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.
Yes. Because she was trying to do HER job, and it interferes with her livelihood to hear jackasses hollering this and other sexist slurs dozens of times a day. It’s called sexual harassment, it’s called creating a toxic work environment, and if you read the links I posted before you came on here with your inanities, you’ll see that the issue has already been addressed. It’s illegal to do what he did, like it or not. And if he can’t hold his liquor, then maybe he shouldn’t be drinking. And he definitely shouldn’t be the spoiled little putz in a $106,000/year job, either.
Next stupid question, please.
That wasn’t a flounce, btw, I’m just blown away by how insistently you are reading my comment in such a way as I’m a misogynist-supporting troll rather than someone going “yo, your article is inaccurate in x way, and it seems many other people have been misled in this regard as well. Here’s the actual facts”
It’s not like it doesn’t matter re: the things that have been discussed in the article or itt. It is a relevant correction and I don’t understand the resistance.
Because at no point has anyone said that it’s never been yelled at a male reporter. We’re just discussing it being yelled at female reporters.
@nellodee1010:
In the op:
This is a true paragraph. It just isn’t mentioning the male targets, or the couple female perpetrators. Because “fuck her in the pussy” is obviously a gendered statement, and so the most outrageous cases are the ones where it’s a man saying it to a woman.
The fact that the phrase was said to male reporters as well? Irrelevant. The fact that, in your particular compilation you linked, the ratio was nearly 50/50? Completely irrelevant. As I said before:
If someone said it was only women being called at and you wanted to clarify that, quote the person and show the evidence. If you want to claim that it isn’t a misogynistic or sexist thing because men were targeted as well, you’re wrong. You’re wrong, and continuing to assert this is the case is indeed supporting misogyny, whether you in particular are sexist or not.
Well since I am procrastinating on finals I’ll make an effort.
First of all, from my OP:
(emph added)
And from my first reply:
(emph added)
NOW.
From David’s OP:
(emph added) (please note that the only way you can claim this doesn’t define FHRITP as a specifically female-targeting phenomenon, is by being straight-up disingenuous)
WWTH:
theladyzombie:
Sarah:
(Also please note that, despite what some of the responses have said or implied about the position I hold, I agree with Sarah on this, or would if she hadn’t used “if” but “when.”
Bina:
kirbywarp:
Isidore13:
Now to respond to some of the reactions to my post!
GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina:
Other than the fact that I find drunk aggressive dudes threatening to everyone around them? I mean obviously a woman would feel more intimidated, and have good reason to feel more intimidated. Not sure why you asked me this.
ParadoxicalIntention:
Wait, actually, I’m not even sure that this is a response to me. Is it?
kirbywarp:
I hope I’ve shown you enough evidence. I also hope that you understand by now that I am not claiming that it isn’t misogynistic or sexist because men are targeted, and, in fact, that characterization of me is half of the upsetting part of this whole exchange, since I was careful to explain that this was NOT my position in the first paragraph of my OP. That’s what I was talking about when I said I was being read uncharitably. None of the positions attributed to me so far have been ones I’ve held, or as far as I can tell, implied that I’ve held. I don’t believe fact-checking can be misogynistic, no matter what the facts are, as long as they are accurate.
*fingers crossed for blockquote success*
Blockquotes worked but not emphasis. Meant to emphasize “clarify” in my first quote, “implied” in my second quote, and “female” in David’s quote.
You missed the point of the paragraph you quoted from me. Are men yelling “fuck him right in the ass!” at other men? No they are not. Since cis men don’t have a pussy, there’s no threat involved, so yelling fhritp at men involves no threat of any kind. So it’s not the same.
I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here. If you’re not trying to prove it isn’t misogynistic, why even bring up? The point is, it’s a harassing thing to yell at a woman and a sexist thing to yell at all.
Because I am bothered by inaccuracy in reporting and correct it when I see it.
nellodee1010, none of the people you’ve quoted have said explitely or implied that only women were subject to the phrase. They were simply only talking about the female targets. Why do you think it is important for them to qualify their outrage by saying “oh yeah, and it happens to men too?”
