Daniel Tosh - Offensively unfunny misogynist

[Darth Wong]

While the questionnaires in question vary, what they all tend to find is that if you take a sample of a bunch of men and ask them if they've ever raped someone, by using questions like "Have you ever restrained a woman physically to obtain sex?" or "Have you ever obtained sexual activities with the threat of force?" without ever mentioning the word "rape," some 5%-25% (depending on how you ask and the sample in question), will say "yes."

There were 85,000 reports of forcible rape in America in 2010. Even assuming they were all committed by men against women, with ~150,000,000 males in this country, about 0.05% of American males are raping women. So, either rape reporting is beyond abysmal in this country and (at a minimum) 750,000+ women are being raped every year (or 37 million if you take the 25% figure) and that many rapists are walking the streets, or it's more likely the study is flawed because even I've made a comment that would label me a rapist: "Woman, get back in bed right now before I drag you back" in response to her saying "we need to get up and get ready to leave."

Rape reporting is abysmal. Studies show that women report rape to the authorities 31% of the time, with attempted rape and sexual assault even lower. The Criminal Victimization report listed 260,940 rapes, attempted rapes, and sexual assaults. Research indicates that even these statistics are woefully understated, as many women, when asked, describe an incident that meets the legal definition of rape, but don't recognize it as such themselves. Studies on undetected (nonreported) rapists show that on average, these undetected offenders are responsible for nearly 6 rapes each. This supports research showing 1 in 4 women of college age describe scenarios in which they've been raped or had rape attempted, while 1 in 12 men describe scenarios in which they have raped or attempted rape.

Also, I don't think you understand the studies. These questions aren't asked of women, they're asked of men. If you were asked "Have you ever used threats of physical violence to have sex with a woman against her will?" would you answer "Yes" because of that comment? Because these men do.

Yes, I agree that rape reporting is abysmal. But even if it's totally correct that rape jokes serve to help rapists justify their behaviour in their own minds, the same could be said of any other kind of offensive humour. Race jokes (which are far more common, to the point that they seem to make up the majority of some comedians' repertoire) probably embolden racists. Sexist stereotyping jokes are so ubiquitous as to be virtually inescapable in comedy shows, even the "nice" ones that are deemed fit for broadcast TV. Do we really want to embrace the logic of trying to suppress comedians whose jokes may promote harmful thinking?

[Losonti Tokash]

Fenix, I noticed some issues with your methodology.

1) Your 150m males includes groups such as infants and the disabled, people I assume do not constitute a sizable population in the rapist community.
2) You seem to dismiss the idea that rape reporting is abysmal out of hand, when this is actually quite well known to be the case.
3) While 1/4 of women and 1/6 of men will be sexually assaulted, this is at some point in their lives, not that this is the number of people sexually assaulted each year.
4) "Dirty talk" is not equivalent to someone saying "I am entitled to use force to obtain sex from a woman if I have paid for her dinner and/or she came to my home." Drawing a false equivalency to somehow show the study is flawed isn't a great idea.

Edit: Dammit, Terralthra. You posted first and did a better job to boot. :V

[Simon_Jester]

Without a recording of the performance it's hard to tell, but that's beside the point: you can't categorically declare that an entire subject area is off-limits.

Hm. Is that an absolute statement? Could you imagine any circumstances at all where society could declare that a subject area is off-limits? Somewhere where the consequences of talking about it really are worse than those of not talking about it?

I for one cannot imagine such a circumstance. Christopher Hitchens gave speech at the University of Toronto on the topic of free speech which was probably the very best speech of his career. The full video is on youtube, and from my perspective his arguments are absolutely convincing.

The youtube link is here. There is a short (40 second or so) intro by some TV host before Hitchens' speech actually begins.

I asked Wong for a reason- because I'm pretty sure of the answer he'd give, assuming consistency; I would expect that his answer is "no, it's not absolute, under some circumstances it would be okay."




Now, looking at you, who have given a different answer, I want to ask a certain question. Assuming your views are identical to Hitchens (since you haven't expressed them in detail, but presents him as one that speaks for you), I have the following thoughts to raise.

