Is Comedy Sexist?
By: Sadie Lee
Tags: Cancel Culture, Forgiveness, Feminism, Social Justice, Comedy

How should comedians seek forgiveness in our feminist society?

Still from YouTube. JennaMarbles

I watched the worldwide decision a la ‘cancel culture’ choose to attack and shut down Jenna Marbles. I had watched her since I was a teenager. Still I stand by the beliefs that the content that Jenna Marbles produced that was sexist or racially insensitive did not warrant the reaction the world spewed on her.

I looked up to Jenna Marbles. I grew up with Jenna Marbles. I would lay in my grandma’s bed eating handfuls of Dove chocolates and laughing to hours of her early videos. I loved her “girls vs. guys” series at the time. I had seen her “rap video,”her Niki Minaj, and even “How to Trick people into thinking your good looking.” As her content evolved, so did I, so did the internet, so did our social awareness. She grew her brand, her PC content, and we grew up together. Jenna’s video about her leaving the internet was like watching a close friend go into a downward spiral of depression.

It was watching a young woman who built an entire empire herself, crumble.

Jenna didn’t fall apart when she left her first boyfriend Max. It was all about Jenna. She was the star. Not someones girlfriend.

I find myself wondering at times, did the internet tear her down because she was a woman? And a successful one? It was like the trolls were saying, “Let’s tear down one of the few successful women we have seen in a long time, and then watch her crash and burn, while we sit behind our laptops.” No one wants to tear down PewDiePie. But a few videos with some questionable content by a woman? That sounded like a fun time to the internet. All her content and humor evolved to cute dogs, makeup, and silly cooking. It was content a 4 year old, and a 98 year old could watch. But she wasn’t allowed to grow and learn as I had, because every video she made was saved on the internet.

This isn’t a post about me analyzing why Jenna should still be able to post her videos on YouTube. She should, but this isn’t what this post is about. This post is about our inability to allow even a single tiny amount of forgiveness to a young woman and her journey through the internet, one she navigated with few, if any, trail blazers to guide her way. The internet wasn’t able to forgive. The internet refused to forget. The trolls created an unforgiving time capsule. I talk about how important it is we acknowledge that we all hold racists beliefs here. How can we move forward if we publicly shame even the smallest learning opportunities of our role models? How can we talk about race, feminism, and social change if we publicly vilify those on public platforms and refuse to show the learning process of social justice? How can our role models demonstrate redemption and growth if we don’t allow them to even talk about it?

The trolls created an unforgiving time capsule.

Screenshot Youtube/Jenna Marbles

“For now, I just can’t exist on this channel. I’ve taken down anything that would upset someone. And I hope you know that’s just not my intention. It’s never what I set out to do, to hurt anyone’s feelings or to make anyone feel bad.”- Jenna Marbles, Youtube June 25th, 2020.

In her video, her apology is proportionate to the crime. But more than that this feels more like the internet collectively bullying a young woman. The trolls who chose to shut her down appeared to be sadistic misogynistic people that were trying to protect the world from Jenna Marbles, not from racism or sexism.

Were trolls looking to “put a woman in her place” or were they seeking to inform Jenna about issues they cared about and educate others via her platform?

Louis C.K.

Still from Netflix. Louis C.K. Hilarious.

Louis C.K. was accused of showing himself to several women. He also wasn’t shy with offensive material. I bring up Louis C.K. because he shouldn’t be “forgiven” financially or with his comedy platform anytime soon. There’s a right way and a wrong way to seek forgiveness and redemption. The years of offensive humor Louis C.K. spewed, shows that he wasn’t joking about these things, he thought and acted on them. This is exactly the problem with a culture that rewards this behavior in a celebrity for so long, refuses to acknowledge the connection, and then slices that person off the face of the Earth. We don’t allow for humans to make mistakes. He should not have comedy or speaking platforms at this time, but I do believe that following his journey of realization and his perceptions of the fallout may have been helpful for others to see. If we only see the f*ck ups, the fallout, and forget all about them, how do we learn what it’s like to be caught and live with that? How did we applaud male chauvinism for so long and then have everyone shun him immediately? Is it because we feel guilt for the jokes he made that we once laughed at? Or is it because we don’t often recognize the harm of words and culture until we see its direct impact?

