When is rape funny?

I was reading an article on the Guardian website earlier which has prompted me to talk about a night out I had at a comedy club several years ago.  Here is a link to the article: The Rise of the Rape Joke

On the night in question, I was with my sister and we had managed to bag seats right at the front for the gig.  The beer was flowing and we were having a brilliant time, Matt Kirshen and Rhod Gilbert had been the first two comedians up and we had laughed pretty much non stop at these two almost effortlessly funny guys.  It was time for the headline act - after the previous two acts, this one must be a corker, right?  Wrong.

Step forward "Ian Cognito", a comedian so dire that he is ashamed to perform under his real name.  That's the only excuse I can think of.

He started off shakily, with a few weak jokes, and soon got on to the subject of a footballer who had recently been cleared of a rape allegation.  He then spent the next several minutes posturing in what he probably thought was a manly fashion, and declaring loudly that he wished that he was a famous celebrity so that he could get away with rape and implying how great that would be.  Ha, ha, ha.

The sad thing is, many of the audience were actually laughing at this.  I was not.  Neither was I prepared for what came next.

"Mr Cognito" noticed that I wasn't laughing.  And he wasn't going to let it go.  He picked me out of the audience, and started accusing me of being sour faced and having no sense of humour, and asking what was wrong with me.  I attempted to argue back, and this led to him turning to the audience and taking the piss out of me to them, and then stating that they should all wait behind with him at the end to beat me up.

Yes, I was shocked as I hope you are.

Anyway, as it happens it wasn't him waiting to beat me up.  It was me waiting for him.

I cornered him in the bar area and asked him if he thought that his earlier act was acceptable.  His excuse?  That he was "just being ironic".  Now, I know Americans get a fair bit of stick for apparently misunderstanding the meaning of irony, but I am not sure that even Alanis Morrisette has got it this wrong.  He blustered for a while about what he meant and that clearly he didn't condone rape and never intended to, but my counter to this "irony" claim was this:  "How many of your audience thought that it was ironic?  How many just laughed?  And don't you find that fucking scary?  Because I do."

Something that he had also failed to consider, which I also found frightening and ignorant, was that I may have been a rape victim.  So he could have been in the position of encouraging an audience to beat up a rape victim for not laughing at a rape joke.  He did seem to appreciate that this was a nightmare scenario and that he had been completely out of order, and I did get an apology, but I had to drag him over hot coals to get it out of him.

If I could advise him, I would suggest that in future, if he wants to potentially damage a member of his paying audience, then he should perhaps pick on someone who is not assertive enough to stand up to him and more intelligent than him in an argument.  Obviously what he SHOULD do is develop some human empathy and common sense and realise that such acts are unfunny, dangerous and unacceptable and be man enough to never go near the subject again.  Sadly I suspect that even now he is out there mindlessly peddling his sick "comedy", and people are still paying to see it.  That's what makes me really shake my head in sorrow.