[lauraura]

If you're speaking to a randomly selected adult American audience, on average, roughly 1 in 12 people in that audience have been raped. You're probably going to make a good portion of those people feel even more awful about being a victim -- never mind the PTSD. That should be good enough reason not to joke about it.

[flexie]

Every rape is one too many but these 1 in 12 (or 1 in 4) figures that we hear about, are dubious:

http://triggeralert.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-1-in-12-rape-st...

I am not saying that joking about rape is okay if "only" 1 in 40 women in the audience has been raped. Just that the figures are questionable.

[lutusp]

>I am not saying that joking about rape is okay if "only" 1 in 40 women in the audience has been raped. Just that the figures are questionable.

They certainly are. FBI labs, who had every incentive to find otherwise, has discovered that, of every 100 sex crime reports filed by women, between 20 and 40 of them are false:

"False Rape Accusations May Be More Common Than Thought":

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194032,00.html

Researched by Wendy McElroy, editor of ifeminists.com (who also had every incentive to find otherwise, and who expected to).

[flexie]

Along those lines:

This study by forensic science researcher, Birgitte Schmidt Astrup, found that consensual sexual intercourse often produces genital lesions:

http://www.fsijournal.org/article/S0379-0738(11)00563-9/abst...

It's interesting, because the finding of genital lesions sometimes decide the outcome of rape cases.