Guardian removes prison rape wisecrack from column following complaints
After a decent 30 to 40 years of joking about prison rape, maybe the smallest turning point in the perception of the issue arrived today when the American section of British newspaper The Guardian ran a comment column about hackers getting extradited.
Following complaints about the prison rape joke in the concluding paragraph, it was edited out two and a half hours after the article was published. The comments below the line of the article preserved the jibe for others who had not seen it. This normally happens when censored comments from site members themselves get moderated and other people respond but not normally in the author’s original piece.
The perception of people finding the jibe offensive, stating said offence in public, and the author or sub-editor’s removal of the joke, will depend on whether prison was where your Adult Sexual Assault occured. It’s noteworthy for being the total opposite of the customary blame and ridicule that survivors are used to. It might otherwise be dismissed as political correctness, or irrelevant because the news site wasn’t American, but we naturally hope it’s the little acorn that will grow into proper support for survivors outside of their enclosed environment, whether that’s prison, a boarding school, a foster care establishment, or the military.
The column in question is here.
– CBG
