Be Here Now

Let me be clear: I don’t believe that previously non-raping audience members are going to take to the streets in a rape mob after hearing one rape joke. That’s an absurd and insulting mischaracterization. But I do believe that comedy’s current permissiveness around cavalier, cruel, victim-targeting rape jokes contributes to (that’s contributes—not causes) a culture of young men who don’t understand what it means to take this stuff seriously.

And how did they try and prove me wrong? How did they try to demonstrate that comedy, in general, doesn’t have issues with women? By threatening to rape and kill me, telling me I’m just bitter because I’m too fat to get raped, and suggesting that the debate would have been better if it had just been Jim raping me.

This isn’t just coming from anonymous trolls. Local comics — whom I know and work with — have told me to shut the fuck up. One hopes I’ll fall down a flight of stairs. (He later apologized—to my boyfriend, not me.)

There’s a medicine that, in half a century of use, has been linked to a grand total of zero deaths or serious complications. It’s safer than aspirin. Physicians willingly admit that their advice is not needed for it to be taken correctly. The largest organization of pediatricians in the nation is urging its members to pre-write prescriptions for patients who may need it, because it’s so safe they believe everyone should have access without visiting a doctor.

This medicine is often desperately needed. It must be taken within a specific 120 hour period in order to be effective. It prevents a condition that can be devastating to the people it affects, especially young people, who are more likely to develop depression, drop out of school, and even die. Furthermore, if young people can’t get this medicine when they need it, they are more likely to spend their lives in poverty, never marry, and have their kids end up in jail.

So why has the supposedly progressive Obama administration repeatedly spoken out against making this medicine available over-the-counter to young people, even after a federal judge ruled that girls under seventeen must be given access to this medicine? Why would the president go against all scientific evidence and say that the medicine “could be dangerous if misused”?

Because the medicine is emergency contraception, the medical condition it treats is pregnancy, and Americans are terrified of teenage girls being in control of their own sexuality.