One is that Hitchens glosses over an important point. He talks about the importance of free speech in the context of adult dialogue, of debate, of keeping a flat earther around specifically so that you remember how to argue that the world is round. In debate we can say any idea is always appropriate, because it's all about the interplay of ideas and the finding of truth.

The problem is that not all venues are debate. For example, we have the idea of slander: of someone making up deliberate lies about you to hurt you, and spreading them around. You might say "let them, I'll defend myself in debate." But you never really get a chance to defend yourself against slander by debating the slanderer- you can't fight a rumor campaign that way, human beings just don't think like that. So having a slander law, I think, makes sense because there is a real difference between the act of slander and the act of raising some absurd 'bannable' notion in a formal debating environment.

Classrooms are not debating societies either. Teaching certain things to children is hard enough- there are heavy burdens of classroom management, rapport-building, and logistics to work out before you can even begin to present children with advanced concepts and hope that it'll stick. If we place all ideas on an equal footing in a classroom, and rely on children to sort truth from lies, the result is that many of those students will come out of the building without the power to do the sorting. All that does is make them unable to participate in these great debates forever after, because they will never learn to understand why the arguments for homeopathy aren't as good as the arguments for real medicine.

So we have curricula, and some ideas are not taught in school because they really are bad for our best efforts to teach children to know true things about the world, instead of teaching them to believe lies. Some of the things we think are true now turn out to be lies later- but if you teach a child to keep a mind so open that his brains fall out, you're not doing him any favors.

This, of course, all falls under the heading of 'time, place, and manner.' But there is another issue I think is important.

Anyone who can participate in Hitchens' grand debate is an adult who should be judged morally by adult standards. And one part of adulthood is being able to foresee the harm your actions might cause, and trying to avoid it. Even if you have freedom, you're supposed to be wise enough to know when not to say something that will serve no useful purpose, not even the purpose of getting people to re-examine themselves, something that will create no new freedom, and will cause only pain. That may not fit well with big sweeping political theories, but it's such a basic part of human nature that we'd be fools or madmen to walk away from it.

This is where I think comedians that crack rape jokes are falling down, if they're not careful. If (as appears true) we have a documented link between the 'rape culture' of sexually predatory men looking around and seeing evidence that women are prey by nature, that this is somehow OK and not an act of evil on their part... well, at that point any adult who speaks out in favor of rape, even in joke, needs to be asking themselves "what will my words do?"

And if someone doesn't bother to think about that, I will think poorly of them as a human being, just as I'd think poorly of someone who casually fired a machine gun down the middle of a street because he didn't think anyone would get hurt.

[Darth Wong]

Hm. Is that an absolute statement? Could you imagine any circumstances at all where society could declare that a subject area is off-limits? Somewhere where the consequences of talking about it really are worse than those of not talking about it?

I for one cannot imagine such a circumstance. Christopher Hitchens gave speech at the University of Toronto on the topic of free speech which was probably the very best speech of his career. The full video is on youtube, and from my perspective his arguments are absolutely convincing.

The youtube link is here. There is a short (40 second or so) intro by some TV host before Hitchens' speech actually begins.

I asked Wong for a reason- because I'm pretty sure of the answer he'd give, assuming consistency; I would expect that his answer is "no, it's not absolute, under some circumstances it would be okay."

Well, under some circumstances even martial law is OK, but I think those are pretty extreme circumstances. Of course, we've already suppressed an entire category of subject matter once in what we'd consider enlightened society: the Allies mandated a total suppression of Nazism and all Nazi-related symbolism, artwork, literature, movies, etc. in Germany following WW2.

I guess I would amend my comment to say "barring extreme circumstances", if you insist

[Simon_Jester]

Very well; I have no objection to that. Although it does lend itself to another question.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can document a link between what is called "rape culture" and the actual rate of rapes in society. Again for the sake of argument, imagine we could predict mathematically that the rape rate would go down if we didn't make rape jokes. Would it have to go down by a little, or by a lot, for us to think about banning those jokes or at least agreeing not to talk about them and disapproving of them whenever they're mentioned in kinda-sorta-polite society?

Would preventing one rape be enough to justify abridging freedom of speech like that? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? A million?

