Oppression

I'm in a much better mood than when I last wrote, though I am a bit concerned about finding a sublet for my apartment. My lovely roommate has 3 people staying with her this weekend, thereby preventing me from showing potential subleasers a clean apartment. Oh well.

I just discovered a recap of Daniel Tosh's January episode where he had a guest appearance by Antonio Dodson, aka the brother of a girl who was the victim of a break-in and was almost raped. The whole episode was dedicated to making fun of rape, it seemed. I am thoroughly disgusted with our media and our society. I want to escape, and I want to stand up for victims even more. Sometimes it seems like a losing battle when people in power and in the spotlight are sending messages that rape is okay. It's not okay. It will never be okay. It's existed basically since the beginning of time and is probably not going to go away, but I envision a world that recognizes that women need to be respected in the media. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around this concept, because I haven't seen much that would make me feel hopeful for the future of media. It's going downhill. And why? Because people with money, people in power have the privilege of saying and doing anything they want to do.

This show was aired in January. It should have been taken off of the air after this episode. I think the saddest part about living in a society that is based on and attached to oppression of those who are less privileged is that I have come to expect it. I'm not surprised they didn't take the show off of the air. And this makes me very sad. Oppression works very slowly - the enemy is sneaky. It slips into humor and then becomes acceptable to joke about it. Then it becomes acceptable to perpetrate. Oppression is never justified. That the jokes are acceptable is the problem. That people laugh at the expense of others is a problem. I feel lucky to be surrounded by friends who don't think that's funny, but staying in a bubble is not going to address the problem. I need to find a way to act instead of escaping from reality, as is my tendency.