This Is How You Tell a Rape Joke

Readers of the satirical news site Reductress clicked the main site today to find a front page dedicated to the subject of rape and sexual assault. “We Built This Robot to Explain Rape Culture to Men,” announces one story illustrated with a photo of Sophia the robot. “Man Who Sexually Assaulted You Likes Your Facebook Post About Assault,” reads another headline for an article written by Reductress founder and editor Beth Newell.

“It is unclear what led to the man who assaulted you liking this post,” wrote Newell. “Does he believe that the act that he perpetrated against you was consensual? Does he regret the trauma he caused and is now extending a mysterious olive branch in the form of a Facebook like?”

Writer Nicole Silverberg penned a humor piece written from the perspective of an “anonymous woman” who reporter her rape for the “anonymous attention.”

“The process of reporting my rape nearly destroyed me, but it was all worth it—just to see my name, ‘21-year-old woman,’ emblazoned in newspapers next to the words, ‘may have had two beers that night,’” wrote Silverberg. “To be honest, I just wanted to feel like a victim—without any of the actual aid or benefits of being one. For me, that was enough.”

This week was a bad week for the comedy scene, one that only got worse as the days wore on, starting with the dissemination of an anonymous victim statement alleging that comedian Aaron Glaser had been banned from the Upright Citizens Brigade after being accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women in the community. This triggered the social media ramblings of Inside Amy Schumer writer and comedian Kurt Metzger—who declared that rape was “hard to prove” and blamed victims for not reporting to the police and went on a Twitter spiral as he tried to fend off his critics. As of this afternoon, his Twitter bio read, “Proud cuck and rape apologist.”

“Our female comedian friends were feeling pretty frustrated with a lot of the dialogue surrounding these events, specifically some of the comments coming from men,” Newell told Jezebel. “We put out a call to writers for pitches on the topics of sexual assault and related issues and we received an overwhelming response.”