I'm not asking for an exact number, that would be impossible and dishonest of me. But I think it's a question that bears thinking about. I don't have much faith in my own ability to come up with even a vague answer.

[Darth Wong]

Very well; I have no objection to that. Although it does lend itself to another question.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can document a link between what is called "rape culture" and the actual rate of rapes in society. Again for the sake of argument, imagine we could predict mathematically that the rape rate would go down if we didn't make rape jokes. Would it have to go down by a little, or by a lot, for us to think about banning those jokes or at least agreeing not to talk about them and disapproving of them whenever they're mentioned in kinda-sorta-polite society?

Would preventing one rape be enough to justify abridging freedom of speech like that? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? A million?

I'm not asking for an exact number, that would be impossible and dishonest of me. But I think it's a question that bears thinking about. I don't have much faith in my own ability to come up with even a vague answer.

Well, I think there are material consequences to suppressing freedom of speech; it's not just a vague "moral principle" which is justified by its own righteousness. Free speech is correlated to societies which tend to outperform authoritarian societies in a lot of other ways, and I don't see why people tend to treat this as mere coincidence. Unfortunately, as you allude to, it would be nightmarishly difficult to actually assess these benefits and compare them to the consequences of any particular area of speech suppression (especially since those would also be unreliable projections).

[TheFeniX]

Rape reporting is abysmal. Studies show that women report rape to the authorities 31% of the time, with attempted rape and sexual assault even lower.

The way the questions were phrased would lead me to believe these would be classified as "forcible rapes" which is what I used. Your 260,000 number includes crimes that don't qualify. Going off the low-end 5%, and assuming males 18-60 being in the 100m ballpark, that's about 500,000 rapes (or 25 million if you believe 25%). You have a 17% report rate on the top end and it gets under 1% the closer you get to the "25% of men to admit to rape." A 30% report rate is bad, but 1% would be what I call abysmal. I'm more inclined to believe statistics from the FBI than these interviews where any number of factors could influence the answers. We have the number of reported forced rapes and we have the report percentages. These don't add up with the numbers from the interviews.

NOTE: These numbers are kind of off-the cuff, but designed in a way to give the arguments the benefit of the doubt. We don't know how many of these 85,000 rapes were Man on Woman, and that's where I got the 17% report rate number (it would realistically be lower), but I also can't assume what percentage of the ~112m adult male 18-60 population isn't sexually disabled (and hell, some 12 and 85 year-olds can still have sex).

Anyway, I'm going to bow out because I can't find data that can really give me a number of sexually active males (I'm assuming there's ~112m men in the age range and knocking off 12m for disabled, etc just to keep it round) and there's a wide range of severity between sexual assault and violent rape, but finding good break-downs is hard. Thanks for the links, they are good reads (for lack of a better term).

There is one thing though that kind of gets to me (from your last link): "False reports of rape are rare, according to the FBI, occurring only 8% of the time." I didn't know the false report rate was so high and 8% is not what I'd call "rare."

[Darth Wong]

Question: if, instead of suppressing free speech on a society-wide level, individual businessmen simply chose to promise non-offensive comedy in their own privately owned comedy venues, would they succeed? Or fail miserably?

[Terralthra]

Rape reporting is abysmal. Studies show that women report rape to the authorities 31% of the time, with attempted rape and sexual assault even lower.

The way the questions were phrased would lead me to believe these would be classified as "forcible rapes" which is what I used. Your 260,000 number includes crimes that don't qualify.

The CV report listed "forcible rapes" number includes attempted rape and forcible sexual assault. Which part of that do you think shouldn't qualify?

Going off the low-end 5%, and assuming males 18-60 being in the 100m ballpark, that's about 500,000 rapes (or 25 million if you believe 25%). You have a 17% report rate on the top end and it gets under 1% the closer you get to the "25% of men to admit to rape." A 30% report rate is bad, but 1% would be what I call abysmal. I'm more inclined to believe statistics from the FBI than these interviews where any number of factors could influence the answers. We have the number of reported forced rapes and we have the report percentages. These don't add up with the numbers from the interviews.

