Dudes, are you finding that your attempts at humor are falling flat? Are your clever quips getting you written up regularly by HR? Are they causing your friends to get fired when they drunkenly defend your “jokes” on live television?
It’s possible that what you think is humor is not actually humor. Consider the following list of things that are not humor:
- Embezzling
- Punching a random dude in the face for no reason
- Pushing elderly people off of train platforms
- Lighting an orphanage on fire
- Sexually harassing a woman on live television by yelling “F her right in the P,” except instead of “F” you say a certain word that starts with “f” and instead of “P” you say a word that starts with “p” and ends with “y.”
Seriously, dudes. Stop it with this whole “F her right in the P” shit. You’re making life crappy for women and giving all aspiring funny men a bad name.
If you, dear reader, don’t know what the “F her right in the P” thing is, it’s this: dudes yell “F her right in the P” at female TV reporters doing live shots on the street. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
As someone who doesn’t watch a lot of local news, I only became aware of this whole “F her right in the P” thing yesterday, when a helpful reader alerted me to the story of Shauna Hunt, a Toronto CityNews reporter who’s gotten so sick of the whole thing that she confronted a group of men on live television after one of their friends shouted the phrase at her while she was interviewing soccer fans. The men defended their friend’s actions as “hilarious.” One, obviously a bit drunk, told her she was “lucky” they didn’t have a vibrator. You can watch the whole thing above.
This “meme” originated more than a year ago in a fake news blooper reel that went viral online. Since then, female news reporters — covering everything from sports events to anti-austerity protests — have been dealing with dudes yelling the phrase at them on a daily basis, sometimes several times in a day. The dudes think what they’re doing is hilarious. They feel no shame. And they don’t expect there to be any consequences from sexually harassing a woman on live television.
Maybe that will change: several of the men defending the harassment in Hunt’s video — which itself has gone viral — have been identified. They’ve all been banned for a year from sports events featuring teams owned by Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, and one (the guy who made the vibrator joke) has been fired from his job. Good.
To any dudes who feel their sacred man-right to generate “humor” by making people deeply uncomfortable is being abridged, might I suggest you follow the lead of the three gentlemen in the video below?
These three manage to make pain quite funny indeed. What makes them genuinely hilarious, so unlike the guys harassing Hunt in the video above? Their originality, for one thing; they demonstrate an ingenuity that would make Rube Goldberg proud. And, just as importantly: the only people they’re actually hurting are themselves.
The problem with “do we really need to ruin his life?” rhetoric is that, well, where is he line drawn? MRAs will go as far as saying “yeah, he had sex with a girl too drunk/underage to consent properly but do we really need to ruin his life by sending him to jail? He was just being a horny dumbass.”
Luke,
Being drunk is not a free pass to being abusive. If he can’t control himself when he drinks, he should stop drinking
I’ve been drunk plenty of times and managed to not harass anyone.
Which makes me wonder why the manosphere is so up in arms about this. Aren’t they always talking about an ideal world where people are held accountable to their actions and face consequences for wrongdoing?
Oh shit, I forgot, that only applies to women.
pretty sure he ruined his own life. At least this part of it. Personally I’d be impressed if he turned it around, took sensitivity training, campaigned against street harassment- some reasonable show of remorse. People occasionally get fired from their jobs and still manage to have a life afterward. I admit, as glad as I am someone got fired for being a douche I think this guy is getting the lions share of some legitimate anger that should be spread around a bit more. And I think that is because he is the only damn one who has seen some consequence. I don’t think he should die penniless, cold and alone, but he shouted into a camera, he wanted his fifteen minutes, and this is what it got him.
It’s interesting how Luke has given no thought to how constant harassment ruins women’s lives. Nope! It’s just the men who have important lives and jobs I guess!
I’m actually kind of surprised at how quiet the manosphere is on the cbc facebook page. Only a few fake accounts, and a few dudes muttering ‘suck it up and tolerate our abuse, we find it hilarious’ (paraphrasing a bit there).
You know, Luke, it’s funny how I’ve managed to get to be 58 and managed not to harass anyone on live TV (sexually or otherwise) (or really, anywhere ELSE) despite getting a little rowdy now and then at events where I’ve had a bit too much to drink. It is NOT THAT HARD to not harm other people. Yes, he should have lost his job; who wants to work with someone like that?
It’s not like they fired him for wearing plaid and stripes in the same outfit.
@luke, this is not just some innocent joke that otherwise has no consequences. Every time one of these douchebags does something like this to a female reporter, news organizations are less likely to hire and promote female journalists.
If a woman gets drunk and ends up being sexually assaulted, well that’s her fault and she should accept the consequences. If a man gets drunk and sexually harasses a woman, well hey now, let’s not ruin his life or anything.
Understandable as that would be.
@KSray
Nailed it.
@katy, @Snuffy:
Agreed entirely.
@katz:
It might be, if you can’t find your ass with both hands to begin with.
I’d just like to clarify for everyone that this happens to male reporters about as often. Though it’s usually (but not always) men saying it. I’m not trying to excuse harassment of people at their jobs or the sexual nature of the phrase, but the practice itself is largely gender neutral regarding targets.
Just to test my theory, I watched a compilation to see the proportion of male:female reporters. There were 30 female, 27 male. One other male reporter was the one saying it so I didn’t count him. There was only one female joker, the rest were male. But many of them were the same dude who apparently has decided that FHRITP is his calling in life. I didn’t count how many he did but I’m gonna say at least 5 were the same Unabomber-looking dude.
https://youtu.be/xHdwqnbiwXE
Did you flip the one that holds up the pizza box lid?
@nellodee1010:
The “unabomber-looking dude” is the guy who made the orignal prank with fake newscasters. And it doesn’t matter what percentage of the targets are women and what are men: the phrase itself is inherently sexist. It targets women, whether it’s said to a woman’s face or not.
Considering that it’s women who routinely get harassed in a variety of contexts it is most definitely not gender neutral. Plus, with the exception of some trans men, men generally don’t have a “pussy.” Saying that to a man is inherently less threatening. Not that it’s acceptable to say to a man, just that they don’t have the parts that the dudebros are suggesting should be fucked.
As I said, not excusing the phrasing or harassment, or trying to say there is no misogyny involved in any way. But this is not something done to female reporters because they are female. Many people, including David in the op, are implying or saying explicitly that this is a phenomenon that happens exclusively to female reporters. Someone even expressed concern that news orgs might be less likely to hire female reporters because that’s who this happens to. That is not true. That’s all I mean to say.
@nellodee1010:
Could you explain to me why a male reporter should be intimidated by some drunk guy shouting “Fuck her right in the pussy”?
ಠ_ಠ
The… You couldn’t wait to contradict yourself until sometime after the next fucking sentence?
This is kind of like when white people think being called a cracker is like black people being called the n word.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Except it’s like a case where a white man was being called the n word. Totes not racist, you guise.
Yeah, because it’s not like there’s a whole system of oppression in place to tell women we should expect this kind of behavior, right? It’s not like women are constantly objectified and treated like sexual toys to be acted upon by men, obviously.
[/sarcasm]
@Paradoxical
No, it was bigger than that. I think it was a bedside table. Or one of those plastic tables that children use for tea parties.
Sorry kiddies, but I had to vent.
At no point did I contradict myself. The only way you could think that is by being, just, fucking ridiculously uncharitable in your reading of my comment. If y’all are going to strawman me that badly because you refuse to read what I actually wrote as I wrote it, I’ll just leave you to wallow in the inaccuracies that you seem to enjoy so well.
Tl;Dr-Fact checking ftl, apparently.