Restaurant Defends Chloroform/Rape Sign As “Harmless”

The sign outside this Montreal restaurant translates into English as, “Pick-up line of the day: does this tissue smell like chloroform?”

Because nothing lures in potential diners to your restaurant than a rape joke, an eatery in Montreal has defended its decision to display such a joke in public on a sandwich board outside its front door.

Since it’s Montreal, the sign was written in French, but it translates to “Pick-up line of the day: does this tissue smell like chloroform?”

Guess what? Not everyone sees the humor in a restaurant cracking jokes about rendering a woman unconscious, presumably for the purpose of non-consensual sex. And even some people who admit that such a joke might have a proper time and place contend that maybe a restaurant sandwich board is neither the time nor the place.

In response to the people who find rape less than amusing, the restaurant’s owner took to the eatery’s Facebook page [via Eater Montreal] to defend the gag:

We thought it was harmless. The joke is from the movie Hall Pass and Family Guy. It wasn’t intended to offend anyone or to condone rape or violence. We kind of find it mind-boggling. We’re not promoting rape here. We’re not saying that rape is normal and that people should be getting raped. It’s dark humour, not for kids, but apparently some people choose to interpret it differently.

The Montreal mess is already the second rape-themed restaurant story of 2014, coming on the heels of the Spokane bar that made headlines with its “Date Grape Kool-Aid,” which drew not just the ire of those who have no sense of humor about dates that degrade into sexual assault, but also that of Kraft, which sought to distance its Kool-Aid brand from the drink.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist