Comedian Damon Wayans seems to be a shoo-on for this week’s Shitty Rape Apologist Shithead of the Week award.
In an interview on Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club show on Friday, Wayans attacked Bill Cosby’s accusers — or at least the majority of them — as money-hustling “bitches” too ugly to have been really raped.
Wayans’ explanation for why 50 women have stepped forward with similar stories of drugging and sexual assault at the hands of Cosby?
I don’t believe he was raping. I think he was in relationships with all of them, and then he’s like, ‘You know what, [I’m] 78, I can’t get it up for any of y’all, bye bitches.’ And now they’re like, ‘Oh, really? Rape.’ Forty years — listen, how big is his penis that it gives you amnesia for 40 years? …
If you listen to them talk, they go, ‘Well, the first time…’ The first time? Bitch, how many times did it happen? Just listen to what they’re saying and some of them really is unrape-able. I look at them and go, ‘I don’t want that. Get outta here.’ [Laughs]
He added:
Look, I understand fame. I’ve lived it. Women will throw themselves at you. They just want to be in your presence. There’s some that innocently will come up there, but not 40-something women. They’re not that naïve.
You’re talkin’ about, what, in 1965 he just walked into someone’s dressing room and put his penis in their mouth?
Backtracking a little, Wayans later said that he thought some of the accusations could be true.
And for them, my heart goes out to them. For anybody who was raped by Bill Cosby, I’m sorry, and I hope you get justice. You other bitches, look. …
What’s the joy of banging someone who’s asleep?
Lovely.
Breakfast Club co-host Angela Yee pushed back against some of Wayans’ assertions, pointing out that many of the women came forward decades ago. In an aside that seems to have gone unnoticed in the coverage of Wayans’ remarks, she said that when she was a little girl her mother told her she knew someone who’d been drugged (and presumably raped) by Cosby.
50 women have already come forward; I wonder how many more there are?
For more quotes from the interview, see Gossip Cop. Or you can watch the actual interview below; skip ahead to 26 minutes in.
lurker-
Pretty much.
I think the problem is that privileged groups are used to dominating the conversation and not receiving pushback, largely because the groups they have been marginalizing haven’t been allowed their free speech.
As such “freeze peach” types genuinely do think that free speech also should come with a ban on others expressing their free speech if they dare be offended. They think that one should not only be allowed to say what they want, but that they also have a right to everyone’s approval of those statements and to not receive any consequences for that speech in the form of people thinking they are douchebags or not financially supporting them.
And this seems baffling to the marginalized, because it’s such a perversion of what free speech means, but to the privileged, that state of affairs has been the norm for so long thanks to the shutting out through terrorism and oppression of marginalized voices.
As such, to their eyes, they are not seeing that others are being allowed their free speech to be offended and express their offense. They are just seeing that they used to “be allowed” to “get away” with certain types of statements and jokes and now “all of a sudden” that isn’t working and people are getting upset at them.
So that feels like a loss of rights and since their brains can’t admit that what they have lost is some of their powers of oppression, they instead interpret it as a diminishing of free speech. They used to be able to laze out on X stereotypes for a free paycheck but now they are “not allowed” to do that without having to experience pushback and criticism for the first time in their lives, and so they have been censored in their minds.
It’s one more aspect where privilege has allowed the dominant groups to pretend side benefits of oppression are one and the same with actual fundamental rights.
But yeah, no one has the right to a receptive audience and not everyone should be expected to sacrifice their free speech to support someone no matter what. Instead, you’re allowed to say something, and others may use that speech to decide you are a complete waste of space who is dangerous to minority group members and deny you private employment based on entertainment of said people who are no longer coming to watch an asshole.
That’s not loss of free speech, that’s not discrimination. And speaking as someone who has actually been discriminated, this whole whine about losing employment because you straight up fucked your job up and alienated your customers being discrimination just raises my hackles. Like, no, just no. If you fuck up, that’s not discrimination. That’s you fucking up your job.
First of all: I was talking about the comedians at college link, not damon (I don’t even know who he is, to be honest, and neither do I care, obviously he’s an idiot and worse).
So, let’s start at the beginning: I don’t think that we need to discuss what bad jokes are. We probably all agree that “A jew, a black guy and mexican walk into a bar…” is probably a good start for a desaster, but not for a joke.
If “do not make jokes about things that aren’t choices” is the line that gets drawn, ok, so be it. I could live with that. But can you really tell me that this is the final line? If that’s the case, we are finished here and can be satisfied.