Due to the fact that Louise C.K. did this for years and years shows a flawed perception of women that will take a long time to correct. In the following years hopefully he finds recovery. Yet, he doesn’t need to be celebrated by the public during this process. If we allow him to perform this tells women, ‘It’s okay to be a man who is grossly inappropriate with women.’ His crime is escalatory by nature of this type of sex crime. It is important he has time and public hesitancy in allowing him back into his previous behavior. It doesn’t really matter what he says in an apology, this crime is years of repair/therapy for him. Perhaps the ‘canceling’ of many of his shows allowed for more women to be protected and the abuse to stop. Which should be what ‘canceling’ is about. Not silencing someone’s voice, but defunding or disallowing platforms that can support continued abuse to occur.

Aziz Anasari

Still from Netflix. Aziz Anasari: Right now

“Like this infraction was a gift to other men so they could also self reflect on the pain they too caused women.”

Aziz Anasari- Aziz was part of a date that did not go well. I stand by this idea that much like trauma, the processing of an event can depend on the suffer. I think in this situation this woman was sexually assaulted, and I do not think Aziz intentionally wanted to harm this young woman and in that, I think he should of course be forgiven.

I was talking with my boyfriend about this. He was fiercely protecting Aziz and I was fiercely protecting the woman. I realized that many men must resonate with this story and feel afraid. Afraid of receiving the never forgiven “rapist” label and thrown down a well. While I, a young woman had been the woman in this situation. The first week in college an older RA invited me to his room to do homework. When I went to his dorm, he suggested we massage each other. I left after a while and felt foolish the whole time for ever thinking he had ever meant homework. I had also had several sexual experiences where I didn’t feel comfortable using my voice. I sympathize with both of them in this situation. I don’t think Aziz was intentionally predatory. I don’t think she was lying. I honestly find it sad that a beautiful expression of physical love has been so conflated to power, historically and today.

Situations like this had happened to me, and many of my close friends. We don’t need to be shouting “rapist!” from the rooftops or tagging the men who do this. The point to this story for me is that Aziz was not able to pick up on non-verbal cues. Conversations with our friends, movies we watch, and television shows teach us that it’s sexier not to have conversations around sex. They tell us that the more shy and demure the woman seems and the more powerful and dominant the man is, the sexier it is. Our lack of sexual education mixed with the free porn and sensationalized televised sex didn’t teach any of us about the conversations around consent.

Aziz and this young woman were both victims of a larger systemic issues and neither of them was a “bad person” who deserves to be punished. Aziz arguably didn’t really do something that was all that “bad” of a thing. There was a victim in this situation and it was the young lady who didn’t want to perform the sex act.

Aziz discusses this incident during his standup comedy special on Netflix. I almost wish he hadn’t said anything at all. Aziz seemed to start his show talking about this but it feels like a formality he addresses quickly because he should. The change in his inflection seemed less genuine to me.

“After a year or so I just hope there was a step forward. It moved things forward for me, it made me think about a lot. I hope I become a better person.”- Aziz Anasari, Right Now, Netflix

I feel frustrated that it took a big miscommunication for him to realize he needs to be aware of consent. Through this sad and hard experience for this young woman he gets a ‘step forward’ and to ‘think a lot’ and ‘become a better person.’ While the woman is left with the hard parts of the experience. She wont “grow for the experience of pain” if her behavior changes it would likely be to an increase in anxiety as a reaction to the experience. For Aziz the growth he experienced came at a cost for someone else’s life.

