Abortion was still illegal in 1970. At the time, as both an
underground abortion referral service and a stand-up satirist, I
faced an undefined paradox. Irreverence was my only sacred cow, yet
I wouldn’t allow victims to become the target of my humor. There
was one particular routine I did that called for a “rape-in” of
legislators’ wives in order to impregnate them so that they would
then convince their husbands to decriminalize abortion.

But my feminist friends objected. I resisted at first, because
it was such a well-intentioned joke. And then I reconsidered. Even
in a joke, why should women be assaulted because men made the laws?
Legislators’ wives were the victims in that joke, but the
legislators themselves were the oppressors, and their hypocrisy was
really my target. But for me to stop doing that bit of comedy
wasn’t self-censorship. Rather, it was, I rationalized, a matter of
conscious evolution.

* * *

Now, in July 2012, more than four decades later, rape-joking
triggered a widespread controversy when a woman who prefers to
remain anonymous went to a comedy club, expecting to be
entertained. She chose the Laugh Factory in Hollywood because Dane
Cook was on the bill, but he was followed by Daniel Tosh, and she
had never heard of him.

In an email to her Tumblr blogger friend, she accused Tosh of
saying that “rape jokes are always funny, how can a rape joke not
be funny, rape jokes are hilarious.” She was so offended that she
felt morally compelled to shout, “Actually, rape jokes are never
funny!” Tosh paused and then seized the opportunity, responding,
“Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like five guys?
Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her?”

The audience laughed raucously. After all, isn’t anyone who
yells at a comedian practically asking to become an immediate
target? But this woman was stunned and humiliated, and she left. In
the lobby, she demanded to see the manager, who apologized
profusely and gave her free tickets for another night—admitting,
however, that she understood if this woman never wanted to
return.

In her email, she concluded that, “having to basically flee
while Tosh was enthusing about how hilarious it would be if I was
gang-raped in that small, claustrophobic room was pretty viscerally
terrifying and threatening all the same, even if the actual
scenario was unlikely to take place. The suggestion of it is
violent enough and was meant to put me in my place.”

She added, “Please reblog and spread the word.” And indeed, it
went viral.

Coincidentally, on the same night that Tosh, in his signature
sarcastic approach to reality, provoked the woman, Sarah Silverman
was performing at Foxwords Casino and she touched upon the same
taboo subject:

“We need more rape jokes. We really do. Needless to say, rape,
the most heinous crime imaginable, seems it’s a comic’s dream,
though. It’s because it seems when you do rape jokes, that the
material is so dangerous and edgy, and the truth is, it’s like the
safest area to talk about in comedy, ’cause who’s gonna complain
about a rape joke? Rape victims? They don’t even report rape.
They’re just traditionally not complainers.”

Ironically, in The Aristocrats, a documentary entirely
about a classic joke of the same name, Silverman complained that
she was once raped by show-biz legend Joe Franklin.

* * *

In the fall of 1981, I booked myself for a cross-country tour,
from New York to Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Los
Angeles.

While I was in New York, a nun was raped. When I got to Chicago,
the rapist was also there. He had given himself up to the police.
On stage I explained the true reason why: “He heard that the Mafia,
in a rush of Christian compassion, put a $25,000 contract out on
his life.” That part was true. “So now I’m asking the Mafia to use
their clout to end the war in El Salvador since four nuns were
raped and killed there.” They must’ve heard my request. By the time
I got to Los Angeles, the Herald-Examiner was reporting
that the Mafia was “probably the largest source of arms for the
rebels in El Salvador.”

In the spring of 1982, there was a Radical Humor Festival at New
York University. That weekend, the festival sponsored an evening of
radical comedy. The next day, my performance was analyzed by an
unofficial women’s caucus. Robin Tyler (“I am not a lesbian comic—I
am a comic who is a lesbian”) served as the spokesperson for their
conclusions. What had caused a stir was my reference to the use of
turkey basters by single mothers-to-be who were attempting to
impregnate themselves by artificial insemination.