I was horrified by all the comments over at Puck Daddy on this subject. “Get a life!” “Toughen up!” “Don’t be so easily offended!” It is easy for a man to say that when his chance of being sexually assaulted is small. Since most sexual assault is perpetrated by men against women, I found the lack of empathy and understanding for those that may have been offended to be more disturbing than the actual tweet. I am not sure that much headway will be made surrounding ‘rape culture’ in our society until the dialog amongst the male population changes.

I think it was tasteless and crude, but at the same time, I shrug my shoulders. This is the world we live in, where any publicity–even bad–is good publicity.

This makes me sad because I love the Kings Twitter feed, and I would hate for this incident to completely ruin all the generally good, chirpy fun.

This makes me angry because not only do I not find rape jokes funny, but because I f-ing HATE IT when people “apologize” by saying “IF you were offended by what I said, then I’m sorry for THAT.” That is NOT an apology. That is a passive aggressive way of saying “I’m being forced to apologize, but I really don’t mean it.” If that’s what you’re going to say, then just don’t apologize, because it’s incredibly insulting to everyone’s intelligence and possibly the only thing that makes me angrier than a rape joke.

I respect Vanessa’s thoughtful and well-stated opinion about needing to joke about everything. And I am, in general, very difficult to offend with humor. My sense of humor is very dark, and I’m usually the one having to think “Is this going to get me sent to HR?” before — or sadly, sometimes after — saying something. But at the risk of sounding way over-dramatic, I find the prevalence of rape culture, especially in sports and media, to be an absolute scourge on humanity, and I just can’t excuse it. Especially when it’s done in such a public, “official” forum.

And what might even be the absolute worst of this is that the “joke” was NOT EVEN FUNNY. Not even a little a bit. Not even in a way that I don’t want to admit publicly, but privately snickered at for a second. If you’re going to wave your “I’m the edgy shock jock guy who pushes people’s buttons” flag, for crying out loud, at least be GOOD at it. This is not just offensive – it’s offensive and lame and just pathetic.

But speaking for myself, I need for there to be the ability to joke about things, including sexual assault. I need there to be times when it’s not taken so seriously, because otherwise, I buckle under the weight of it, I take myself as victim too seriously. And that’s not undermining the tragedy of it, but the fact is, that my life does not deserve to be rendered down to only this thing. I am more than a victim and I can laugh about it.

But that’s me, and I don’t claim to speak for anyone else. Given that I can and do find humor in absolutely everything, I’m maybe the queen of bad jokes, so take that as you will. And, of course, there’s a difference between humor as coping method and humor for cheap laughs.

Honestly, I do think the Kings need to stop handing their twitter account over for guest tweeting; they do well when it’s them, so why the need for guests?