Jokes that blame the victim

Jokes that appear to 'blame the victim' are anathema to the knee-jerk egalitarians. When the author was working in Newfoundland in the early 1990s, there had been a major scandal because the people suddenly became aware of the widespread sexual molestation of boys by Roman Catholic priests and even more so by members of a teaching order, the Christian Brothers who ran an orphanage. These were not mere unsubstantiated allegations driven by greed for compensation nor were the deeds the acts of opportunistic casual gropers; having read the contemporary reports I can safely say that these were among the vilest crimes Newfoundland has ever seen. They had been hushed up for a long time. No-one disagreed about that. Yet immediately there was a cycle of Father Hickey jokes about one of the perpetrators.

Father Hickey had to go away, so he asked a young priest to stand in for him and hear confessions.
Bridget confessed that she had given her boy friend a blowjob.
The young priest was unsure as to what penance to give, so he sneaked out of the confessional and asked an altar boy, "What does Father Hickey give for a blow-job?"
The boy replied without hesitation, "A bottle of coke, an ice-cream and a bag of chips".

How do you get a priest to have sex with a nun?
Dress her up as an altar boy.

These jokes caused outrage in the local press, not because they were obscene or because they made fun of a sacred institution in difficulties but because they 'blamed the victim' - in this case the altar boy. There is a parallel here with the recent pressure by women's groups on broadcasters to censor all jokes about rape or sexual assault.

A British visitor to a convent in Italy asked one of the sisters how they had managed during the war.
"Oh it was a-terrible. First there were troops here from another part of Italy and they rape all the nuns except-a for Sister Maria. Then they went away and the Americans came and they rape all the nuns except for Sister Maria. And then they were replaced by the French. They were the worst of all. The French soldiers broke down the doors of the convent and they rape all-a-de nuns except for Sister Maria.
"But-er-tell me", said the puzzled Englishman, "Why did none of them rape Sister Maria?"
"Oh, Sister Maria, she no like that kind of thing".

It is a good joke and it is easy to list the kind of protests that would occur if it were told on the air: 'It suggests the nuns really wanted to be raped. It provides excuses and mitigations for rapists and diminishes their guilt! It will lead to more sexual offences!' Nonsense. It is just a joke. Those who protest against it would do better to ask why the soldiers of some armies and indeed of some units within an army are far more likely to commit rape than others. It has nothing to do with the kinds of jokes they tell. It is the differences in behaviour between groups of men that provide explanations, not general waffle about jokes that are held in common.

Jokes are humorous utterances that exist in a world of their own and cannot be reduced to serious statements. Jokes are for jokes' sake. They are not a suitable subject for indignation.