Yes, they don't add up, because you aren't noticing the key difference: the interviews are asking "have you ever," and the FBI statistics are "this year." This was already pointed out to you. Assuming 100 million sexually active males, the interviews indicate that between 5m (not 500k) and 25m of them have committed rape, attempted rape, committed sexual assault, or attempted sexual assault, ever.

On the other hand, you have FBI statistics indicating that per criminal victimization statistics, at least 260,000 women were the victims of rape, attempted rape, sexual assault, or attempted sexual assault this year. Studies by the FBI indicates that this is at best ~30% of the actual incidence of those crimes.

Please, pay attention to the bolded words. They are important.

There is one thing though that kind of gets to me (from your last link): "False reports of rape are rare, according to the FBI, occurring only 8% of the time." I didn't know the false report rate was so high and 8% is not what I'd call "rare."

Eh...the FBI doesn't actually call the reports "false." They have a way for jurisdictions which report to them to note that a report of a crime committed was "unfounded." I'll let someone else speak:

A certain percentage of rape complaints are classified as "unfounded" by the police and excluded from the FBI's statistics. For example, in 1995, 8% of all forcible rape cases were closed as unfounded, as were 15% in 1996 (Greenfeld, 1997). According to the FBI, a report should only be considered unfounded when investigation revealed that the elements of the crime were not met or the report was "false" (which is not defined) (FBI, 2007).

This statistic is almost meaningless, as many of the jurisdictions from which the FBI collects data on crime use different definitions of, or criteria for, "unfounded." That is, a report of rape might be classified as unfounded (rather than as forcible rape) if the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect, if the alleged perpetrator did not use physical force or a weapon of some sort, if the alleged victim did not sustain any physical injuries, or if the alleged victim and the accused had a prior sexual relationship. Similarly, a report might be deemed unfounded if there is no physical evidence or too many inconsistencies between the accuser's statement and what evidence does exist. As such, although some unfounded cases of rape may be false or fabricated, not all unfounded cases are false.

[Terralthra]

Yes, I agree that rape reporting is abysmal. But even if it's totally correct that rape jokes serve to help rapists justify their behaviour in their own minds, the same could be said of any other kind of offensive humour. Race jokes (which are far more common, to the point that they seem to make up the majority of some comedians' repertoire) probably embolden racists. Sexist stereotyping jokes are so ubiquitous as to be virtually inescapable in comedy shows, even the "nice" ones that are deemed fit for broadcast TV. Do we really want to embrace the logic of trying to suppress comedians whose jokes may promote harmful thinking?

I have not ignored your point, and need some time to craft a worthwhile reply.

[The Kernel]

Well, I think there are material consequences to suppressing freedom of speech; it's not just a vague "moral principle" which is justified by its own righteousness. Free speech is correlated to societies which tend to outperform authoritarian societies in a lot of other ways, and I don't see why people tend to treat this as mere coincidence. Unfortunately, as you allude to, it would be nightmarishly difficult to actually assess these benefits and compare them to the consequences of any particular area of speech suppression (especially since those would also be unreliable projections).

Funny you should put it this way, have you ever read the US Supreme Court ruling on Hustler Magazine v. Falwell? Was an 8-0 ruling and showed pretty definitively what the court thought about this type of situation.

In order to protect the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern, the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures and public officials from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of the publication of a caricature such as the ad parody at issue without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with "actual malice," i. e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true. The State's interest in protecting public figures from emotional distress is not sufficient to deny First Amendment protection to speech that is patently offensive and is intended to inflict emotional injury when that speech could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts about the public figure involved. Here, respondent is clearly a "public figure" for First Amendment purposes, and the lower courts' finding that the ad parody was not reasonably believable must be [485 U.S. 46, 47] accepted. "Outrageousness" in the area of political and social discourse has an inherent subjectiveness about it which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors' tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression, and cannot, consistently with the First Amendment, form a basis for the award of damages for conduct such as that involved here.

