[Content note: sexual assault]
I wrote a Daily Dot piece about rape “joke” t-shirts.
An unnamed Coachella attendee is making headlines online after Jemayel Khawaja, managing editor of Thump, tweeted a photo of him wearing a shirt with what I assume is meant to be a “joke” about rape:
This guy wins the award for worst fashion/lifestyle choices at @coachella. I’m not easy to offend, but this is shitty pic.twitter.com/fyjod24nAx
— Jemayel Khawaja (@JemayelK) April 12, 2015
The shirt, which is presumably a reference to Fatboy Slim’s song, “Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat,” is not that unusual. Similar ones have made the rounds online in recent years, prompting retailers to hastily pull them off their shelves.
For example, the SM Store, located in the Philippines, caused a backlash after a customer found a shirt with the slogan “It’s Not Rape, It’s a Snuggle with a Struggle.” Online retailer eBay was criticized for selling shirts saying “I’m Feeling Rapey” and “Sometimes No Means Yes.” Solid Gold Bomb, a clothing company that uses automation to generate t-shirt slogans, sold shirts saying, “Keep Calm and Rape A Lot” on Amazon. Topman sold a shirt that featured a checklist of excuses for domestic violence, such as “You Provoked Me” and “I Was Drunk.” Anti-violence advocates rightfully pointed out that these are actual excuses that abusers use all the time.
Why do these shirts keep being made and sold? The eBay shirts were oh-so-helpfully labeled “offensive cool geeky funny” in the online store, and that provides a clue:
I imagine the geeky is there because it’s the (a?) style category for solid color shirts with some text, like 99% (not literally) of the t-shirts on thinkgeek. The salad in the listing title is a consequence of how searching ebay works; it would look less terrible and be more usable if they had a tagging system instead of only looking at titles.
Do we gain anything from shitty dudes wearing rape culture on their sleeves?
@ ^ Brad : People know who to avoid?
The dead baby joke comparison in the linked article got me thinking what an actually apt one might be. Would it be funny to wear a t-shirt with a noose and the words “solution to the race problem”? I think most people would be properly appalled by that, as they should be about such rape jokes.
…I don’t know how to express my full reaction without expletives, but yes, I think that shirt is a reasonably good analogy.