Today in Rape Culture Not Existing

CNN guest jokes Chelsea Manning will get ‘good practice’ being a woman in prison

Hahaha. Ha.

There's so much terrible here, let's go ahead and dissect it.

1. Joking about rape! That's the easiest terrible. Fun fact about joking about rape: context doesn't matter! It's never okay! Yes, even that most hilarious of topics, prison rape, is not okay to joke about. Shocking.
2. The idea that you get good practice being a woman by being raped. Holy crap, guy. That's your concept of what women are for, huh? I can't even.
3. The pervasive transphobic attitude that this is an action that should be particularly applied to a transgender woman (who, of course, is never referred to as a woman in this awful piece).

The truth is this: he's not wrong. Unfortunately, LGBT inmates are 15 times as likely to be raped or sexually assaulted in prison. 67% of LGBT inmates are raped or assaulted. 67%! That's not fucking funny. That's a symptom of a larger problem.

So here's a link to Just Detention International, an organization dedicated to fighting prison rape in all its forms. It's not an acceptable threat. It's not corrective behavior. It's terrible and it needs to stop.