People in this thread are being ridiculous. There's nothing morally or legally wrong with what Tosh did--even if you take the woman at her word about how this went down then no rational person would believe Tosh was actually trying to incite a crowd to commit rape, nor did any actual violence occur. I've seen Tosh's standup routine in person before and his entire act is based on absurd lunacy that no one takes seriously. Let's look at a few areas he has covered in the past:

• Morality of beating your spouse if she forgets to tape the game in HD and/or forgets to record the 30 minutes after in case of overtime.
• The article mentioned rape of his sister which he supposedly facilitated by replacing her pepper spray with silly string.
• Giving a speech to a bunch of high school kids telling them that they are future felons and some of them should expect to die in a DUI related accident TONIGHT.
• Throwing nickels at promiscuous women instead of bills and doing it hard enough to cause welts because "he's a baller on a budget".
• Constantly flaunt cheating on his girlfriend and how he puts her down for a variety of reasons.
• Making jokes about tricking his girlfriend into getting an abortion or failing that running off and leaving her with nothing.
• Wanting to start a charity which sprays homeless people in the face with Febreeze.

This is quite simply what his ENTIRE ACT is based upon and I'm appalled at how many people in this thread are acting like whiny little bitches. Get the stick out of your asses, get off your high horses and shut the fuck up about how offended you are by Daniel Tosh--if you don't like him don't see him but this ridiculous six page and growing thread about the morality of telling rape jokes may be one of the stupidest fucking things I've read on a board that has had its share of stupid debates.

[Darth Wong]

People in this thread are being ridiculous. There's nothing morally or legally wrong with what Tosh did--even if you take the woman at her word about how this went down then no rational person would believe Tosh was actually trying to incite a crowd to commit rape, nor did any actual violence occur. I've seen Tosh's standup routine in person before and his entire act is based on absurd lunacy that no one takes seriously. Let's look at a few areas he has covered in the past:

• Morality of beating your spouse if she forgets to tape the game in HD and/or forgets to record the 30 minutes after in case of overtime.
• The article mentioned rape of his sister which he supposedly facilitated by replacing her pepper spray with silly string.
• Giving a speech to a bunch of high school kids telling them that they are future felons and some of them should expect to die in a DUI related accident TONIGHT.
• Throwing nickels at promiscuous women instead of bills and doing it hard enough to cause welts because "he's a baller on a budget".
• Constantly flaunt cheating on his girlfriend and how he puts her down for a variety of reasons.
• Making jokes about tricking his girlfriend into getting an abortion or failing that running off and leaving her with nothing.
• Wanting to start a charity which sprays homeless people in the face with Febreeze.

This is quite simply what his ENTIRE ACT is based upon and I'm appalled at how many people in this thread are acting like whiny little bitches. Get the stick out of your asses, get off your high horses and shut the fuck up about how offended you are by Daniel Tosh--if you don't like him don't see him but this ridiculous six page and growing thread about the morality of telling rape jokes may be one of the stupidest fucking things I've read on a board that has had its share of stupid debates.

Well put. I haven't talked much about Tosh himself, preferring to speak in generalities, but I've been watching his show on the Comedy channel website and it seems to me that he's sort of like Borat Lite: his act is based on the creation of a caricatured persona who acts like a total douchebag (there are rape jokes in the movie "Borat" as well).

[The Kernel]

I'd also like this presented for those of you who are doing nothing beyond reading transcripts to try to gain context. This is a video of Daniel Tosh doing standup in a bit making fun of mentally retarded people.

Tosh Standup

A big part of his act is telling ridiculous things and then making the audience feel bad about laughing at it. It's clear though from his general nature and demeanor that absolutely none of this is meant to be taken seriously. He even breaks the fourth wall during a number of his acts in the sense that he does a kind of meta narrative where he provides a more serious commentary on the joke he just told.

You may not find this standup funny--fine don't find it funny. I personally do and so does my wife and friends, but hey that's a matter of taste. But get off your fucking high horses about how telling rape jokes is some kind of moral crime.

[CarsonPalmer]

So his entire act is based on being a jackass who caters to jackasses who think rape jokes and wife beating jokes are funny?

There is no way to ban such speech, and I'm not going to advocate that, but I do tend to agree with the enabling aspect of rape jokes. Spousal abuse falls into the same category.

Just like Darth Wong pointed out earlier that a crowd that laughs hard at racist jokes woud tend to be racist, a crowd that roars with approval at Tosh's misogyny would...not tend to be rapists but would ten to be jackasses. And I do know from experience that the bigger a fan of Tosh someone is, the more likely it is that I will end up finding them to be, in fact, a jackass.

