[stephp]

Saying "your average uncle joe" does not ring sexist to me? You're drawing a comparison, to whomever you want to, and not making any radical assumption about a specified group of people.

As for your rape anecdote... I hope you'll give the mechanics of that a bit more thought? And also consider the type of physical injury. (Many rape victims suffer damage to their internal organs and/or lose the ability to conceive.)

[Crito]

I think his point is that it was not too long ago that saying "him" did not ring as sexist to most people.

If the standards of language are changing, then we have to decide what punishment, if any, we deal out to those who don't keep up quickly enough.

[yeukhon]

Here is one. Not very long ago did our definition changed the way we interpret male rape. Of course how we rule male rape in court is a different story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/justice-dept-expands-...

[catwell]

About "uncle Joe": in France the most popular equivalent is "Madame Michu" (female). And a lot of people consider this is sexist.

[reeses]

Male prison rape is a joking matter in many places. "Pound me in the ass prison" is well-known in the hacker community.

Think before you react.

[stephp]

To state the obvious: female rape jokes are everywhere, all the time. Both are terrible, of course.

[reeses]

Indeed. However, you tell a rape joke about women and someone should (and very likely will) tell you that it's not funny.

Comments like,"Don't drop the soap," are so benign in our culture that you would have to be in a hypersensitized environment to be concerned about repercussions of any sort.

How many people feel as if justice is served when a male prisoner is raped to death, à la Jeffrey Dahmer. In fact, many would not call Dahmer's homicide a rape, but switching genders would absolutely qualify it as such.

I'm sounding as if I'm on a soapbox about this, but I'm not defending female rape in any way or the power imbalance of gender in most of the world.