“It makes me think about a conversation I had with a friend of mine who was like “you know what man that whole thing made me think about every date I’ve ever been on” and I thought wow. Well that’s pretty incredible. This made not just me, but other people be more thoughtful then that’s a good thing.”- Aziz Anasari, Right Now, Netflix

Here Aziz makes it sound like his experience has helped a lot of other people. While this may be true, I wish he had interjected other content here in his acknowledgment of that had happened. I wish he had talked about how he had been socially conditioned to communicate with women. I wish he discussed maybe a change in expectations around sex. I wish he had talked about how this experience made him realize how important it is that we give women more platforms to use their voice and discourage the cultural push to infantilize, silence, and make women submissive. Because while doing this harms women, it impacts men too. Aziz feels a lot of guilt and that interaction would have stopped a lot sooner if they had felt comfortable with communicating and she had been socialized to use her voice. Frankly it’s a societal failing that manifested in an interaction that cannot be pinned onto Aziz.

So yeah, overall Aziz could have done a little better in his apology. Maybe it was his tone. Or the short snippet he gave. Or the words he chose to use. But I don’t think he should be ‘canceled’ or ‘vilified’ and I think hearing his thoughts can allow us to all understand these mistakes and have more references for how to navigate these interpersonal challenges. It was good he addressed it and that’s a huge step forward for how we heal as a whole.

Dan Harmon

Still from Rick and Morty. Dir. Pete Michaels

Dan Harmon fell in love with a younger writer. He was her superior and made advances towards her that were not appreciated. The young writer expressed several times that she was just trying to do her job and did not want to be with him.

To be clear I don’t think Dan Harmon (writer for Rick and Morty) should be showered with praise and given tons of money and worshipped as a role model… because he should have apologized just like he did for what he did. I am not saying what he did was okay. But his apology is a model apology.

Harmon shows us what an apology to women wronged can look like. It allows us into his thought process. He also remains in the public eye, and because of this his voice still matters, people still view his platforms, and when we allow perpetrators forgiveness they can improve and help leverage their voice to change the behavior of others.

Dan talks about his apology on his podcast. I listened to the adapted version on This American Life.

“And I knew enough to know that these feelings were bad news. And so I did the cowardly, easiest, laziest thing you could do with feelings like that and I didn’t deal with them. And in not dealing with them I made everybody else deal with them, especially her. Flirty, creepy, everything other than overt enough to constitute betraying your live-in girlfriend to whom you’re going home every night, who is actually smart enough and respectful enough to ask you, do you have feelings for that young writer that you’re talking about, that you’re paying all this attention to? And saying to her, no, because the trick is if you lie to yourself you can lie to everybody. It’s really easy.” Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

Dan doesn’t allow himself or the listener any of the usual excuses that have been flung out in the past. He talks about betraying the other woman in his life. He isn’t just a champion who gained from the harm of women, he acknowledges it. He talks about his girlfriend as being “smart” and “respectful” and this also empowers her. It is language we don’t often hear about when a man talks about his wife and his “side ho” in the same conversation. Dan doesn’t pin these women against each other, nor does he belittle/blame them in comments, nor does he see them as being in the way of what he wants. Dan talks about lying to himself and others. He allows the victim to be the person and he talks about himself as the monster. Notice it isn't self deprecating or pitying language. He deplores his behavior in this situation and not his character. You can do bad things, and be a good person in the acknowledgement of the harm and the commitment to do better.

Still from Rick and Morty. Dir. Pete Michaels

“And I — I was attracted to a employee. I really want to be careful about that language. I think a huge part of the problem is a culture of feeling things that you think are unique and significant because they’re happening to you, and saying things like, I had feelings for, and I — I fell for, and all these things. I mean, the most clinical way I can put it in fessing up to my crimes is that I was attracted to a writer that I had power over because I was a show-runner.” Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

This is was another time Dan calls out beautifully the fact that his incident wasn’t an isolated incident. He doesn’t discuss this in the way that many male film representations have portrayed this issue in the past. He talks about the power imbalance, the prevalence of this issue, and how he was wrong in doing this.

