Because I don’t, but it sure seems like a lot of people do these days. Lately I’ve noticed one show after another making jokes about rape, incest, molestation etc and it’s really started to bother me. Every time I turn the TV on I get anxious now because every time I hear one of these jokes it’s like a punch to the gut. I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me I can’t understand how anyone can find sexual abuse funny under any circumstances.

And now it’s gone beyond TV. I have an account over at YouTube where I’ve been posting a series of video blogs called The Blessed Blogger Gets A Life. As a kid and teenager I was physically, verbally and sexually abused by several different people and as a result (as well as a poor home life, stress, lack of medical care etc) I have a lot of health problems. So for the last ten years I’ve been practically a hermit, rarely leaving home or interacting with people other than my husband. I isolated myself and cut myself off from people to protect myself and only now am I getting to a point where I feel like I can start to have a life again. So I started this video blog series as a sort of art therapy to help me get used to interacting with people again before going out into the big bad world.

Three weeks ago I came across a video on YouTube called Rapers Inc. It was a parody of Haters Inc., a video by Mr. Safety, a popular guy on YouTube. One of Mr. Safety’s friends decided to make this parody about raping Mr. Safety. Mr. Safety was fine with that and they both thought it was pretty funny but I thought it was distasteful and crude. To make fun of something as serious as rape knowing that sexual abuse victims would see the video was just plain cruel. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously as a sexual abuse survivor. You feel guilty, ashamed, afraid and like maybe it’s your fault. Maybe you tell and maybe you don’t, because you’re scared to death no one will believe you, or worse, they’ll blame you. And then when you find the courage to tell half the time they don’t believe you or they pretend you’re exaggerating or simply never talk to you about it at all. So when people make jokes about sexual abuse they desensitize people to the true horror of the experience and people stop taking it seriously. I saw this video and thought ‘Somebody will see this video and as a result won’t report the sexual abuse their suffering.’ It made me so angry and so sad.

I left a comment and the producer of the video replied and we sent a couple more messages back and forth but there was nothing abusive or vulgar in the comments and after a couple days we both dropped it. I realized nothing I said was going to get through to him and he wasn’t going to understand how traumatic it was for people like me to see his horrible video so why bother trying to get through to him? Two weeks went by and neither of us said a word to each other, as far as I knew it was water under the bridge and we’d simply agree to disagree. This is America after all and we’re both entitled to express our opinions under the free speech laws. But after more than two weeks I get a private message from him saying he’s made a new video and guess who’s in it, me, ha ha. He literally laughed at me, like he was 13 instead of a grown man with a wife and child. He also left a similar taunting message on my profile page. So I watched the video. And the short of it is this, it’s another video about rape and how funny the whole thing is. Which is fine, like I said, America, freedom of speech etc. But in the video he plays a clip from one of my videos and then points to my picture and calls me a whore.

At which point I burst into tears. First, because he was obviously enjoying taunting someone he KNOWS I’ve suffered sexual abuse. Second, because he stole my copyrighted work and used it without my permission. And third, because he called me a whore, which I’m very sensitive about. My whole life men have been abusing me, boys groping at me, old men leering at me, because I have a very large chest. Everyone at school just assumed that because I looked sexually mature I must be easy and they treated me like a piece of meat. I was so afraid of being abused again I started wearing huge clothes, rarely dated, put on a lot of weight so people wouldn’t notice me etc. I eventually married my high school sweetheart and was a virgin when we married. So calling me a whore was like validating everything those boys and men had said about me my whole life.

So I sent him a message trying to explain why the video hurt me so much and asking him to remove it since he’d not only stolen from me but slandered me, both are illegal. And he refused, said some more insensitive things, got his friends involved and now they (including his wife for crying out loud) are leaving me hateful comments and private messages. I finally sent a DMCA to YouTube requesting they remove the video for a number of reasons (hate speech, copyright theft, slander, etc). It’s been a week and they haven’t removed it yet.

So I’m asking you, do you think this is funny? Do you think grown men should be joking about raping people? And do you think it’s an appropriate reaction to a negative comment to make another video bullying a sexual abuse victim? I feel so stomped on right now, I feel helpless and like no one is going to stand up for me or stand up and say this is wrong! I’ve been depressed all week, just lying in bed crying and feeling victimized all over again. And I don’t know what to do. I mean, if YT won’t do something about it I guess I’ll have to sue him. But the issue here isn’t that he broke the law, the issue is that this guy is making this whole thing into a joke even though he KNOWS how it makes me and a lot of other people feel. Even though he’s aware that 1 in 4 women in the US will be the victim of a sexual assault. How cruel can a person be?

If this upsets you as much as it upsets me and you want to send this guy a message that rape is NOT a joke please go to the video and flag it as inappropriate. Please, don’t leave a comment on his videos; it will only give him more exposure which is what he wants. And please don’t contact him, I don’t want him to be harassed, I just want the video removed.

Original Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOxNsXa4xwg

Second Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2AoMVpmhOc

My Account
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=TheBlessedBlogger
LiveVideo – http://www.livevideo.com/TheBlessedBlogger

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 2:11 pm and is filed under General Stuff, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.