Inappropriate Jokes And Being "Sensitive"

When you're in school, you hear a lot of things. You hear rumours, you hear lies, you hear gossip, but you also hear jokes.

Jokes are great because they can help you make it through a day. If it's a long day in particular, they can lift your spirits up a little bit. There's no harm in having a laugh!

There is a harm, however, in making inappropriate jokes.

Back when I was twelve years old, there was an incident that happened that left me emotionally traumatized. A few years later and I still have trouble talking about it without crying a little bit.

It was a really hard time for me and I feel as though I haven't gotten completely over it.

Fast forward a few years and I've come to accept the fact that it happened and I'm trying to move on from it, but that's definitely easier said then done.

How am I supposed to move on from that bad point in my life if people keep making jokes about it and laughing about it?

I don't talk about what happened at all, so people don't know that I suffer from it, but that doesn't mean they should joke about it anyway!

This is a little worse than I what I experienced, so please don't go off thinking the worse, but did you know that one in every four woman in North America will be sexually assaulted throughout their life?

Did you know that 60% of sexually abused/assaulted people are under the age of 17?

Did you know that 57% of aboriginal women (in Canada) have been sexually abused?

With statistics like those in only one single category, how can you feel good or accomplished about making jokes about rape?

If you're the person feeling offended by the joke, you're left with the choice of telling the people who told the joke to stop because jokes like that aren't funny, or you're left with the choice of sitting back, not saying anything by it while being bothered by the joke.

From personal experience, if you tell people that a joke like that isn't funny and it's wrong, then, from personal experience, you might hear the words "Oh my God, you're so lame," or "What a loser," or what I find to be the worst "God, you're so sensitive."

That's the worse for me because that's a complete lie.

I am not being too sensitive. I am being a person who is trying to avoid a bad time in my life. I am a person trying overcome a traumatizing experience. I am doing what any person would do in that situation and you're mocking me for that and making my emotional recover take longer.

This is an issue that has to be addressed.

I constantly hear people joking about rape, being gay, being assaulted/sexually assaulted, having a mental illness, being suicidal and more.

Jokes like that aren't funny. People are scarred for life from events like that.

Do you have any idea how many people struggle with coming out to their friends and family that they end up not doing it? People have to find their love for another person because they feel as though they won't be accepted by the people in their life.

It isn't fair.

Something that people have to start understanding is:

Rape jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Assault jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Sexual assault jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Mental illness jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Physical illness jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Weight jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Self harm jokes aren't funny to everyone.
LGBT jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Race jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Religion jokes aren't funny to everyone.
Suicide jokes aren't funny to everyone.

Any category that are also often jokes about that I missed, I'm truly sorry and feel free to leave it in a comment to remind everyone else that something of that subject should not be joked about.

If you are aware that this is a problem yet you continue to make jokes about those subjects, you're part of the problem.

Then again, what do I know? I don't live your life, you might've been a victim of something traumatizing or part of a social group that's often jokes about, and maybe you joking about it is how you're comforted by it.

It's different for everyone, but you must remember that the people around you might've lived through something awful that you might not know about, and you telling jokes like that could be slowly killing them on the inside.

People go through different experiences in life whether they're good or bad.

Just because they haven't told you about it doesn't mean that it hasn't happened and it doesn't mean that they aren't still affected by it.


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