Content warning: This story mentions rape and sexual assault.
“I didn’t know women just dressed like wh*res now,” Shane Gillis said in his SNL skit on October 10.
And I didn’t know that men were allowed to publicly insult women on national television without any repercussions! Men, like Shane Gillis, have been able to use the pass of “it’s just a joke” when it involves insulting or dehumanizing women for decades. Decades.
What’s even more insulting, beyond the joke itself, is that women are expected to take it and move on. Move on, like women have been forced to do with everything else involving idiotic men because nothing will change. Meanwhile, men are often rewarded for their sexist and moronic behavior.
This cycle of men speaking about women publicly in a dehumanizing way is constantly contributing to rape culture. Not all men, but the majority, have it in their brains that it’s perfectly okay to speak about women in this way because of the little-to-no consequences they receive afterward. It starts with men believing they can say these things to women, and then it leads to men thinking they can physically hurt women.
Men get praised for their “funny” jokes while women are told to “chill out,” and that we’re the ones ruining comedy. That, as women, we are somehow the ones ruining someone’s ability to watch someone perform original jokes, not the man himself performing the offensive jokes.
“You’re not allowed to look,” Gillis continued throughout his opening monologue.
Men have this idea inside their brains that a woman wearing slightly revealing clothing grants them access to a woman’s body. How a woman chooses to dress herself in the clothes that she buys and puts on is no one else’s business but her own. It also feels pretty hypocritical of men — especially Shane Gillis — to judge women for what they wear to the gym, since they’re the ones who only wear gym shorts and nothing else.
Are only men allowed to wear “revealing” clothing, Shane Gillis?
Women aren’t able to do anything without a thousand men in their ears nitpicking and criticizing everything they do. You can’t overdress or undress. You should go to the gym, but don’t wear the workout outfits designed for women. You should be friendly but not overly friendly because then you’re a wh*re. Women cannot win at anything as long as a man is standing right there.
“They’re like artificial bait colored,” Gillis said.
Insinuating that the color of a woman’s shorts is designed to make a man look at her butt is so absurdly stupid. Sometimes, women buy those kinds of shorts because they like how they look on them, not for any other reason! Women are allowed to wear certain pieces of clothing purely for themselves that aren’t intended for anyone else to look at.
Shane Gillis should focus more on being actually funny rather than putting down women and calling it comedy.
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