So I don't consider it any infringement of anyone's freedom of speech to consider Tosh a moron who is at least callous and nasty, and stay well clear of him. Or to consider all his fans morons of a similar caliber.

[The Kernel]

Well put. I haven't talked much about Tosh himself, preferring to speak in generalities, but I've been watching his show on the Comedy channel website and it seems to me that he's sort of like Borat Lite: his act is based on the creation of a caricatured persona who acts like a total douchebag (there are rape jokes in the movie "Borat" as well).

Yes, although his standup persona is a little different in the sense that its more raw (because it doesn't have to deal with the Comedy Central censors) and also is quite a bit funnier because his original material is a lot better than his recycled YouTube commentary. I actually was first exposed to his standup and was very disappointed when I saw his show as I thought it lacks the punch and creativity of his standup comedy.

[Darth Wong]

So his entire act is based on being a jackass who caters to jackasses who think rape jokes and wife beating jokes are funny?

There is no way to ban such speech, and I'm not going to advocate that, but I do tend to agree with the enabling aspect of rape jokes. Spousal abuse falls into the same category.

Just like Darth Wong pointed out earlier that a crowd that laughs hard at racist jokes woud tend to be racist, a crowd that roars with approval at Tosh's misogyny would...not tend to be rapists but would ten to be jackasses. And I do know from experience that the bigger a fan of Tosh someone is, the more likely it is that I will end up finding them to be, in fact, a jackass.

So I don't consider it any infringement of anyone's freedom of speech to consider Tosh a moron who is at least callous and nasty, and stay well clear of him. Or to consider all his fans morons of a similar caliber.

I think you're missing the point. It's possible to be a jackass in an ironic way, or a jackass in a genuine way. Some comedians make race jokes and they're not really ironic at all; they're just abusive. Others make race jokes and they're ironic; the whole point is that people who sincerely think this way are assholes. Borat was an excellent example of this; he's an anti-Semite but the whole joke is that he's ridiculously ignorant; that's why he thinks this way.

I don't know if Tosh is thinking on that kind of level or if he just stumbled onto a shtick that gets laughs, but his onscreen persona reminds me of (as mentioned previously) a fratboy version of Borat. It would be pretty easy to describe the movie "Borat" in such terms as to make it sound unbelievably offensive. You have to watch it.

[Blayne]

Very well; I have no objection to that. Although it does lend itself to another question.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can document a link between what is called "rape culture" and the actual rate of rapes in society. Again for the sake of argument, imagine we could predict mathematically that the rape rate would go down if we didn't make rape jokes. Would it have to go down by a little, or by a lot, for us to think about banning those jokes or at least agreeing not to talk about them and disapproving of them whenever they're mentioned in kinda-sorta-polite society?

Would preventing one rape be enough to justify abridging freedom of speech like that? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? A million?

I'm not asking for an exact number, that would be impossible and dishonest of me. But I think it's a question that bears thinking about. I don't have much faith in my own ability to come up with even a vague answer.

Didn't we see something like this with Prohibition? Sure it *worked* to drive down consumption, but was still a disastrous policy?

[The Kernel]

I think you're missing the point. It's possible to be a jackass in an ironic way, or a jackass in a genuine way. Some comedians make race jokes and they're not really ironic at all; they're just abusive. Others make race jokes and they're ironic; the whole point is that people who sincerely think this way are assholes. Borat was an excellent example of this; he's an anti-Semite but the whole joke is that he's ridiculously ignorant; that's why he thinks this way.

Yeah that's a good analogy, just for reference lets look at some of the things the Borat character said (and unlike Tosh he didn't break character and did it completely deadpan the entire time):

• Repeatedly referred to Jews as subhuman. Insinuated that they give birth by laying eggs, have the ability to change into cockroaches, etc.
• Promoted a game around beating and killing Jewish children (the "Jew Eggs" scene).
• Believes that women are property.
• Celebrates the death of his wife who he was regularly cheating on.
• Believes it is acceptable to kidnap a woman and force her to marry you and (presumably) have sex with you. So forced slavery and rape are a-ok!

