He referenced a joke about Hitler that Kamau had made in an earlier segment, then added: “If we go down the road of ‘Hey, don’t make fun of this, don’t make fun of that,’ well, then people have a very legitimate argument to go, ‘Well, don’t mention Hitler in any context, because it’s never humorous!’ So I’m just not comfortable going down that road. I just think as long as you’re trying to be funny, you’re okay.”
“Everybody knows the difference,” he said. “Reasonable people can sense when you’re trying to be funny.” There’s a nasty implication there. The entire rape joke debate can be boiled down to women saying, “These are not just jokes. These bleed into the world and validate our abusers and reinforce our silence. These are rooted in misogyny, not humor. These are not funny.” Therefore, Jim implied, women are not “reasonable people.” “Everybody knows the difference” except feminists, apparently.
Kamau threw the question to me. I breathed sharply through my nose, trying to slow my heart. I wanted to establish myself as someone who wasn’t there to equivocate, to bow and scrape, to cede ground to an older, more famous man who talks for a living. I know what I’m talking about, and I mean it. Don’t fuck with me. I also wanted to open with a laugh. “I think that question is dumb,” I said.
“Everything has repercussions. If you’re talking about legal repercussions, yeah, I do not think that comedy should be censored, and we’re not here to talk about censorship, and”—I gestured to Jim—“I’m pretty sure we agree.” The censorship argument is a boring red herring—I wanted to knock it down early. Rape joke apologists are quick to cry “free speech,” to use the word “allowed,” as though there are certain things comedians are and aren’t “allowed” to say “anymore.” Barring the most extreme forms of hate speech and credible, specific threats of violence, there is no legislative body governing comedy club stages. The “thought police” is not a real law enforcement agency.
“What I’m talking about is the kind of repercussion where you choose to say something that traumatizes a person who’s already been victimized, and then I choose to call you a dick.”
Jim cut in. “I totally agree with you…”
(Great. Are we done?)
“… and if you think somebody sucks for what they said onstage, you should blog about it! You should write about it! As long as a person isn’t calling for somebody to get in trouble for an opinion or a joke.”
The vagueness of “trouble” felt like a misdirection. “But what do you mean by trouble?” I asked, trying to pin him down. “Is the trouble ‘people are mad at you’?”
“The trouble is, I do Opie & Anthony, the radio show. So a lot of time, the trouble people will do is if you’re doing jokes they don’t like, they begin to target your advertisers. Because the market should dictate whether or not people enjoy you. But they’ll go to the advertisers and say, ‘They’re making jokes that we don’t like, so remove your advertising support,’ which is a way to punish them. That’s the type of trouble I’m talking about.”
So Jim was fine with people complaining about comedians, as long as we do it where no one can hear us—as long as we don’t complain in any of the ways that actually produce change. No petitions, no letter-writing campaigns, no boycotts. It’s odd to invoke “the market” in such an anti-market sentiment. People boycott because boycotting works—and, more importantly, because it is the only leverage available to us. People target advertisers because they’re tired of their hard-won consumer dollars going to pay sexists and racists and homophobes who got those jobs, at least partially, by coasting on the privileges and benefit of the doubt conferred by sexism and racism and homophobia. Also, you know, you’re not entitled to a job. It is okay for a white dude to be fired.
It is also okay to draw hard-and-fast distinctions between different ideas—to say that some ideas are good and some ideas are bad. There’s a difference between church groups boycotting JCPenney because JCPenney put a gay couple in their catalog and gay people boycotting Chick-fil-a because Chick-fil-a donated millions of dollars to groups working to strip gay people of rights and protections. Gay people wearing shawl-collar half-zip ecru sweaters does not oppress Christians. Christians turning their gay children out on to the streets, keeping gay spouses from sitting at each other’s deathbeds, and casting gay people as diseased predators so that it’s easier to justify beating and murdering them does oppress gay people.
That said, right-wing Christians should have the right to boycott and write letters to whomever they please. The goal is to change the culture to the point where those boycotts are unsuccessful. You do that by being vocal and uncompromising about which ideas are good and which are bad—which ones we will tolerate, as a society, and which ones we will not. I do not tolerate rape apologia. And, yes, I want to actively work to build a society in which rape apologists face social consequences.
The next few minutes of the debate were more of the same: Kamau asked me if I thought that comedy clubs are “inherently hostile environments for women,” to which I joked, “Well, they’re dark basements full of angry men.” (I took a tremendous amount of abuse for that quip later on, from male comedians who were “offended” by my characterization of them. Weird—I thought “reasonable people can sense when you’re trying to be funny.”) Jim compared feminists complaining about sexism to religious people complaining about mockery of their religion. He hammered away, yet again, at the idea that “we all know the difference” between “a comedy club where you understand that we’re trying to have an emotion pulled out of us, which is laughter, and standing up at the office party”—here he pantomimed raising a toast—“and going, ‘to rape!’”
I was frustrated. What the fuck is the point of debating the cultural impact of jokes if your opponent’s only argument is “They’re jokes!” It’s a cheap trick, forcing me into a position where I have to argue that jokes aren’t jokes. So, he’s the “Yay, jokes!” candidate, and I’m the twenty-minutes-of-nuanced-feminist-jargon-that-kind-of-makes-you-feel-guilty candidate.
“I’m sure it’s super-comfortable and nice to believe that there aren’t systemic forces that are affected by speech,” I said, “but that’s not true, and those of us who are affected by those forces know that’s not true. I’m sure sixty years ago there were some ‘hilarious’ jokes about black people, and comedy was way more overtly racist sixty years ago, and it’s not a coincidence that life was more hostile and dangerous for black people—not that it’s great now, by the way!—and you literally think that’s a coincidence? You don’t get to say that comedy is this sacred, powerful, vital thing that we have to protect because it’s speaking truth to power, blah blah blah, and also be like, ‘Well, it’s just a joke, I mean, language doesn’t affect our lives at all, so shut up.’”
Jim turned to the audience with a kind, paternalistic smile, as though he felt sorry for me. “Comedy is not a cause of what happens in society. A lot of times it’s a reaction to what’s happening and a reflection of what’s happening. And comics’ speech has never inspired violence.” He then segued into a weird rant against “the press,” who, he said, is “the only group that I think owes an apology,” because they sometimes report on the identities and manifestos of mass shooters, which “contributes to violence.” Applause.