Nothing to laugh about: excerpt from Someone You Already Know

It's sad and disappointing when people you once respected make jokes about things that just aren't funny. It's even more unfortunate when they defend such jokes, despite being told about their offensive nature. I wish these incidents didn't bother me so much, but I wouldn't want to be a rape crisis counselor if they didn't. So today, I think it's appropriate to share a similar scenario depicted in Someone You Already Know:

I take my usual seat at lunch by the vending machines and wait for Elisabeth when I hear a male voice behind me say “Man, I really got raped by that Algebra exam today.”

There are a million different reactions I could have to an ignorant statement like this. On one hand, I can ignore it. The kid is an idiot. He doesn’t know. But I can feel the blood pounding in my veins, rushing swiftly in my ears, and what I really want to do is turn and scream at the little fool. 

But to scream…to fight…to make any sound in my defense, that’s something I just don’t know how to do. Something I don’t know how to do well.

How does a word like rape, loaded with stigma and designed to shock, manage to get reduced to such common, blasé terminology to describe something as mundane as an Algebra test? Whether he meant to offend or not, just how stupid can some people be to not realize the full impact of their words?

I don’t have to say anything in my defense. A voice that sounds remarkably like Trevor’s calls out: “Hey! You think rape is something to joke about? You wouldn’t if it happened to you.”

I can’t not turn around now to see the looks on those guys’ faces; I think they feel genuinely remorseful now, seeing me sitting only a table away, but they also look shocked to hear a guy rebuke them in such a way. I can see the confused looks on their faces now: why would a guy speak out against a rape joke? After all, they’re probably thinking, it’s not like guys can be raped. 

If it was me who yelled at them, or some other girl, the sad reality is they’d probably have laughed and said something along the lines of “Lighten up.”