This is just the stuff I remember...been a long time since I saw Borat.

[Simon_Jester]

Very well; I have no objection to that. Although it does lend itself to another question.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can document a link between what is called "rape culture" and the actual rate of rapes in society. Again for the sake of argument, imagine we could predict mathematically that the rape rate would go down if we didn't make rape jokes. Would it have to go down by a little, or by a lot, for us to think about banning those jokes or at least agreeing not to talk about them and disapproving of them whenever they're mentioned in kinda-sorta-polite society?

Would preventing one rape be enough to justify abridging freedom of speech like that? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? A million?

I'm not asking for an exact number, that would be impossible and dishonest of me. But I think it's a question that bears thinking about. I don't have much faith in my own ability to come up with even a vague answer.

Didn't we see something like this with Prohibition? Sure it *worked* to drive down consumption, but was still a disastrous policy?

That's because we didn't think through the second-order consequences. Also, there's a difference. With prohibition, you ban a physical commodity. People will want it anyway, and pay for on the black market.

Nobody's going to pay that much for black market rape jokes unless they're really fucked in the head.

[Ralin]

• Repeatedly referred to Jews as subhuman. Insinuated that they give birth by laying eggs, have the ability to change into cockroaches, etc.
• Promoted a game around beating and killing Jewish children (the "Jew Eggs" scene).
• Believes that women are property.
• Celebrates the death of his wife who he was regularly cheating on.
• Believes it is acceptable to kidnap a woman and force her to marry you and (presumably) have sex with you. So forced slavery and rape are a-ok!

This is just the stuff I remember...been a long time since I saw Borat.

He also called for the death of the entire nation of Iraq.

[ArmorPierce]

I don't know about you guys but daniel tosh always came across to me as making jokes intentionally so absurd and rediculous that nobody is meant to take it seriously. It feels like on many issues he jokes about he jokes in opposite devils advocate type of way and actually feels the opposite.

[Crown]

This thread is fast outpacing Tipper Gore's crusade against Prince for "Darling Nikki" in the cereal factor of 'they can't be serious can they?'

[Darth Wong]

This thread is fast outpacing Tipper Gore's crusade against Prince for "Darling Nikki" in the cereal factor of 'they can't be serious can they?'

Well, keep in mind the starting point: it started with a feminist ranting about what an awful person Daniel Tosh is for joking about rape. When you start a debate from that position, it's sort of inevitable that you have to actually get seriously into the idea of why we have free speech, why comedy and satire are protected, and how humour works. Also keep in mind that a lot of sci-fi geeks are a bit autistic or have led sheltered lives, and may actually need to have some kinds of humour logically broken down and explained to them.

It reminds me of the time, many years ago in the early days of the board, that Spanky got morally righteous on me because I mentioned spanking my wife. He had no idea that this is a playful thing some couples do for foreplay, and he thought it actually meant that I was a physically abusive husband. He actually needed somebody to explain it to him.

[Simon_Jester]

That sounds especially ironic, given the screenname...

Anyway. I get that someone can deliberately tell jokes about horrible things and have it be funny. That never startled me. To me, it's a messy subject. Because all these rape jokes really might be hurting someone; it's not just a figment of some prude's imagination like "violent video games make kids kill people."

[Ford Prefect]

Let's look at a few areas he has covered in the past:

• Morality of beating your spouse if she forgets to tape the game in HD and/or forgets to record the 30 minutes after in case of overtime.
• The article mentioned rape of his sister which he supposedly facilitated by replacing her pepper spray with silly string.
• Giving a speech to a bunch of high school kids telling them that they are future felons and some of them should expect to die in a DUI related accident TONIGHT.
• Throwing nickels at promiscuous women instead of bills and doing it hard enough to cause welts because "he's a baller on a budget".
• Constantly flaunt cheating on his girlfriend and how he puts her down for a variety of reasons.
• Making jokes about tricking his girlfriend into getting an abortion or failing that running off and leaving her with nothing.
• Wanting to start a charity which sprays homeless people in the face with Febreeze.

Wow, this Daniel Tosh guy sounds like a total shithead.