The Women in Toronto's Comedy Scene Aren't Going to Take It Anymore

June 11, 2018 1:31 PM

"...but if sexual harassment were a meal, the comedy club would be an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
posted by Kitteh (2 comments total)

From the article:

over the past several years, Shaughnessy says that she’s seen an interesting transition. “I think there was more sexism but men were less threatened,” she says. “Now I think the hostility is held by fewer men, but more intensely. I hear from men that they believe they’re not getting work because they’re a straight white man. They think we’re taking things from them.”

My blood pressure... It must've been here at MeFi during the great 2008 MetaTalk threads over gender and racism, that I really got at a visceral level that there are abusers in every community, even ones beloved to me like this one -- people who will. Not. Make. An. Effort. to see the status quo from the perspective of people they're accustomed to ignoring. They are impervious to considering that they could be wrong about something, or that their material, or speech, or actions, could be optimized for changing times, or a more inclusive moral compass. (It's a lot better at MeFi now, because mods started nipping such behavior much earlier.)

Like, in this article, sure, these male comedians aren't getting the work they used to. They won't believe that the problem is not their Straight White Man-ness. They won't contemplate the possibility that their material is dated, harmful, predictable, self-centric, boring, Unfiltered Asshole bullshit that they're too narcissistic to re-think objectively. In their minds, the problem is and will always be the women who disagree with them.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 3:41 PM on June 11, 2018 [31 favorites]

I'd like to see The Humourless Feminists Comedy Night!
posted by ovvl at 9:15 PM on June 11, 2018