Somehow, some time ago, our society decided that humor - above all, regardless of quality, context, or subject, was the holiest of all things. Somehow, humor was infallible. Standup comedy became a righteous act, that regardless of what they were saying, was never to be interrupted. Jokes were just “jokes,” somehow Piss Christ becoming more holy than Christ himself.

Suddenly, it’s somehow my obligation as “a man” to stand up and defend any comedian who gets called out making a joke, forever, defending them from any and all criticism, because otherwise I was letting “censorship” destroy America. Jokes are just jokes, little lady, you need to shut your mouth before your evil Feminism defeats Free Speech and all that’s right in America. Regardless of the context of said Joke, Joke is free from any and all consequences.

Last week was certainly an interesting week. It was a disheartening week if you were a man even halfway aware of how ass backwards our society is and has yet to go, as far as empathy, equality, and the divide between social groups in this country are concerned. To start off, a pair of men walking down the street one evening started harassing and terrifying a drunk woman trying to make her way home alone opposite the street of them. At one point, one of them shouts about how he’d like to have her way with her in a back alley, laughing to himself.

So a woman in the vicinity turns around and breaks his nose. She goes home and posts on the Internet about it. Suddenly, men come out of the woodwork to defend this poor, poor rape joker man. Not the woman being harassed, not at all. Depending on who you ask this woman didn’t even exist. So, after shouting down and harassing a lone woman in the street at night, “joking” about raping her in a society that has over a third of college aged men admitting they would commit sexual assault if they knew they could get away with it - does this “joke” somehow exist alone, in a cultural void, on it’s own pillar of being untouchable? Are minority groups that are subject to violence on the basis of their identity supposed to get on their knees and bow to Jokes, the most important cornerstone of society?

It’s actually quite ironic, for all the putting down of women for being “catty,” men were certainly jumping all over each other to shout down any Misandrist Feminazi Soldier who dared voice her support of the woman in here for not putting up with a culture that treats sexual assault like a joke and expects her to stand idly by while her fellow woman is being shouted at and harassed for the grand crime of walking down the street alone at night after a few drinks.

Of course, this constant abuse men seem to enjoy subjecting women to, over and over again, the rape jokes, don’t exist in a vacuum or a cultural void. They stack, and build upon each other to form a rather disgusting cornerstone of our society, a cancer that seems to have no cure. This was proved ever more evident last week with the broken nose being followed up with Daniel Tosh getting “heckled,” the grandest offense of all in the Towel of Babel. Tosh makes a rape joke, and a woman in the audience shouts hey, those aren’t fucking funny.

Which is a fact, and if you don’t have the empathy to understand the cruelty then it’s simply a technical matter - comedy doesn’t work by having “awful, horrid thing” being the butt of the joke.

Tosh responds with something along the lines of, hey, wouldn’t it be funny if she got raped by like five guys right now, or, she was probably raped by five guys, trying to deflect this “heckle,” when she was making a statement of fact. Again, if your “humor” is awful, horrible fucking thing happening to someone, especially in the audience, then you’re trying too hard and not funny. Tosh was cruel, and unfunny, in a two-for-one deal of broadcasting what a piece of shit he is.

What was quite fascinating was as this controversy was making the circles around the Internet, I bothered to search “Daniel Tosh,” and the Top Tweets? A stream, a constant stream of white man after white man after white man jumping to the defense of Tosh.

Twice this week I’ve watched, as the legion of men went marching across the social networks of the internet, chanting the name of Funny Men, and coming up with excuses upon excuses of why this woman was in the wrong - that you never, ever, ever “heckle” a comedian, and that if someone says something you don’t like, little lady, you’re to run away and never say a word, never standing up for yourself or calling out the injustices in society. How quaint. I mean, they’re just Jokes, right? How could they be harmful? Like words, just leaving the lips, right? Like communication? Racism is a communicated entity. Sexism is a communicated entity. Bigotry doesn’t just exist - it’s communicated and shared, and since Jokes are communicated they hold just as much weight as anything else, regardless of if they’re said by some punk with a microphone in his hand on a stage.

Comedy can help, and it can heal. Yet when it comes to sexual assault and the toxic views men hold of women in society, we as men have been nothing but cruel, toxic, and utterly disgusting.

As men we’ve failed. Trying to live up to some sort of romanticized ideal of masculine heroics, of sticking up for the little guy, doing what’s right, Freedom and The American Way™ - we somehow picked the wrong fights. Electing the wrong heroes as champions of the cause, partaking in all sorts of delusions. It makes me wonder, in this race to bottom, how Comedy became where men fell on the sword.

Regardless, it’s become embarrassing, disgusting, and utterly pathetic to watch. When Men’s Rights Activists cry about the End of Men, it’s not going to be from Evil Feminazigul Witches or “Hecklers” or “Bullies” - it’s going to be because we damned ourselves in our endorsement and worship of people like that shitty comedian who made a career narrating over low quality Youtube videos who thinks a woman getting gang raped is hilarious, or that guy who lives in his mother’s basement making animated Sonic the Hedgehog tentacle rape porn, that makes a flash game where you can beat a woman who’s only crime was speaking her mind, or that overweight, greasy little shitlord The Amazing Athiest, who beyond somehow retaining a following, is most notorious for recording himself pouring coffee and shoving a banana up his asshole and sending it around to women in the hopes they’d be into it. A few days ago he posted a video going on a little rant about the same events I’ve just covered.

The reason I bring him up is because it’s in his little recap video, he refers to the woman who broke that man’s nose as a “Bully,” and that woman who shouted down Daniel Tosh as a “Heckler,” reducing them to labels. Not even human, just vague labels you’re supposed to be angry against, as the poor, poor men are rescued by the white night with a camera and a Youtube channel. In warfare, the military learned that to increase the amount of soldiers who would fire their weapon in battle, they’d have to train their men to see their enemy as less than human, reducing them to simple concepts and labels. I shouldn’t have to explain why this is a problem.

Look, if Men on the Internet are going to fall behind unfunny comedians, cartoon tentacle rape porn generators, and a man who shoves food up his arse and records it - then what else is there to say? We’ve lost any illusion of decency, and we have only ourselves to blame.

Damn us all.