Gwen and I usually refrain from posting material that seems culturally marginal. There’s a lot of disturbing stuff that pops up on the fringes, but we’re mostly interested in illustrating culturally dominate tropes with particularly influential cases (for example, lessons from music videos by artists like Eminem, Rihanna, and Kanye West). My first instinct, when I received a link to a set of cartoon at The Oatmeal from Sully R., was to skip it for this reason. But when I got to the end of the page, I saw this:
Nearly 2,500 diggs, 743 tweets, over 8,000 people on facebook sharing it, and nearly 8,000 stumbleupons. What was this content that so many people had felt compelled to share?
It’s five cartoons illustrating hilarious ways to “use” a sex worker… eh em, “hooker.” The message is: once you pay for a sex worker, you get to do anything you want with her, including demean her for your own entertainment.
I guess the point of this post is: I thought this was fringe. I thought, “Oh sure, another set of sexist cartoons. They’re everywhere. Whatever.” But then I was shocked by how many people had thought they were hilarious enough to share with their friends and strangers. This is not fringe at all… it’s just everyday LOL.
