A US comedian’s jokes amid the Cornell rape scandal have set off a firestorm

Two weeks after allegations of a 20-year-old woman being gang-raped by seven men at Cornell University were made public, US comedian Shane Gillis used his opening monologue of Saturday Night Live to declare “women just dress like whores now”.

Gillis, who has more than 3 million followers on social media and a lucrative Netflix deal that includes a stand-up special, made the gag when speaking about his recent attempt to lose weight.

After laughing about how he probably made a woman hiking alone feel unsafe, the 38-year-old then said, “I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now.”

Amid audible groans, he continued with a smile on his face, “I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe it.”

The comment was delivered less as observational comedy and more as a statement of fact. Because as Gillis explained, the problem is that when women exercise in the gym, they wear gym clothes. This makes it impossible for him to not leer like a pervert, and as such, clothed women are to blame.

For audiences in Australia unfamiliar with his work, Gillis isn’t a comedian as much as he is a poster boy for people who want permission to say abhorrent things and be met with cheers and a pat on the back. In the same monologue over the past weekend, he implied he’d rather look like Adolf Hitler than be mistaken for a gay man, and called his sisters “big fat bitches”, seemingly because they had the audacity to rib him.

As the longest-running and most-watched sketch comedy series in the world, hosting SNL is not an honour bestowed upon emerging and untested comics. Nor does the role allow for ad-libbing. Before the final show, there is a full dress rehearsal in front of a studio audience, and each host spends the week leading up to their episode working with a team of comedy writers to workshop their skits and the opening monologue over 12-hour (and reportedly often longer) days. They know what they are getting well before it makes it to air.

At the same time, a 2022 clip resurfaced showing four Australian men who self-identify as comedians joking on a podcast about US woman Gabby Petito being murdered by her boyfriend. One calls the murder “justified” and describes Petito as “hottish – you’d give her one in an emergency”.

With a level of predictability almost as painful as their limited comedic abilities, the men from the podcast have quickly scrambled to issue apology statements and reassure people they know gendered violence isn’t funny.

But as comedian Peter Helliar pointed out in a video addressing the clip, when women see men make jokes about rape or murder or women being whores, or see other men laugh at those jokes and realise the butt of that joke is their basic right to safety, it has a profound and lasting impact.

“If you don’t think that has a trickle-down effect, then you are weirdly non-observant for a stand-up comedian,” Helliar said.

In the case of Gillis and the four podcasters, the unsettling reality is that, for them, this is what comedy looks like.

One of the most galling aspects of Cornell case has been a screenshot that showed more than 50 men were in a group chat where the alleged sexual assault was being discussed in real time. The messages included one man sending out a PSA that there was “free pussy” at the Chi Phi house, another saying “Like you can walk in and whip it out”, and two messages celebrating the fraternity.

In the wake of the allegations, people have asked why none of the men on that group chat called the police or called out their friends and classmates.

On SNL’s episode a week before Gillis’ appearance, comedian Michael Che said now was “a good time to talk about men holding other men accountable” in light of the Cornell allegations.

Within the show’s team, three of the four head writers are men, while all three of the writing supervisors are men. Of the total 32 writers currently on staff, 23 are men. That’s 23 people who could have pointed Shane Gillis to Che’s words from the week prior and redirected him to write something that bore even a passing resemblance to a joke. Instead, he was allowed to go on a TV show that has billions of viewers and call women whores.

And unfortunately for SNL, Gillis’ love of punching down – be it women, gay people, immigrants or just about any other group that isn’t straight white men who ideologically align with his world views – is well known and long-running.

In 2019, he was set to join the show’s cast but was fired before making his debut thanks to previous jokes SNL’s executive producer Lorne Michaels said weren’t edgy comedy pushing boundaries, but rather “offensive, hurtful and unacceptable”. Yet despite his comedy style remaining largely unchanged since then, Michaels has invited Gillis not to rejoin the cast, but to host the show three times. The message to comedians in that is clear.

The outpouring of frustration and anger isn’t because women can’t take a joke. It’s because increasingly, what these comedians are saying doesn’t sound like a joke at all.

Katy Hall is a senior editor and regular columnist.

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