Response to "The Play that Goes Wrong"

I saw The Play That Goes Wrong at the Altria Theater in Richmond, Virginia on October 27th, 2019. Afterward, I wrote this: 

I go see a play and watch a group of men violate the body of an unconscious woman as part of the plot, you know, for the LOLZ, and boy do they get 'Em. Thousands of people in the audience around me are in stitches. The whole place is an uproar of laughter. And in this moment it feels like all of them are laughing at me. 

Triggered is when your heart sinks into your stomach and every cell in your body is quivering and you HAVE to leave the situation. As I get up to leave, I am astounded to see that I am the only one in the hallway, seemingly the only one upset enough to walk out. How is that possible? 

So now I'm doing math in my head. There are 3500 people in that audience. Maybe 1750 of them are women. About a fourth of them have probably been victims of sexual assault. That's over 400 women. How am I the only one who couldn't take it? 

Triggered is when the shame rushes over you and through you like a sea of tiny shards of glass or a billion pin pricks. How can so much of my body hurt all at once? 

Now I'm thinking that this is what those assholes are always talking about when they say millennials are too sensitive. Am I just being too sensitive? It's just a joke, right? It's just a joke that thousands of people are able to laugh at. What's wrong with me? 

No. No, fuck that. Triggered is a physiological response to trauma. Nothing is wrong with me. My reaction is right. The joke is the problem. 

So apparently this still needs to be said: Don't write scenes where women are degraded for laughs. Don't perform scenes like that. Don't go see shows that involve the degradation of women for laughs. Don't promote shows like that.


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