I finally got the free time to watch last night’s Daily Show episode dealing with women in combat (and Liz Trotta’s asinine comments about how women in the military should expect to be raped). I remember a lot of people getting bent out of shape, calling the skit offensive and invoking the “There’s no such thing as a funny rape joke” rule. How in the hell did everyone get so worked up over this?

I think it’s pretty goddamn obvious that Samantha Bee doesn’t actually think that women deserve to “earn slightly less and get raped slightly more” for “intruding in a man’s world”. Nor is her band Pre-Historic Rape Machine going to play at a club that offers two-for-one roofie-tinis. It seems what people are really angry over is that anyone would laugh about such a somber matter.

Although I’m a super hetero-normative man I’d like to argue that harsh edicts prohibiting rape jokes are actually harmful for feminism, because a major show discussing sexual assault like this is a good thing. Most of the time rape jokes are hugely offensive and thoughtlessly thrown around for bro-style humor, but this is a satirical current events show discussing a very real epidemic of rape in the military that must be addressed.

After all, no one would insist that jokes about war, poverty, murder, or child abuse are funny, and the Daily Show has produced very insightful material on all of those incredibly mortifying topics in the last month.

Basically, people should just chill out a bit.