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" \n What happens when a feminist blogger publicly speaks out against rape jokes? She gets called a &amp;quot;fat dyke,&amp;quot; of course! Because you guys, the Internet is full of educated poets with great opinions!   Jezebel blogger and feminist Lindy West recently appeared on FX&amp;#039;s Totally Biased with Kamau Bell  to discuss the culture of misogyny in stand-up comedy. The very next day she was barraged with hundreds if not thousands of personal attacks, insults, hate-mail and rape threats. One commenter said, &amp;quot;There is a group of rapists with over 9,000 penises coming for this fat bitch.&amp;quot; 9,000 penises? What does that even mean?   In a blog post on Jezebel called &amp;quot;If Comedy Has No Lady Problems, Why Am I Getting So Many Rape Threats?&amp;quot; Lindy publishes some of the worst of the comments:   &amp;quot;no need for you to worry about rape uggo.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;she&amp;#039;s got a hairy CUNT &amp;#039;tween her thighs.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I love how the Bitch getting complaining about rape is the exact kind of Bitch that would never be raped.&amp;quot;   So, why are these men so full of blind rage for Lindy? What did she say to start such an internet wildfire? Simply that &amp;quot;comedy&amp;#039;s current permissiveness around cavalier, cruel, victim-targeting rape jokes contributes to (that&amp;#039;s contributes\u2014not causes) a culture of young men who don&amp;#039;t understand what it means to take this stuff seriously.&amp;quot; Not necessarily fightin&amp;#039; words. The irony, of course, in all the hateful backlash is that it just strengthens her claims. The comedy world, and let&amp;#039;s just say it, the world at large, is still strongly anti-woman. All you have to do is defend rape victims to get a tiny flavor of how hostile men are to empowered women.   Why do people call Hillary Clinton a ball-buster and a b*tch? Why was Sarah Jessica Parker voted &amp;quot;The Unsexiest Woman in the World&amp;quot; by Maxim Magazine? Why do people rip into Lena Dunham for not looking like a starved giraffe? A woman who doesn&amp;#039;t act the way she&amp;#039;s supposed to\u2014quiet, subservient, agreeable\u2014is considered an enemy. It&amp;#039;s as simple as that.   At the heart of Lindy&amp;#039;s argument is that there are consequences to what people say in comedy clubs. You can&amp;#039;t just spit racist, anti-woman, hate-speech and not expect to be called out for it. On her TV appearance she is asked, &amp;quot;Are comedy clubs inherently hostile to women?&amp;quot; Her hilarious and spot-on answer? &amp;quot;Well, they&amp;#039;re dark basements full of angry men.&amp;quot;   I was a stand-up comic for two years and I can say without a doubt that it&amp;#039;s still a total boy&amp;#039;s club. I have never felt so self-conscious about being a woman as I did when I first started performing. Four nights a week I would go to open mics at various bars and clubs and it was always the same scene: thirty to forty guys\u2014and me. Maybe, if I was lucky, there would be one other girl there. And what is the consequence of this dramatic disparity? Well, with essentially no women around, dudes felt totally comfortable sharing their most f*cked up, angry, misogynistic fantasies. It&amp;#039;s their turf. Who&amp;#039;s gonna stop them?   Now obviously, there are tons of awesome, talented male comics who are super pro-woman but I have heard some insanely misogynistic &amp;quot;jokes&amp;quot; at these mics. I&amp;#039;ll never forget this one guy who went onstage and said, &amp;quot;You know how when a woman&amp;#039;s talking you just want to choke her with your dick?&amp;quot; Uhhh...no.   The debate about misogyny in comedy isn&amp;#039;t men versus women, or men are bad and women are victims, it just comes down to one thing; You are responsible for what you say. In 2011, when Tracy Morgan reportedly said he would kill his son if he acted gay, he was pressured into a public apology. As he should be. When Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld) went on a racist rant telling black members of the audience that, &amp;quot;Fifty years ago we&amp;#039;d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass&amp;quot; his career ended on the spot. Guess what? Freedom of speech is real, but being an adult and knowing the difference between funny and toxic is also real.   A good comic can joke about anything: rape, the Holocaust, slavery, cancer, whatever. No topic is off-limits. But just because you&amp;#039;re a &amp;quot;comedian&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#039;t mean you get a free pass to be a monster. Words are powerful; be smart about how you use them.   Check out Lindy West&amp;#039;s TV appearance here:        Want more musings from Rose? Follow her on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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