Rape is Hilarious—and Fun to Gossip About!

[Trigger warning.]

Kate just emailed me the link to the most horrifying Page Six blind item either of us has ever seen:

WHICH hunk in a summer movie is a violent, closeted homosexual? The heartthrob snuck into his ex's apartment a few months ago and raped him so violently, the ex ended up in the hospital - and the actor paid him $500,000 to keep his mouth shut.

What the fucking fuck?

For those unfamiliar with the "blind item" concept, it's basically some little piece of scandalous gossip about an anonymous celebrity and you're supposed to guess who it is. They're mostly about people "canoodling" with someone they're not officially dating or being bad tippers or getting a secret nose job or something. It's frivolous shit. This is the equivalent of minimizing the severity of rape by sticking it next to water-skiing squirrels in the "Odd News" section (the foundation for the "How Odd" series, the latest installment of which is here).

And not only does it treat rape as some kind of fucking joke, it is, as Kate says, "presented as the natural outgrowth of the titillating news that someone is gay," which unavoidably plays into the pernicious stereotype of gay men as predators.

We shouldn't expect anything better from a group that thinks making veiled rape threats is uproariously good fun, but still: Wow.

[Rape is Hilarious: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three.]