|
I don't think rape jokes make people rape. I don't even think they make 'rape' socially acceptable - what they can do, depending on the target of the joke, is feed into a viewpoint and potentially reinforce or confirm it. It can, imo, act to downgrade how certain behaviour is perceived - like date rape, for instance, or domestic violence, or a penchant for very young teenagers (jail bait). Not for most of that group of friends - but for someone who is already leaning in that direction.
I'll have to go looking for them at some at some point, but there have been some really interesting studies into how young men (in particular) respond to peer attitudes to this kind of thing.
I should stress by the way, that I am not referring to all rape jokes. There is a particular strand of humour that has the victim of rape as the butt of the joke. It's the kind of joke that invites the audience to vicariously participate in that power relationship. Similarly there is a strand of humour that has the battered wife or girlfriend as the butt of the joke - and again, the audience is invited to associate in to the one assaulting her.
With that particular strand of humour, there's an undercurrent of 'we'd all like to do this really'.
|