Me, I don't much care for rape jokes. I know, it's a daring and bold stance. Really, it's something I never actually recognized as a genre of humor until Daniel Tosh allegedly did this. Of course, there are mildly conflicting stories as to how long the two women stayed, and whether or not they actually went to the manager, but what's apparently totally not in question is that the basic bit/heckle/response exchange did take place. In fact, he tried to apologize, and then rationalize his actions. Not surprisingly, it had little effect on offended parties.
The thing is, I don't actually count myself as among that group of people, which leads me to two conclusions:
1) I enjoy the luxury of not having to be offended because I am a member of the privileged hegemony.
2) I might sort of be a sociopath. Not in the stand-idly-by-while-watching-someone-get-hate-crimed kind of way, but more in the positivist, Cartesian mind-body-duality sort of way where I automatically force myself to intellectually process everything before running it through the emotion-filter. Unless it's like a scary movie or something and I jump and spill my popcorn all over the place - I haven't yet fully detached my entire limbic system.
Real sociopaths probably don't even eat popcorn.
Before I go too far with this whole "sociopathy" thing, however, I think it's necessary to argue against automatically placing that word into the schemata of "things you need to take medication for." On the contrary, most medications prescribed for common disorders like anxiety and depression actually strive to promote a mild sociopathy - specifically, they reduce the amount of emotion you feel in order to prevent you from becoming overwhelmed and rendered unable to cope with your surroundings.
In short, they turn you into the Internet.
I know, that's a pretty huge leap in logic, and you're probably thinking that I maybe *do* need that medication after all... and I won't argue, because defending yourself against people who you've only imagined saying things really *would* be crazy, and that would definitely knock a few points from my credibility. So stick with me, here.
Recently, we've seen the proliferation of a bizarre anti-misandry movement, created by a backlash of mostly-anonymous men who take umbrage at Anita Sarkeesian's efforts to create an anti-misogyny study of the treatment of women in video games. Now, much like rape jokes, I didn't really know that misandry was even really a thing until this debate. I remain unconvinced that it can really exist on a phenomenological level, and absolutely certain that it doesn't exist on an institutional level. It's weird.
Misandry: A real problem... in Rwanda. And even then, not so much.
What's even more baffling is the kind of conditions even the most current iterations of female-protagonists in gaming are being subjected to: Lara Croft getting potentially raped in "Tomb Raider: Extreme Rape Edition" (or whatever they're calling it, I lost count of the sequels...), and a group of latex-clad, assault-weapon-wielding nuns getting systematically beat down in "Hitman: Absolution."
I'm almost angrier that they missed out on a golden opportunity
by not calling it "Hitman: Kicking the Habit."
Now, I've argued before that Lara Croft's alleged rape-scene (which has since been backpedaled and now is claimed to be merely attempted murder) is really a problem of the character's inability to transition from a second-wave model of feminist equality to a third-wave feminist "ecriture" within the property, owing largely to the fact that the entire enterprise is a regendering of the kind of H. Rider Haggard-esque post-colonialist fantasy upon which Indiana Jones was built, and this is basically the Croft version of the Crystal Skull (though "nuking the fridge" seems like much less of a trespass than "raping the heroine").
But the nuns - I think something much more complex is going on there. Is it puerile and childish shock-value? Well, yeah - but it's also symptomatic of a kind of effort to break every taboo at once. This is much more than an isolated attempt by an industry which has already tapped its gasp-inspiring resources with the GTA franchise to further push the envelope in hopes of drudging up some counter-protest sales. This a market-response. This is supply and demand on a posthuman level of fulfilling the needs of a clientele who has fully abandoned the traditional notions of morality, social responsibility, and cultural appropriateness: they made this scene for the internet. They made this scene for Daniel Tosh.
Wouldn't it be funny if making rape jokes increased your Twitter
followers by over 25 million people? No? I guess not, really. Hmm.
I mean, we're talking about a comic who went from being a Taco Bell spokesperson to suddenly landing an entire show on Comedy Central predicated on sarcastically interpreting viral videos by applying an ironic-hipster patina of faux-bigotry and pseudo-misogyny onto everything that passes through reddit. He's like the Jay Leno of the internet... except he's actually funny on occasion. He is the 4-Chan Tzaddik, the high-priest of YouTube, and he seems to have acquired and instantiated the entire ethos of the cultural undercurrent of digitality into his act. He should be paid attention to.
He is the sociopath's comedian, and watching him do his posthuman-jester routine is something that can either break your spirit or force you into a moment where you realize that behind all the intentional misanthropy lies a bizarro sort of anti-ethos wherein *every* rule is made to be broken - even the ones that are a good idea to follow. It's not high-brow, and it's arguably irresponsible, but it's consistent. Words don't mean anything. Every label is just a lexical artifice that exists in some kind of vestigial framework of identity-construction, and underneath that elaborate construct is a nihilistic void of existence, where nobody is anything, or everybody is nothing, and we're all just along for that ride that Bill Hicks was talking about back before stand-up comedians had enough airtime to make it very far into public perception.
Bill Hicks: one of the only people who succesfully pulls off wearing a
cowboy hat in public. And also, quite possibly, an angry prophet.
So, what does it mean when things like a beat-up Sarkeesian Flash-game pops up on the horizon? Well, a few things. For one, it's a graphic and disturbing portrayal of the very real prevalence of that "venerable tradition" which insists on eroding the advances that feminism has made throughout Western culture. But it's also, in a perverse and not-easily-definable way, a reaction against the kind of identity politics that allow such misogyny to exist in the first place. It's a misguided strike at the cultural logic that impels us to check demographic boxes and cling to adjectives that describe us, but which misses the underlying history that has made those metrics of identity necessary. It's short-sighted, and hurtful, and cruel - but it's also a cry for help from people who feel trapped and defined by others. The irony of posthumanity is that its first step seems to be cannibalizing the very agents of social change which engendered it. It kills the people who remind us that this digital life is just a ride, and we can transmute our identities with the same ease with which we build an avatar - and it does so with the selfsame message: we are more than just the thing we call ourselves, and infinitely more than that which we are called.
Sociopathy and optimism aren't mutually exclusive, after all, and I guess I'd prefer to see the posthuman glass as half-full of cultural feedback against traditional modes of identity construction than a half-empty echo chamber of issues long-since worn over as right or wrong.
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