Like The Varsity, the University of Western Ontario’s student paper the Gazette publishes a “spoof” issue every year on or around the first of April. Never a paragon of good taste, last Friday’s spoof issue made the Gazette the target of scorn from a group of UWO students decrying it for, in their words, supporting the university’s “rapist culture.”
Undoubtedly, the article, which depicts recognizable caricatures of UWO feminist organizers holding an anti-lingerie “tribal ritual,” should never have been published. At one point in the piece, a woman’s genitals miraculously come to life and seize a megaphone before being dragged into a dark alley by a nightstick-wagging cop.
The clumsy attempt at parody isn’t worth the ink used to print it, but it’s also obvious that its statements aren’t meant to be taken frankly. So I’d like to know: where exactly does this joke article seem to support “Cocky McFratboy” and his “culture?”
Predictably, the joke piece has drawn outraged letters from students like Corey Katz (also a former Innis Herald editor), who suggested that the article soothes rapists’ guilty consciences with laughter, easing them along their criminal development. “How many jokes like these has someone read, heard, laughed at or told before they’re able to overcome their conscience enough to rape or assault someone?” he asked, presumably with a straight face.
The article uses the real name of London’s police chief Murray Faulkner, which is very questionable of the Gazette’s editorial staff, but not exactly a cardinal sin. But to therefore suggest-as did an 800-member Facebook group led by UWO student Laurel Mitchell-that people call Faulkner in mass numbers and press him to “clarify his position on violence against women?” That’s just ludicrous. Even without flooding him with harassing phone calls, we can all assume that a chief of police is opposed to violence against women.
The protestors who’ve come out of the woodwork to picket the joke piece seem to have picked a safe topic. It’s pretty hard to speak out against even their more unhinged claims without being made to look like a “rape supporter,” and the Gazette was obviously not up to the task.
Still, doesn’t shotgunning accusations against anyone who seems like a half-decent target just dilute the strength of those accusations?
It’s the easiest thing in the world to treat a joke like an earnest statement and react with righteous fury. There are those who say that certain subjects are off-limits to humour, (though that doesn’t stop people from making jokes about AIDS and Hitler) but whether those things are right or wrong is a separate issue from whether it’s okay to joke about them. Anyone who’s ever laughed at an episode of South Park without running off to do penance or write angry letters can understand that distinction.
I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling that’s what the article, in its cack-handed way, was really trying to say.
It’s wrong and despicable to belittle rape, rape survivors, and attempts to teach awareness and precautions against rapists. It’s wrong as well to read that sort of malice into situations where it isn’t there: not only is it unduly hurtful to the people you misrepresent, it also jades the public and weakens the support they’ll give to real activists fighting against those who really deserve it.