“And so that’s what I continued to do, telling myself and anybody that threatened to confront me with it that if you thought what I was doing was creepy or flirty or unprofessional then it’s because you were the sexist. You were jealous. I was supporting this person. I’m a mentor, I’m a feminist.”-Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

My predatory male college professor also is a self proclaimed “feminist” in front of his class, faculty, and wife. While he is dating a colleague ten years his senior behind his wife’s back and had an affair with me. I know from personal experience the title of “feminist” is a very empty label, and I think men and women alike can hide behind the label without continuing to work through their negative patriarchal beliefs. Male professors, males in power, and twisting this use of power is not an isolated incident. It is to be expected from our toxic culture. And our representations of abuse of power and women, in things like the song by The Police, 500 days of summer, and Bridget Jones Diary for example. These incidents are so prevalent we have example after example of them in the media.

“How will I know if I’m truly doing my job well?”- Megan Ganz, This American Life, Get a Spine! (The female employee Dan Harmon was a creep towards for years.)

“I just didn’t hear it. And it’s because it didn’t profit me to hear it. And this was, after all, happening to me, right? And so after a season of playing it that way I broke up with my girlfriend, who I had lied to the whole time while lying to myself. I broke up with my girlfriend, then I went right, you know, full steam into creeping’ on my employee.” Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

Again Dan discusses the motivations behind his behavior. He humanizes and sympathizes with his victim several times and doesn’t let himself not be a perpetrator. He sees himself as the bad guy who did a bad thing in this situation and truly acknowledges this. He isn’t bad to the bone, and in many other areas of his life he may be the caretaker, the supporter, or the creative. But in this moment he lets himself be the perpetrator. This is often used in therapy because many time the predator does not see the person as the victim. It is important for perpetrators to acknowledge, take responsibility for their actions, and acknowledge again and again the “victim.”

“And then after that season, you know, I got overt about my feelings after it was wrapped because then — and said, oh, I love you. And she said the same thing she’d been saying the entire time, in one language or another. Please, don’t you understand that focusing on me like this, liking me like this, preferring me like this, I can’t say no to it. And when you do it, it makes me unable to know whether I’m good at my job.”Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

Dan acknowledges that she has said this again and again. In doing this she can be vindicated because he acknowledges he knows she was saying no, and he blew past this. He acknowledges her as a professional woman with desires separate from him and he doesn’t belittle her for rejecting his advances in this apology. He owns up for ignoring a woman, for stunting her career, and for harming her trust.

“And because I finally got to the point where I said to her, oh, this is — you know, I love you, because that’s what I thought it was when you target somebody for two years. And it was therefore rejected that way. I was humiliated. And so I continued to do the cowardly thing, and continued to do the selfish thing. Now I wanted to teach her a lesson. I wanted to show her that if she didn’t like being liked in that way, then oh, boy, she should get over herself. After all, if you’re just going to be a writer then this is how just writers get treated. Just treated her cruelly, pointedly. Things that I would never, ever, ever have done if she had been male and if I had never had those feelings for her. ”- Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

This statement is vital. As many domestic violence women and other victims will tell you they often wonder if they made everything up in their mind or they were somehow to blame. This question is one victims often ask themselves and fear. ‘If I don’t smile and flirt, will he become violent and cruel towards me?’ Harmon admitting this is like a breath for every victim of this type of behavior. It’s a whispered secret we would not have heard if we had canceled all his platforms or vilified him. He isn’t asking to be celebrated through this apology. He is vulnerably explaining his piss poor behavior.

