This Video Brilliantly Skewers the Idea That Male Rape is Hilarious

When this video was first sent to me, it took me several minutes to bring myself to watch it. The screenshot on YouTube is of a smiling, anxious-looking male in his 20s and I braced myself for a ten minute defense of the use of rape jokes in comedy. What I saw was much more heartbreaking.

In only two minutes, actor and writer Andrew Bailey takes you on an emotional roller coaster with his painful monologue. Bailey introduces himself as Will and immediately launches into a defense of why rape is hilarious (but only when it happens to males). And about ten seconds after that, the monologue takes a very real turn when Will breaks away from a defense of how funny Adam Sandler is to discuss the fact that Lynndie Englund, one of the 11 soldiers convicted for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, wasn’t a monster, she was a comic genius. And then Will drops a bombshell: He was molested at 13 by a teacher who was not a pedophile, but a woman. And it was awesome, because he’d always wanted to have sex and here he was doing it with a trusted adult.

Despite its short duration, the video is difficult to watch in one sitting. Even knowing that this is a monologue and may not be based on personal experience doesn’t make it any easier because the experience Will describes is the experience of many. Just watching Will’s eyes as he explains that what happened to him wasn’t rape (“it was statutory”) and how good it felt physically is painful. And it gets even harder when he discusses the reaction of others and tries to convince himself that everything is all right, but it’s not.

An adult taking advantage of a child’s trust will always take an emotional toll. This is true no matter how hard the victim tries to tell themselves that they wanted it (especially if the victim is socially pressured to want sex). The video is an excellent addition to the discussion of rape humor and the problem of sexual violence against males. Hopefully this video will challenge flippant attitudes common toward rape and particularly statutory rape so that we can have a serious discussion about how to help victims and help prevent this serious crime.