Using “rape” as a synonym for victory.

I was perusing my facebook last night when i came across a status update by a guy i used to go to High School with in the USA when i lived there. I have not seen this person in probably 2 years, we were not close friends but more like friendly aquaintances.

His status report was as follows…

“chelsea vs seattle…prepare the ass rape”

Now im not sure what sport this is referencing but im almost certain that he was talking about some imminent event that he was looking forward to. Obviously we all at feministing are aware of using such terms to describe something that has nothing to do with ‘ass rape’ in general. I was not furious, but understandably irked by such insensitivity.

So trying to approach this situation with a good heart to try to shed some light i replied to his status report, which can be seen by his friends on their wall (for those who are not familiar with the site). My response:

‘with all due respect, words like ‘ass rape’ shouldn’t be thrown around as a joke, it makes a mockery of the people who are actually affected by such things.’

to which he replied about 10 minutes ago

‘then i’ll be sure to walk on egg shells and follow the soft culture political correctness.’

So now im lost as to what to do. Some may say that i should not have replied in such a public forum so as to embarass him or cause him to be defensive. However if he is so willing to post something like ‘ass rape’ which is also public, do i not have a right to consequently voice my concerns if it is offensive. Also, he has approx 1000 friends, now im not going to go and count how many female friends he has, but assuming loosely that half are female half are male, and statistically speaking according to the UN 2/3 of women will be sexually assaulted at one point in their lives, is it not highly likely that at least one of his female friends has been raped or sexually assualted and may have been upset by his status also?

I have since sent him a private message saying that if he wants to discuss it further i would be happy to. I have yet to recieve a reply, but im not really sure how i would go about explaining myself without getting the common ‘angry feminist, stop being so politically correct’ response.

Any suggestions?

PS. this is my first post on feministing, and i’m not highly familiar with blog format or anything like that so if i messed up with grammar etc i apologise.