A lot of people have already written on the subject of Seth MacFarlane’s dreadful Oscar performance, in particular his dreadfully distasteful “We Saw Your Boobs” song.

I wasn’t going to touch the subject. I’ve made my feelings on it clear in several different venues. However, an incident I had today caused me to want to write about it.

I had mentioned how disgusted I was with four the “boob displays” mentioned being in rape and sexual assault scenes at dinner. My brothers replied with, “Yeah, so?”

Now, I adore my brothers. They are really good guys. They are usually very respectful of women. That makes this even worse. Two guys who are usually incredibly respectful found no problem in the routine because it was “just a joke about showing off boobs”.

First of all, do you know how difficult it is for an actress to strip off in front of the camera? With all of the body issues women have when clothed, for a women to allow herself to display herself completely naked in front of a film crew? To have the director critically look over every inch of you? To have your body filmed and put in the annals of history? Meanwhile, you can’t focus on the discomfort of it. You have to put in a performance. Once the scene is done, many of these actresses have people come up to them and tell them how turned on they were by their nude scenes (Kevin Smith actually told a story once about how Jason Mewes informed Rosario Dawson of how he’d masturbated to her nude scene in Alexander).

This is a ridiculously uncomfortable thing for a woman and it should be celebrated rather than turned into a humiliating, slut-shaming song. And that is what that song was. It was degrading those performances into nothing but “LOL, you took off your clothes and we saw your boobs”.

To make matters even worse– and as mentioned at the beginning of this– four of the scenes mentioned– Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, Jodie Foster in The Accused, Jessica Chastain in Lawless and Charlize Theron in Monster— were rape scenes.

All of the issues that I mentioned above about an actress displaying herself in a nude scene? Times it by a thousand for a rape scene. Those scenes are showing a woman being brutally assaulted. The nudity is not there to titillate. It is there to be visceral and violating. The actresses have allowed themselves to have their clothing torn off of them to show the brutality of the act. Often, the men playing the rapists feel just as uncomfortable as the women, because of the intensity of the moment. It is not something to be made light of in a “funny” song at the Oscars.

It is part of the rape culture. It is sexually objectifying a woman being assaulted. It is ignoring that this is a horrific crime and instead focusing on the fact that the woman displayed herself, even shaming her for doing it. If you disagree with me on that point, then what was the point in the shot of Jennifer Lawrence doing a victory fist-pump over not having shown her boobs? Those reaction shots were all carefully orchestrated and not the real reactions. Jennifer Lawrence was supposed to be proud of not having shown herself naked.

Saying that “it is just a joke” does not excuse things. It is the same argument that was used by Daniel Tosh after the horrific jokes he made about rape at a comedy club last year.

Women are expected to sit back and allow jokes about rape to be made about them. Comedy is so quick to jump on the First Amendment when it comes to tasteless jokes about rape. But this isn’t about the government telling them they shouldn’t make these jokes. It’s about trying to inform comedians that they have a responsibility to censor themselves. There are some things that just aren’t funny.

Women have a 1 in 4 chance of being sexually assaulted in her lifetime. This is something that should create outrage, not comedy.

My brothers tried to defend MacFarlane. That I know what he does because I’ve seen Family Guy.
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Tell me this: What gives him the right? Who gave him carte blanche? I’m supposed to be less offended just because he’s made these jokes before, rather than even more disgusted with him as a human being?

Did I know what I was getting into when I heard Seth MacFarlane was hosting the Oscars? Yes, I did. I have seen Family Guy. It made me dread the Awards. But I’ve watched them every year for as long as I can remember. I didn’t go in hoping to be offended. I hoped that maybe– maybe­– the writers and the director might pull MacFarlane back.

But instead, the running gag through the entire ceremony was that Seth MacFarlane bombed because he was too edgy. He did not take responsibility for his own failing. It was that no one “got” him. He was just too smart and controversial for them.

I appreciate dark humour. I do. I’m also not a delicate flower who can’t handle edgy jokes. But I don’t like some smug asshole standing around smirking at the fact he’s unappreciated by the masses because he “goes there”.

And when I point out something that I think to be offensive, I don’t like when I’m told that I’m “too sensitive”. That my brothers think I’m the problem is a pervasive attitude in society. When I call them on the fact that men are conditioned to find these jokes humorous, I was called sexist.

Do you know why I can’t find rape jokes to be funny? Because it is a real and honest fear. Because I have known people who have been assaulted. Because if God forbid something were to actually happen to me, I’m fairly certain someone would point out the fact that I wear tanktops and fishnets. That is the world we live in. And these men decide that instead of doing anything about this, they are going to make jokes that denigrate the women who suffer from these ordeals.

Of course, not every woman that MacFarlane pointed out had been portraying a rape scene. One of the big jokes was the fact that Kate Winslet has shown off her body a lot in film and none of the scenes portrayed her characters doing it without her consent.

But one of my brother said this was her being “a slut”.

Kate Winslet is a brilliant actress. She is the youngest actress to receive six Academy Award nominations and won for The Reader. And yes, she has had a lot of nude scenes. She is a woman who is not ashamed of her body. She should not be shamed for this. This should be celebrated, especially as Kate Winslet does not comform to the Hollywood norm of stick figure perfection. She admits freely to having cellulite. She is voluptuous and she is lovely. She should not be called a slut because she’s been comfortable enough to allow her body to be filmed. She should especially not be called a slut to me, by someone I love, by someone in my own family.

Aside from the disgusting rape fetishizing, the number focused on actresses just flashing their tits. It ignored that out of all of the performances mentioned, six of them were nominated for Academy Awards and five others had won. These are performances that are more than just a woman showing off her body. But that was what was focused on.

Can we also mention that one of the incidents of “seeing your boobs” was the unlawful hacking of Scarlett Johansson’s phone? She did not consent to those pictures getting out. Unlike everyone else who was mentioned in the song, she did not want her breasts seen by the public.

You can say that the performance was supposed to be a joke about Seth MacFarlane bombing. Except it wasn’t. If that were the joke, they wouldn’t have done the entire number. The performance was meant to be funny. It wasn’t “Oh, MacFarlane is such an idiot”. It was “Middle America just doesn’t appreciate my humour”.

I could go on about a million other problems from the Academy Awards. MacFarlane’s joke about eating disorders, the Onion’s horrific comment about a nine-year-old. But I’m just going to leave things here for now. That if members of my own family are finding this kind of thing funny, then I am not doing my job trying to convey my own feelings of disgust about this sort of thing. I am sadly disappointed that I feel that this has to be my job. But society certainly isn’t doing it for me.