braveasanoun

As many of you probably have seen, Betty White was the host of Saturday Night Live last night, and she was absolutely hilarious. There were many cameos from former SNL women such as Maya Rudolph, Ana Gasteyer, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, and Molly Shannon. This definitely provided some awesome female performers, which SNL has been lacking in recent seasons (not that the women on there now aren’t funny, but there’s definitely an imbalanced ratio of men to women on SNL now). However, one sketch that was aired really struck a bad chord with me, and it got to me.

This skit, called "Scared Straight", has been recurring for years on SNL, and is a prime example of our rape culture in America. In this skit, a prisoner, played by Kenan Thompson, scares three teenage boys into avoiding a life of crime (even though the actual crime these boys are accused of is usually fairly minor). This is done through humorous allusions to movies that are told as if they really happened, and through countless rape jokes. Sadly, these jokes about rape receive roaring laughter, because people getting raped in prison is HILARIOUS!

These jokes are harmful not only because they make light of rape, but they normalize prison rape, as if people (men in this case) deserve to be raped because they committed a crime. However, this is false because A) NO ONE DESERVES TO GET RAPED and B) Not everyone in prison ...