British Comedy Guide

I read the news today oh boy! Page 1,407

Oh c'mon being raped in prison is a staple joke of all sorts of films and sitcoms.

But when do we hear jokes about these??

Man gets penis cut off in violent attack = hilarious!

Man has testicles unwillingly removed

This one is totally true...

If my boyfriend cheats on me, I'm cutting off his dick = hilarious! If my girlfriend cheats on me, I'm shoving a white hot poker so far up her vagina it penetrates her womb so she can't have children = you monster!

But I think Renegade's made the rest up.

Okthat's fair, prison rape jokes are commonplace, the others less so

Quote: zooo @ 14th January 2014, 10:39 PM GMT

But I think Renegade's made the rest up.

Every couple of weeks there is a news story about some unfortunate bloke who loses his bits and pieces and the jokes come flooding out - whether it was a paralyzed man who's dog ate his testicles or the South American chap who took too much Viagra and had to have his penis amputated.

E.g. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384061/Man-64-finds-penis-missing-waking-drunken-night.html

According to the comments section, there were quite a few female readers who found it 'hilarious' and apparently even Sharon Osbourne joked about it on Loose Women.

You also might be too young to remember all the John Wayne Bobbett jokes that all comedians were doing, but even today many a lady comic will do jokes about having her fella spayed and neutered. But I am in no way saying that it's the preserve of female humourists exclusively, men are just as, if not more so guilty in making jokes about the loss of private parts, presumably because it's expected.

Wayne Bobbitt went on to be a porn star . .

He must have winced every time the director shouted 'cut'

Quote: Tursiops @ 14th January 2014, 11:29 PM GMT

He must have winced every time the director shouted 'cut'

Just like Angelina Jolie winces whenever someone says 'I'm off my tits' - see how funny it is when you reverse the genders?

Well, there is no context as to why an American actress would frequently hear a piece of English slang, and the joke does not really work in any case, because that tits were off of her, so yes you are right it is not very funny...

Secret networks of Freemasons have been used by organised crime gangs to corrupt the criminal justice system, according to a bombshell Metropolitan Police report leaked to The Independent.
Operation Tiberius, written in 2002, found underworld syndicates used their contacts in the controversial brotherhood to "recruit corrupted officers" inside Scotland Yard, and concluded it was one of "the most difficult aspects of organised crime corruption to proof against".
The report - marked "Secret" - found serving officers in East Ham east London who were members of the Freemasons attempted to find out which detectives were suspected of links to organised crime from other police sources who were also members of the society.
Famous for its secret handshakes, Freemasonry has long been suspected of having members who work in the criminal justice system - notably the judiciary and the police.
The political establishment and much of the media often dismiss such ideas as the work of conspiracy theorists. However, Operation Tiberius is the second secret police report revealed by The Independent in the last six months to highlight the possible issue.
Project Riverside, a 2008 report on the rogue private investigations industry by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, also claimed criminals attempt to corrupt police officers through Freemason members in a bid to further their interests.
Concerns over the influence of freemasons on the criminal justice system in 1998 led former Home Secretary Jack Straw to order that all police officers and judges should declare membership of the organisation.
However, ten of Britain's 43 police forces refused to take part and the policy was dropped under threat of legal action. In England and Wales, the Grand Master of the Freemasons is Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. The United Grand Lodge of England declined to comment last night.
The Independent revealed last week that Operation Tiberius found that organised crime syndicates such as the Adams family and the gang led by David Hunt were able to infiltrate the Met "at will".
Asked to comment on the Tiberius report, a spokesman for Scotland Yard said: "The Metropolitan Police Service will not tolerate any behaviour by our officers and staff which could damage the trust placed in police by the public.

ACAB

Quote: Tursiops @ 14th January 2014, 11:45 PM GMT

Well, there is no context as to why an American actress would frequently hear a piece of English slang, and the joke does not really work in any case, because that tits were off of her, so yes you are right it is not very funny...

I disagree. There is every reason she would know this piece of slang as she's worked with a vast number of British actors and directors and spent long periods of time in the UK filming.

Just as a lactose intolerant person can be off their tea because it contains dairy products then so can someone be off their tits if they're full of cancer.

I can't argue with it being not very funny.

Ah, but for the joke to work she does not just have to know the phrase she has a matter of inevitably to come into contact with the phrase. So if she was, say, a barmaid rather than a Hollywood actress, then we might be getting somewhere.

I am struggling to unpick the logic of your second point. Never a good position to be in when deciding whether a jokes works.

But sick jokes tend to be offensive in inverse proportion to how funny they are. So making a point about perceptions of how offensive humour is when the gender is reversed, and using an unfunny joke in order to do so, is disingenuous.

I was going to say that there was nothing in that 'rape joke' montage I found offensive, but actually the laziness of the writing in Two Broke Girls does offend me quite a bit.

Quote: zooo @ 14th January 2014, 10:27 PM GMT

It'd be funny if any of that were true...

I can't think of anyone making jokes about male rape, let alone it being a common thing!

I think RCP's examples are on the whole valid, and perhaps people may be more willing to laugh at a man suffering such atrocities because men are still seen as thinking of themselves as sexually dominant, and it's funny to (excuse pun) prick that pomposity.

Quote: Tursiops @ 14th January 2014, 11:29 PM GMT

He must have winced every time the director shouted 'cut'

Quote: Tursiops @ 15th January 2014, 12:08 AM GMT

But sick jokes tend to be offensive in inverse proportion to how funny they are.

Thank you for setting me straight on this Tursiops. I think I'll concentrate on humour involving inadvertent irony, there seems to be a lot of it about. Unimpressed

Quote: Renegade Carpark @ 15th January 2014, 1:48 PM GMT

Thank you for setting me straight on this Tursiops. I think I'll concentrate on humour involving inadvertent irony, there seems to be a lot of it about. Unimpressed

Teary

Quote: Nogget @ 15th January 2014, 12:27 PM GMT

I think RCP's examples are on the whole valid, and perhaps people may be more willing to laugh at a man suffering such atrocities because men are still seen as thinking of themselves as sexually dominant, and it's funny to (excuse pun) prick that pomposity.

Yes, the basic rule is that you do not poke fun at the powerless

This is tricky in our almost-but-not-quite post-feminist society. To make jokes about men but not about women on grounds of taste is to accept feminine disempowerment and cast them as the victim sex; over-sensitivity is patronising, and being patronised is disempowering. None of the jokes in the 'rape show-reel' strike me as being in any sense misogynistic, which should be the test of acceptability.

But there are also men (on this site? surely not) who feel deeply threatened by feminine empowerment and seek to portray themselves as victims. They then use this assumed victimhood to justify misogynistic jokes about women, by saying look, women laugh at the same jokes about men. (Ignoring of course that bad taste jokes about buggery, castration and the like are far more likely to be made, and appreciated, by men than by women.)

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