Disgusting.

Trivia: The Eastern Michigan University student newspaper cartoon seemed to be a terrible parody of the scene towards the end in Titanic.

Your complaint yesterday was based on a total inability to understand critical humor (i.e.: it was pointing out that racists make light of lynching and how their attitudes conflict with the seriousness of our gut reactions ["it's disgusting that anyone could fondly remember a lynching - what horrifying racists!"]; the disjunction between the two is how the cartoon worked -- it was supposed to upset in precisely that way), but, thankfully, you seemed to have hit your mark today with this cartoon. This cartoon certainly endorses sexual assault and makes absolutely no attempt whatsoever to criticize those who engage in it. I think you would do best to stick to cartoons like this – that is, ones that are plainly offensive with no other meaning intended – since it's a bit harder for you to get them completely wrong.

WTF's up with the whole thing, but the 'always' pleasurable doggy position? What does that mean and imply? Especially if it isn't pleasurable for you? I've always thought of the 'doggy' position as stereotypically beneficial for one partner and tends to be dominant/submissive- so besides trivializing rape it is also implying that women should enjoy a position that they might not.

Yuck. Yuck.

(and I'm not clear on the Titanic reference, maybe because I only saw it once)

So, um, where does it imply that the receiving partner is female? Before you flame me:
1) Nothing in the text suggests that the receiving partner is female. They use strictly gender-neutral terminology to refer to the couple.
2) The silhouettes differ only in hairstyle. One could "assume" the receiving partner is female, but only because they prefer to see the duck rather than the rabbit.

Not to distract from the discussion of rape culture at hand, but what of the culture of rape and heteronormativity? or female victimization?

When was this cartoon published? Because the movie 'The Prestige' is several years old, and no college student would be making a joke referencing it today, at least in this context. Unlike your last failure of a criticism of university newspaper comics, this actually is fairly offensive. However, I would expect to get more of a context. I can't imagine that no one complained about this, just based on my own experiences with college newspapers. Who is the cartoonist? Were there complaints? How many? Was an apology issued either by the cartoonist or an editor? A cartoonist was fired from my campus' paper 2 years ago for a cartoon that offended people (though it was more in the vein of the Eastern Michigan cartoon, that people were too lazy to understand, as opposed to this, which is just tasteless); did the cartoonist face any consequences? Aside from the movie "the Prestige' coming out, were there any big news stories that this could have been referencing, such as the Duke alleged rape case?

I can see why this blog is no longer associated with Contexts, because Lisa doesn't seem to like giving any. Anyone can see that 'lol switching partners on a girl, how bro-tstic' is offensive, but it's much more helpful to have a context. Even a name or gender would help some. For example, while my reaction would be equally negative, whether the cartoonist is a man or a woman would make a difference to me.

Awful cartoon.

Dumb question maybe, but what is a "trigger warning" exactly?

Okay, apparently my reply to this got lost in the internet, though my follow-up reply somehow posted.

At any rate, as Erhen said, the graphic was published last month (though it was not published online, which is why Lisa didn't have a link). I sent Lisa an e-mail the day it happened, but clearly her box is quite full, and she only replied last night. I only got her e-mail today, and thus was not able to provide her with more context on the incident.

There was outrage and there was an apology. There were also people who assert that it doesn't depict rape and/or that it is funny.

The editor of The Exponent is female, and from what I heard the creator of the graphic was female. It was a reference to the movie The Prestige and was not in fact referring to any recent rape cases. People tried to subvert the Facebook protest group by flagging the group and content and later the petition site started by another graduate student was hacked so that it redirected to a porn site. There was outrage, but there were also a lot of people who thought the outrage was bullshit.

The response from The Exponent has been exceptional, in that they admitted it was wrong and propose to do more than just apologize.

Here is the local news report, showing that many people thought it was trivial or funny: http://ht.ly/2GBTt

Here is the apology: http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=22566

Letters to the Editor:
http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=22567
http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=22599

And here is a guest article The Exponent recently published by our Director of Women's Studies: http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=22705

Alright, sorry for the near-identical post, but I swear my other comment wasn't up. Feel free to delete.

Who really "makes light of rape" is you, methinks, by likening this immature bit of college humour to actual, you know, RAPE, where people are forcefully penetrated against their will, with all the pain, shame and trauma that entails. If what's depicted in the cartoon were actually to happen, I'm sure the woman (or man) wouldn't feel great about it, but I'm equally sure she (or he) wouldn't want to change it for being raped by a stranger in the park at night.

