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Abstract
This article traces a cultural shift in ‘consent humour’ by contrasting a Saturday Night Live skit that aired in 1993 mocking affirmative consent with the 2015 ‘Tea and Consent’ video produced by the Thames Valley police, in 2015, which insists that ‘consent is everything’. By reflecting on the cultural contexts and the ‘humour ideologies’ that underlie these examples, the article rejects a simple teleological interpretation of cultural change. It asks who and what is subject to ridicule in these jokes, contrasting the figure of the disruptive ‘victim feminist’ in the 1993 sketch with the ignorant subject who is ‘still struggling’ with consent in the 2015 clip. The article argues that both rely on a class-based politics of cultural capital to defend ideological constructions of ‘appropriate knowledge’ about consent. Where the SNL skit insists that consent is marked by its complexity, the ‘Tea and Consent’ video insists on its simplicity. The humour in both, however, rests on a sexually sophisticated middle-class subject laughing at those who do not possess the appropriate cultural capital in relation to sex and consent. In both cases, the ‘problem’ of consent is deflected away from normative heterosexuality and towards the ignorant other.
Notes
1 See, for a transcript, Don Roy King, Is It Date Rape (online) 8 October 2018 <https://snltranscripts.jt.org/93/93bdaterape.phtml> (last accessed 8 July 2020).
2 Robin Warshaw, I Never Called it Rape (Harper & Collins 1988).
3 Peggy Reeves Sanday, A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial (Doubleday 1996).
4 Bethany Saltman, ‘We Started the Crusade for Affirmative Consent Way Back in the ’90s’ The Cut (online), 22 October 2014 <https://www.thecut.com/2014/10/we-fought-for-affirmative-consent-in-the-90s.html> (last accessed 7 July 2020).
5 Thames Valley Police, Consent is Everything (online) May 12 2015 <http://www.consentiseverything.com/#> (last accessed 8 July 2020).
6 Jessica Bennett, ‘Campus Sex … With a Syllabus’ New York Times (online), 9 January 2016 <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/fashion/sexual-consent-assault-college-campuses.html> (last accessed 4 September 2020).
7 Guardian, ‘The Guardian View on a Year in Feminism: 2014 was a Watershed’ The Guardian (online) 31 December 2014 <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/31/guardian-view-year-feminism-2014-watershed> (last accessed 8 July 2020).
8 Jennifer Doyle, Campus Sex, Campus Security (Semiotexte 2015).
9 Nicola Gavey, Just Sex? The Cultural Scaffolding of Rape (Routledge 2005) 24–25.
10 Elise Kramer, ‘The Playful is Political: The Metapragmatics of Internet Rape-Joke Arguments’ (2011) 40(2) Language in Society 138.
11 Lara Cox, ‘Standing Up against the Rape Joke: Irony and Its Vicissitudes’ (2015) 40(4) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Societ 984.
12 Megan L. Strain, Amanda L. Martens, and Donald A. Saucier, ‘“Rape is the new Black”: Humor’s Potential for Reinforcing and Subverting Rape Culture’ (2016) 2(1) Translational Issues in Psychological Science.
13 New York Times, ‘“Ask First” at Antioch’ New York Times 11 October 1993, 16.
14 I have presented versions of this paper to the 2019 European Society for the Study of Deviance and Social Control (Barcelona, Spain), the 2019 National Women’s Studies Association (San Francisco, USA) and the 2019 Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand (Gold Coast, Australia).
15 Gavey above note 9 at 25.
16 Christopher Stone, ‘Should Trees Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects’ (1972) 45 Southern California Law Review 45.
17 Katie Gentile, ‘Playing With Shame: The Temporal Work of Rape Jokes for the Cultural Body’ (2017) 18(4) Studies in Gender and Sexuality 392.
18 Times above note 13 at 16.
19 Mostafa Abedinifard, ‘Ridicule, Gender Hegemony, and the Disciplinary Function of Mainstream Gender Humour’ (2016) 26(3) Social Semiotics 243.
20 As above at 243.
21 Strain and others, above note 12 at 88–89.
22 As above at 89.
23 As above at 89.
24 Gentile above note 17 at 291.
25 Sneha Krishnan, ‘Agency, Intimacy, and Rape Jokes: An Ethnographic Study of Young Women and Sexual Risk in Chennai’ (2016) 22(1) Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 68.
26 Sharon Lockyer and Heather Savigny, ‘Rape Jokes aren’t Funny: The Mainstreaming of Rape Jokes in Contemporary Newspaper Discourse’ (2020) 20(3) Feminist Media Studies 438.
27 Carol Pateman, ‘Women and Consent’ (1980) 8(2) Political Theory 150.
28 Joseph Fischel, Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice (University of California Press 2019).
29 Melissa Burkett and Karine Hamilton, ‘Postfeminist Sexual Agency: Young Women's Negotiations of Sexual Consent’ (2012) 15(7) Sexualities.
30 Michelle Bemiller and Rachel Schneider, ‘It’s Not Just a Joke’ (2010) 30(4) Sociological Spectrum.
31 Strain and others, above note 12 at 90–91.
32 Gentile above note 17 at 288.
33 John Meyer, ‘Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication’ (2000) 10(3) Communication Theory.
34 Kramer above note 10 at 154.
35 Times above note 13 at 16.
36 Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour (Sage 2005).
37 Cox above note 11 at 967.
38 Sarah Banet-Wesier, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (Duke University Press 2018).
39 King above note 1.
40 See, for example, Katie Roiphe, The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism (Black Bay Books 1993).
41 Meghan Daum, ‘Who Killed Antioch? Womyn’ L.A. Times (online) 30 June 2007 <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-jun-30-oe-daum30-story.html> (last accessed 7 July 2020).
42 Raúl Perez and Viveca S. Greene, ‘Debating Rape Jokes Vs. Rape Culture: Framing and Counterframing Misogynistic Comedy’ (2016) 26(3) Social Semiotics 267.
43 Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism (Sage 2009); Fischel above note 28 at 13.
44 The original post at <http://rockstardinosaurpirateprincess.com/2015/03/02/consent-not-actually-that-complicated/> is no longer available but it is archived here: Rockstardinosaurpirateprincess, Consent: Not Actually that Complicated (online) 2 March 2015 <https://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/resources/consent-not-actually-complicated> (last accessed 8 July 2020).
45 Thames Valley Police at note 5.
46 Cox above note 11 at 971.
47 McRobbie above note 43.
48 Saltman above note 4.
49 Tanya Serisier, ‘“Remembering Anita”: Rape and the Politics of Commemoration’ 2005 23 Australian Feminist Law Journal.
50 Gentile above note 17.
51 Times above note 13 at 16.
52 Daum above note 41.
53 Thames Valley Police above note 5.
54 Bev Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture (Routledge 2004) 17.
55 Kramer above note 10.
56 Skeggs above note 54 at 18.
57 Kramer above note 10 at 163.
58 As above at 162–63.
59 Thames Valley Police above note 5.
60 Kramer above note 10 at 163.
61 Yasmin Nair, Polyamory is Gay Marriage for Straight People (online) 15 February 2019 https://yasminnair.com/polyamory-is-gay-marriage-for-straight-people/> (last accessed 7 June 2020).
62 Skeggs above note 54 at 17.
63 Fischel above note 28 at 13. Emphasis in original.
65 Rockstardinosaurprincess above note 44.
66 Abedinifard above note 19.
67 Skeggs above note 54 at 20.
68 As above at 25.
69 Gentile above note 17 at 291.
70 Saltman above note 4. Emphasis in original.
71 Kristin Bumiller, In An Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence (Duke University Press 2008).
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