bacon]

Everyday people joke about murder, prostitution, bullying, etc and you dont see me calling up something like family guy because they made another gay joke. She heckled him and anyone who knows comedy knows that if you heckle a comedian he is probably going to respond. You paid to see it and so did a bunch of people. You can't get angry at him for responding esp when he is paid to do so.

And what i dont get is that if she hasn't been a victim herself (or affected personally) why is she bitching.
If I make a joke about all of the starving kids in Africa and China, is that better than making a joke about rape?
both are severe issues
both personally affect people
I would even argue that starving kids in Africa is a more severe topic
I mean both are severe topics; the only difference is some high-horse lady decided to make a scene
what pisses me off is she probably laughed at the other 100 jokes that were equally offensive

 

[Perihelion]

I'm baffled about how people so inconsistent in their treatment of rape jokes vs. other jokes. Obviously rape is bad, but why is it not okay to joke about rape when it's okay to joke about things that are worse, like murder? If murder jokes don't encourage people to murder, why would rape jokes encourage people to rape? I'm fine with people just flat-out not liking offensive jokes, but I can't respect inconsistency. You could make an argument for a practical objection to rape jokes, since rape is one of the most common really bad things that can happen to someone and you might trigger flashbacks or something, but the objection is usually that it's morally wrong somehow. Despite woman-on-man rape jokes being completely acceptable when rape is just as traumatizing for a man. There just isn't a defense for thinking men getting raped is funny and women getting raped is horrible, yet it's incredibly common.

I think part of the problem is how Puritan we are towards sex in general, but part of it is also because of the prevailing mentality among "feminists" that woman-specific problems (which rape isn't, but they think it is) are somehow more important than other problems. It's stupid. The way our society views rape in general hurts men because they don't get their problems taken seriously or they fall victim to false accusations, and I think it hurts women too because it's a symptom of the idea that women don't or shouldn't have sexual agency. You're not truly equal if you get special treatment, because you only need special treatment if you're deficient in some way.

 

[Venetia]

I feel the same way, Peri! Here, here!

To add to that, there's this mentality among women, which is very hard to explain, but certain women/girls take a "victim" standpoint in most things they do. Things that they care about or feel are somehow more important than anything else, and are off-limits to mockery. Even when they have no personal experience with the subjects (but they will often say they do, without supporting evidence).

I remember a slumber party I went to as a teen. About 14-15 girls, age 12, 13, & 14, all took over this house (no supervision, either). We did a lot of the "normal" slumber party stuff (pillow fights, truth or dare, etc.). But then, at some point, all the girls were in this one room and we all started having this serious conversation. It turned dramatic REALLY fast. Someone brought up rape, and then I noticed this INCREDIBLY strange dynamic. One girl said she had been. Then another. Then another. Each one was more dramatic than the last. Then they started spouting stories, and tried to top each other. Most started crying to really punctuate how bad it was. One of my friends, who I'd known for years, and told me EVERYTHING, and had definitely never been molested in her life, even said she had been. The rest of the drama-mongers were all well-off girls with nice lives and nice parents and nice things and no emotional problems whatsoever, and I don't think a single one of them even truly knew what they were talking about. Some descriptions sounded like something out of a Lifetime movie.

Me and two other girls were the only ones who stayed quiet. They actually lorded it over us by saying things like "oh yeah, well YOU don't know what it's LIKE to be raped."

I felt disgusted by what they were doing. I had known a lot of [physical, not sexual] abuse in my life, even at that point, but here's the thing about people who ARE abused: While they're trying to cope with it, they DON'T CASUALLY DROP THAT IT'S HAPPENED. They don't want the attention. They might confide in their problem with someone trusted, or a police officer/etc. (hopefully!), but never sober, in a group of other people who are semi-friends or acquaintances, that they'll be seeing frequently later, and may use that information in some unknown way against them in the future.

These girls were all the dramatic types, the ones who would cry at nothing, who were raised like princesses, that thought they were special snowflakes.
It's disgustingly common, and in most cases, follows the girl into womanhood. Because everyone dances around their "moods" and never forces them to realize that their "feelings" don't matter more than a special snowflake's chance in hell to anyone else.

I have no doubt that the heckler in the Tosh situation was one of these types. A true sufferer would not make an ass out of themselves to very vocally & publicly defend something awful that happened to them. Throw an adult's equivalent of a public tantrum.

What do tantrums get? Nothing outside of hurting your cause to everyone who can see the tantrum for what it really is.

 

[MagitekElite]

I didn't think it was a problem until he said the "wouldn't it be funny if she was raped by, like, 5 guys?". That was wrong. Even if he meant it as a joke and I'm 100% sure he did (as I watch his shows a lot), he went overboard with his reply to the woman. He should have just ignored her and have security throw her out.

I'm sure others here and elsewhere would disagree with me on this, but oh well.

@Venetia:

Those girls sound messed up. Faking to be raped to "rank" others? :blank:

 

[Venetia]

He should have just ignored her and have security throw her out.

Stand-up comedians can't do that.
They HAVE to retort. It's how comic shows operate.

Sure, technically, he could have gone "Security? Please remove this woman for heckling." And eventually, someone would have come by, and escorted her out. But that is NOT how comedians are supposed to operate. They are supposed to respond to heckling themselves. It is just how it works, how it's always worked.

You can't be respected as a comedian that does adult comedy, if you cry for help when someone derails your act.

Think of it like being a teacher, sort of. If a little kid stands up and goes "MATH IS GAY!", you can't just sit there and hope a noon duty wanders in to escort the kid out. You have to discipline the kid. A comedian retorting harshly to a heckler is along the same line.

Have you ever been to a comedy show where someone heckled??
If the comedian just sits there and takes it, he invites more heckling! If he retorts in a nasty way, everyone else gets a laugh, the heckler is embarrassed, and the situation is defused.