Staten Island, known to most in the tri-state area as a mecca of subtlety and restraint, has in its borders a liquor depository/social gathering place called The Phunky Elephant, a bar that, until recently, boasted on its menu something called a "Roofie Colada." Some patrons, it turns out, were not pleased with their…

Thanks to The Cosby Show, Fat Albert and standup, Bill Cosby has become one of today's most beloved public figures. Of course, mixed up in his celebrated entertainment career are over a dozen instances where Cosby allegedly drugged and raped various women — but that's the part that most people would rather not…

On Sunday, Fox will air its long-promised threatened Simpsons/Family Guy crossover episode and, because cartoons are edgy, it will feature a joke that involves the word "rape." The comedy police have been dispatched.

A group of seniors from Commack High School in Long Island are in trouble after tweeting out a photo of themselves in homemade t-shirts spelling out "R-A-P-E-?," followed by another photo that includes an additional teen (likely a boy dressed in drag), bound with duct tape and laid at their feet, with the t-shirts…

Brian Jones, a Marine Corps veteran and the editor-in-chief of Task & Purpose, is tired of military leaders' indifference to systemic online sexism.

Next week's episode of Law & Order: SVU contains a special treat: a plot line centered around a RAPE JOKE GONE WILD. Stop me if you've heard this one.

During a publicity interview for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the film's star Martin Freeman was asked a fun, fluffy question about what sort of Middle Earth race he'd be most DTF. And he answered with a pretty fucked up joke about elf rape. Goddamn it, Bilbo. I didn't think this kind of talk was tolerated in…

Maaaaaan, just last week I promised myself I was going to take a (permanent?) Sandals Jamaica vacay from writing about rape in comedy, but I just can't sleep on Jessie Kahnweiler's short film Meet My Rapist. It's a brilliant, troubling example of how "rape jokes" can be cathartic and complex and difficult and…

On his podcast Sunday night, Community creator Dan Harmon used a rather, um, unpleasant rape analogy to describe the agonizing helplessness of watching his replacements pick up his brainchild and run with it. “It’s exciting," Harmon said. "There’s something awesome about being held down and watching your family get…

To clarify: I put "rape jokes" in the headline, for brevity, because rape culture in comedy is a frequent and contentious topic 'round these parts. But the true heart of Patton Oswalt's expansive essay is much more universal. It's about bubbles—how all of us live in our bubbles, hide in our bubbles, and judge others…

Girls's Zosia Mamet is currently starring in an off-Broadway play about a "murky rape accusation," and behind the scenes she has been dubbed the "keeper of the rape jokes." Because, of course, you always need rape jokes to "let off some steam," and you always need a lady around to tell everyone else whether or not…

Can rape jokes ever be funny? We think so: check out Lindy's primer on how to make a rape joke for tips such as "Easy shortcut: DO NOT MAKE RAPE VICTIMS THE BUTT OF THE JOKE." Basically, effective rape jokes only work if they make fun of society/oppressors, not the oppressed. The question is definitely worth analyzing…

Last night, during a live broadcast of the WWE's Monday Night Raw, one of the wrestlers' managers (or, rather, an actor who plays the manager of an actorathlete who professionally wrestles) compared his charge to "Kobe Bryant in a Colorado hotel room... unstoppable," a tacky, stupid joke that was followed almost…

Your comedy boyfriend Louis CK caused the stomachs of some of his female fans to drop precipitously last week when he sent what sure looked a lot like a supportive Tweet in the direction of Daniel "Release the Rape Hounds" Tosh. But it turns out it wasn't what it looked like, as the comedian explained on The Daily Show

Comedian Daniel Tosh, fresh off opening a squirming can of rape worms by telling a female heckler that it would be funny if she got sexually assaulted by, like five guys, has a bit of a problem on his hands. His new show's first episode is scheduled to be shown at ComicCon today and according to a source, the whole…

The first time I tried to load the #replacebandnameswithrape hashtag, my computer browser warned me that the page contained insecure content. "Insecure" doesn't even begin to describe it. I'd be offended if I wasn't so depressed. You know people fought in wars to protect our freedom of speech, right? And this is how…

Damn. Actor and normally funny person Rainn Wilson tweeted something that's got us feeling kind of sad:

And cringe. Above, Ever Mainard proves that rape jokes can be funny — in this case, funny because they're true.