Agency, intimacy, and rape jokes: an ethnographic study of young women and sexual risk in Chennai | Zendy

Krishnan Sneha | Zendy

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Agency, intimacy, and rape jokes: an ethnographic study of young women and sexual risk in Chennai

Author(s) -

Krishnan Sneha

Publication year - 2016

Publication title -

journal of the royal anthropological institute

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62

H-Index - 62

eISSN - 1467-9655

pISSN - 1359-0987

DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.12334

Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , ethnography , gender studies , ambivalence , autonomy , context (archaeology) , sexual violence , psychology , social psychology , sexual assault , joke , sociology , criminology , suicide prevention , poison control , history , political science , medicine , anthropology , art , social science , law , literature , archaeology , environmental health

In this article, I examine the circulation of jokes about sexual violence among young middle‐class women in the South Indian city of Chennai. Drawing on ethnographic research with undergraduate students in this city, I locate the rape joke in an ambivalent discourse of risk that conflates the possibility of sexual assault with the perceived ‘risks’ of women's sexual autonomy. In this context, I argue that humour about sexual violence functions as a form of lateral agency, facilitating a break from the task of reproducing middle‐class respectability.

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