Can rape jokes ever be funny? Canadian stand-up comics who’ve been sexually assaulted are banking on it.
The “Rape is Real and Everywhere” comedy show is “two hours of rape talk” by rape survivors, as 26-year-old Heather Jordan Ross put it.
She and co-producer Emma Cooper came up with the idea over beers last November, after Ross vented about her own rape ordeal.
She’d managed to repress it for a year-and-a-half, even though she’d left her co-worker’s house bleeding. It wasn’t until he contacted her on Facebook that she fully realized what had really happened.
As the women commiserated, they asked themselves: “Wouldn’t it be funny to have a comedy show that talked about rape?”
People talk at length about trivial things like car dents but struggle to open up about serious issues like rape, Ross pointed out.
The two women found seasoned comedians able to joke about their sex assaults. And a cross-country tour was born.
It launched in B.C. this week, with each stop featuring local talent.
Ross hopes they can help break the silence that makes the topic so taboo. She figures staying silent only makes for “an easier world for your rapist to live in.”
Plus sometimes laughter really is the best medicine.
“I noticed my set was getting heavy so I put in a suicide joke in the middle of my rape joke to lighten it up,” Ross said with a chuckle.
That’s a taste of what you can expect from her no-holds-barred set, which took her three weeks to pull together.
Some audiences might find it a little weird to laugh at the material at first, Ross admitted. But “we want people to laugh, we want people to talk about this.”
“If you don’t laugh at these jokes, I got raped for nothing,” a male comedian says in one of the shows.
Pretty much every city features a male rape survivor. Because it’s not just women who can be sexually assaulted — that’s another stigma Ross wants the tour to shatter.
While men are statistically more likely to commit sexual assault, research shows they’re also at the receiving end of it.
Ross believes societal pressure for masculinity can make it even more challenging for men to come forward. They’re “not supposed to be vulnerable ever,” she said.
WATCH: Survivors break their silence on sexual assault to 16×9
The other issue is understanding exactly what rape is. Thirty-year-old Cooper admitted her friends had to explain to her she’d been sexually assaulted.
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She was with someone she’d just met, when he reportedly took the condom off during sex without telling her (that’s a lack of consent).
“It’s unfortunately a pretty common thing that happens to people,” Cooper said.
“When I call it rape, I see people who think about weird stuff that has happened to them. I think a lot of people have experiences they chalk up as ‘weird’ that are rape.”
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‘You’re doing something for survivors’
Ross reported her former co-worker, who claimed not to remember anything.
For her and others on the tour, using humour to deal with the trauma has been immensely cathartic.
There are those, of course, who’ve argued over the years that rape jokes are never appropriate.
Ross thinks it’s all in how you do it.
“Usually it’s boneheads making the jokes,” she said, adding that it helps to have skilled comedians who can bring something new to the conversation.
“Then not only are you funny and engaging, but you’re doing something for survivors.”
Their first show was full of them.
“Survivors that want to see the show are thrilled. Survivors that don’t want to see it respect it,” she said.
“We’ve had a handful of people say no rape’s never funny. Don’t do this. And that’s fine. That’s OK.”
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“We are not making any confusion about what this show is about. If it’s not for you, You don’t have to come.”
The cross-country tour hits Calgary on Wednesday, then Edmonton (May 19), Winnipeg (May 20 and 21), Toronto (May 23 and 26) and Ottawa (May 27) over the next week before a stop in Montreal (May 30) and the Maritimes (May 31 in Fredericton, June 1 in Halifax and June 5 in Charlottetown).
Tickets are $15.
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