“Things that I would never, ever, ever have done if she had been male and if I had never had those feelings for her.”- Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

“And I never did it before and I will never do it again. But I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it if I had any respect for women. On a fundamental level, I was thinking about them as different creatures. I was thinking about the ones that I liked as having some special role in my life. And I did it all by not thinking about it.”-Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

Sometimes the view of women is so incredibly internalized we can’t help but parse it out. The first thing I did when I say our new female vice president was question her outfit, her weight, and her intelligence, during the acceptance speech. The second thing I did was replace those thoughts with my women’s studies knowledge and rewrite them. But the first thoughts? Those were what was conditioned into me. I am a woman and I still see other women as less than men. How do any of us escape a lifetime of poor depictions of women, and a history of policies that disenfranchised them? I also like that Dan says “I did it all by not thinking about it.” He is able to acknowledge that the first step in deconstructing poor opinions of women is being aware of it.

Still From YouTube. CNN Presidential Election.

“Yeah, I was driving to work which, about halfway through listening to it, I thought, well, this is a mistake. I probably should have saved this till I got home tonight. Honestly, I started listening to it expecting to be angry. So that was also kind of a roller coaster, going from angry to feeling this immense relief at the end of it. And I listened to it, I think, again right away, sitting in my car in the parking lot of my work.”- Megan Ganz Get a Spine! This American Life. “Megan thanked Dan via text and also forgave him publicly on Twitter, saying quote, “please listen to it. It is a master class in how to apologize. I only listened because I expected an apology, but what I didn’t expect was the relief I’d feel hearing him say these things actually happened. Ironic that the only person who could give me that comfort is the one person I’d never ask,” Nancy Updike Get a Spine! This American Life.

Megan talks to Nancy about how important it was to hear her perpetrator apologize. An apology that wasn’t loaded with, “I only did it because you…” or “I had a bad childhood…” but a true acknowledgement of his role in the problems. And a true acknowledgement that what he did was actually wrong and she wasn’t crazy. Like my friend has said recently after leaving an abusive relationship, “I think I did a lot of things that made him treat me that way.” She didn’t. How many victims need to hear their perpetrators say, “It wasn’t you, it was me, it was all real, and I wrong.”

Screen Shot Still. Source.

“When he came clean about his feelings and she said she didn’t feel that way, he turned on her, started savaging her work, berating her in front of the other writers. This all went on for about two years, start to finish. The apology that gave her relief — it did not spring forth all at once. It was actually built out of earlier, not successful apologies.”- Dan Harmon, Get a Spine! This American Life.

Dan did not have such a beautiful skillful apology at first and I think thats important to remember too. A good apology can sometimes take time and failures. Dan kept trying until he got it right. Until he could apologize to Megan. Not because he wanted to for money, or his show, or his image, or for his own guilt. But for Megan, with no strings attached, unlike their entire relationship up to this point. He finally let her go as a human, an employee, and a victim.

“Oh, because if you have a crush on someone that works for you, you are not — it’s not the same as having a crush on someone at a library or a bar that doesn’t work for you, you fucking idiot.”- Dan Harmon

Why do I feel like I hear so often: I just don’t think female comics are that funny.

Is it that they are less funny with breasts? Are they less funny because female humor tends to be kinder? Do you not like female comics because it is stripped by the added umpf of disillusioned power when racist or sexists things are said? Female comedians talk about being victims, and they make it funny. Male comics keep making sexists jokes and acting on it. Ali Wong normalizes STDs. Hannah Gadsby normalizing the importance of mental health. How about Jen Kirkman addressing cat calling, aging, and being a single woman?

How intertwined is Louis C.K.’s sexists jokes about women and his leude unwanted sexual behavior? What can we learn from Aziz’s apology? What does the ‘canceling’ of Jenna Marbles show us about how we treat female comedians? Without celebrating what he did to Megan, how can we celebrate and spread the word about the power of Dan Harmon’s recognition, apology, and repairs to his behavior? How does one apologize more like Dan, acknowledge pain like Aziz, step away from comedy like Louis C.K. and become more like Hannah, Ali, Jen, and Jenna?

Reversing sexism within comedy is important. Acknowledging the scope of harm of our jokes is important. So is understanding that we shouldn’t use ‘cancel culture’ to silence anyone, even perpetrators. We need to think critically, not collectively blind, about how and when we allow ourselves to forgive our public figures like comedians.