Comedian recounts past abortion‑related rape joke targeting legislators' wives

Are Rape Jokes Funny? Abortion was still illegal in 1970. At the time, as both an underground abortion referral service and a stand-up satirist, | faced an undefined paradox. | wouldn’ t allow victims to become the target of my humor, yet there was one particular routine | did that called fora “rape- in” of legislators’ wives in order to impregnate them so that they would then convince their husbands to decriminalize abortion.. But feminist friends objected. | resisted at first, because it was such a well-intentioned joke. And then | 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 chickenshit censorship, it was empathetic editing. Now, 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. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015405