As to your verdict that we live in a "rape culture": perhaps we do, I don't know the precise definition of "rape culture". All I know is that in the whole history of mankind, the amount of sexual violence towards women has probably never been as little as in Western societies today. Has there ever been a time when sexual violence was as criminalized and socially non-acceptable as today? I don't think so. Sure there's still loads to be done, but deriving that we live in a "rape culture" from cartoons and stupid t-shirts is at least misleading.

For heterosexual males having a hard time understanding how the act depicted in the cartoon can be construed as rape try imagining this:

You're blindfolded, receiving oral sex from your partner and she tells you to take off the blindfold. When you do, she's standing off to one side and a goat is licking your genitals. Would you feel violated? I would.

My partner and I have a history of swapping, and I have a deep love of practical jokes, but I recognize that an act like this is sexual assault. Tricking someone into having sex with someone they don't want to, whether it's you or someone else, is wrong. Consent is the fucking word, live by it.

Cam I borrow the goat?

I have to take issue with the notion that this cartoon is in some way an "endorsement" of the act it depicts. While it's surely offensive to many and in questionable taste, the same can be said of far, far darker and more overtly critical comedy.

Can we reasonably expect the readers of the student paper to know that the cartoon is intended as humor, rather than to set a standard of behavior? Is the audience at least old enough to recognize irony, and spot the stark contrast between the writing style (fairly formal and technical) and the moronic fratboy stereotype it characterizes?

If the answer to these questions is no, then Purdue should really rethink its admissions policy. But otherwise, it's absurd to judge it by a different standard than we'd apply to satire. We can say, for example, that the critical component of the satire is too vague, that the content is poorly executed, or that we simply don't find it funny, but we don't get to shut down a joke by conflating it with an endorsement. (If we did, we'd probably have to throw Sarah Silverman into jail).

As for the argument about whether the "Prestige position" constitutes rape, I think it's a bit of a red herring. The entire setup is so manifestly improbable that we needn't dignify it with a specific real-world term - especially one as emotionally loaded as rape.

We could pursue the question of whether it would be funny if it existed outside of the context of a "rape culture," but we'd need to have a non-rape-culture (or whatever you'd call the opposite) to test that. And to the best of my knowledge - though I'd be thrilled to be convincingly corrected - such a culture does not exist, and never has.

Life is degrading and savage and pointless in so very many ways. People on this blog just concentrate on a few of those indecencies.

Assuming you were the figure on the floor, and you didn't acquire an STD from the experience, what exactly would the harm be, other than the harm in your own head? I'm not questioning that you'd be totally disturbed by the experience, it's just funny to me that the harm is all the result of psychological trauma because of the way we've been conditioned to think about sex by our culture (and maybe genetics).

I mean, the way rape laws work on the books you could see this scenario play out:

1. An absolutely savage beating of one man by another. Broken bones, torn flesh, the victim's face is an unrecognizable pulp.

2. A sleeping woman is vaginally penetrated while unconscious. She has no injuries, and she only discovers later that she was raped while sleeping.

The second offense involves a much heavier jail sentence, though obviously a judge's discretion will play a role in what kinda penalties will be dealt out.

Once we take out stds and pregnancy, all that's left to justify a heavy penalty for the first situation is some sort of magic aura around the sexual organs. Magic penises and magic vaginas, like a sacred grove in a pagan religion. If you cut down the magic tree we burn you alive, if you touch the magic vagina we put in you in jail for 30 years for rape.

I'm a college junior and last year I heard a few male friends of mine who are around 20-21 years old reference this "prank" and refer to it as a Houdini (they were referring to it in the context of a movie, I seem to remember). I paused for a second, looked at them and asked "Isn't that rape?" and after a moment they agreed that yeah, it is. Take from that what you will.

Partial credit for an honest apology. Honest, but not really adequate. Does no one on the planet understand what it means to take responsibility for a grave error of judgement? Resignation--nothing else--would have been adequate.

It seems that the Exponent is actually an independent, non-profit corporation, rather than a school organization per se...but the administration of the university should look very carefully at their relationship with a periodical that remains under the editorial guidance that saw fit to publish this.

So... a joke means that we live in a "rape culture"? The stupidity of humans never fails to amuse me.

I can see how this was totally not intended as a rape joke in any way. I can also see how it is in fact a rape joke. Grey areas, y'know?

The link to the apology actually goes to the Exponent's front page. I couldn't find an apology there but they did have this headline: Purdue police seek information on three sexual assaults

did that link to the apology work for other people? It just directed me to the first page and I can't find it through their search bar.

It should of never been published, apology should not be accepted

Tried, but couldn't find the apology at that link.

I don't see an apology. I see a link to their home page. It should not be hard to find--it should be a direct link.