The one quote from the op is closer to the “implied” part, but complaining about that is a bit nit-picky; why do you think it’s important that the OP is explicit that the phrase is shouted at male reporters too?
*sigh*
Alright, so your whole point is extraordinarly specific; that the phrase is not thrown just at women, and you found a compilation video that has a roughly even distribution.
And?
Maybe I and others are at fault for trying to read any sort of intention or point into your statement. Why even bring it up if the context of the OP is about female reporters? This may just be on me, but literally the only thing I can think of is that you’re trying to show that misogyny wasn’t a motivation for the meme. If not, then there’s no reason to bring it up except to be needlessly picky about ambiguous language.
@nellodee1010:
It’s not inaccurate, it’s ambiguous at worst. There’s no purpose in your clarification that I can see.
I don’t think it’s needless. I was ambivalent about posting until I read isidore’s concern.
This is a blog about mocking misogyny, not a newspaper. I’m not sure why a YouTube video is considered an accurate source that proves half of the reporters who have been yelled at are men either.
Even if the phrase were thrown out independent of the reporter’s gender, the phrase is still not gender-neuteral, and that is meaningful.
Let’s take a hypothetical where there was an area where people kept jumping in front of news cameras and shouting “lynch the black people!” They were saying this no matter what the race of the person in front of the camera was. Don’t you think news agencies would still be hesitent about sending in black reporters, just for safety’s sake? It has consequences, even if the phrase is not targeted solely at the female reporter in front of them.
Going around and around with the sealion.
(Is it just me, or have we had more new/”New” trolls in the past two days than in the past two months?)
A youtube video is good enough proof for a blog about mocking misogyny.
I’m glad you agree with that thing I said in my first post.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
I changed my gravatar just for you!
Seems like there’s a lot of trolls. I think there’s been five or six these last week and a half.
@nellodee1010:
Apparently you skipped reading the rest of my post, which was involved in explaining what “that is meaningful means,” directly related with isiodore13’s comment, which you claimed prompted your clarification. Perhaps I’m all assuming and such and thinking you brought up their comment because you wanted to imply you were trying to assuage their fears.
Oh, yeah, no, I don’t think they would be reluctant to hire/send black reporters out. Also I don’t think “lynch all the black people” and “F her right in the P” are equivalent statements.
Maybe it’s because school is letting out for the summer, either now or soon.
You know, at some point, the fact you’re pointing it out gets overwhelmed by your need to point it out 87 billion times.
Yeah, pretty much. I’m here cuz I have finals to procrastinate on, anyway.
So not only are the days of the good trolls gone, so are the days of yearning for good trolls? Is NWO’s name not spoken reverently through the halls of WHTM anymore? WHAT HAS THE WORLD COME TO??? *sob*
@nellodee1010:
They aren’t equivalent, that was a more extreme (and hopefully more clear) analogy. The phrase implies a danger.
Apprently not more clear. What? You don’t think news agencies would be more reluctant to send people out to an area where they might be in danger?
katz, I only pointed it out the once, the rest was me defending myself from people determined to see the worst in me by trying to correct their misrepresentations of what I said, and also just kinda having fun.
kirbywarp, I don’t believe they’d believe they were in more danger purely as a result of a horrible racist threatjoke that hasn’t resulted in any physical assault. Not that they are necessarily right, but people outside of marginalized groups (who tend to be in charge), also tend to believe that there is less danger for marginalized groups than the members of the marginalized group believe (which is closer to the truth).
It may, however, have a freezing effect on the black reporters themselves, who may request not to be sent into the field to avoid it. That is a problem, but not the one isidore was talking about.
Anyway, I really have to get to work on this paper, but I’ll be back for more fun later if I haven’t been banned or whatever!
You know, at some point, the fact you’re pointing it out gets overwhelmed by your need to defend yourself 87 billion times.