But sorry, I don’t feel well with “It’s ok if it’s not the government that does it.”. That doesn’t ring right. If I don’t like the fact that neo nazis buy from a certain delivery service, I can voice that opinion, call them, etc. That’s fine, individual freedom of speech, etc. The delivery service can ignore me. Also fine. But if I, let’s say, am the leader of my local stamp collector’s club and get all the 1000 members (hah!) to call the delivery service all day, effectively shutting them down… Is that still ok, because it’s not the government that does it? Is it ok to drive them into bancrupcy because it’s individuals who do that and not the government? Extreme example, of course.
Sorry, somehow there’s something missing. I can’t put my finger on it, perhaps it’s just me being an idiot, totally possibly but somehow I think the whole “individual choice” is too easy, it sounds like an excuse. We are not talking about people not buying tickets, we are talking about a very small group (“people who book comics”) deciding for a much larger group, instead of all members of the large group individually deciding that they don’t want to hear more rape jokes.
So, yes, not watching such a comic is fine. I wouldn’t, too. But somehow it rings a little bit… easy to me, to claim that this is all that is to that. Perhaps it is, I don’t know. But at the moment, I am not convinced. You can hate me for that, if you want to, feel free. Oh, and btw: I am not a US citizen (and wouldn’t want to be, sorry).
Oh, and perhaps some people should check if they REALLY, REALLY want to say that it is actually BAD that I know and mention that there are arguments against my concerns.
( And for my example: If I actually were the leader of the stamp collector’s club, I would start a petition, let the members sign it and give it to the delivery service instead of shutting them done by letting 1.000 people call them. I would strongly advice individual members NOT to call them themselves, since, as a member of a bigger group, we would have an additional responsibility. Same shit as with gamergate: If one person says stupid things, ok, but if you are a huge group and start organizing saying stupid thing, it becomes something not so “innocent” anymore. But as I said, that’s just my personal feeling at the moment, could be wrong here and just not getting the good arguments against my feelings here.)
Ew.
I don’t think I knew him well enough to expect either better or worse from him, but still….ew.
OT, but perhaps of interest to some of you: http://zite.to/1IRNaGL
Nodnodnod
Just out of curiousity, what is your alternative? Venues should be forced to book bad comedians? People should be forced to buy tickets and show up for the show? Audience should be forced to laugh? Nobody should be allowed to criticize comedians? Seriously, what do you imagine would be the alternative?
@ mockingbird
Thanks for that; it was interesting. Some of it was of course the same old story of a woman sticking her head above the parapet on pretty much any subject except flowers and kittens and being abused for it.
I did like the Caitlin Moran quote though; I think that nails is.
What in the right royal fuck are you even talking about? I think you’ve gotten us mixed up with #GamerGate there, because we don’t harass people. For future reference, they’re the pro-rape ones, not the anti-rape ones.
@Twisted Inspiration:
This is a false equivalency, I’m afraid. As you point out, it’s entirely fine to organise a boycott of a company because they take an unethical stance. If the company decides not to change its stance and instead maintain it to the point of bankruptcy, then the boycotters have carried out no wrong act.
On the other hand, if you organise an attack which shuts down the operation of a company via constant harassment, then that is not okay. However, this is a very different thing: one is asking customers to change their behaviour and not interact with the company, while the other cuts the company off from customers who wish to engage with them.
You’re right that a #GG style DDOS is unacceptable; but it’s not the same as a boycott or complaint campaign at all.
(As an aside, it’s basically impossible to actually prevent a company from operating via mass complaints, unless you’re calling their internal numbers instead of their complaint line. It’s an inherently different act which is not easily confused.)
I have an ex-FWB who’s a professional events organiser, and who does comedy events when she can. It’s a massively stressful thing, apparently, because you’re trying to arrange talent, venue and audience, and bring them all together. There isn’t a monopoly over it at all; rather there are a lot of people trying to organise such events and no matter how skilled and connected you are, occasionally your events fail.
If the audience want to see a particular comedian, some organiser will do it. That’s the holy grail for an organiser. Much harder is when you have a comedian who doesn’t have a ready audience, or an audience who don’t have a clear vision of what sort of talent they want to see.
Unless Britain (where I live) is very different from wherever you live, I suspect that there very much isn’t a local cabal of events organisers who cut off eager audiences from hot talent out of malice.
You are still confusing something here. I was actually asking a question and voicing my bad feelings. I was not making an argument. I know that it is strange that people actually ask questions (instead of “just asking question” and the way some people are reacting here would fit well onto an MRA board when someone tells them that women are simply people, but I really do not make any argument here. I know that many trolls are trying to come in here, as I’ve been reading here for a whole while now. And no, I don’t claim that I’m not one of them, as the people who don’t want to believe me, will not, anyway. Also I don’t say “I’m not a anti-boycot-comicist, buuuut…”, because I’m not.
As for the alternatives… I don’t have one. I don’t even have an agenda, just a bad feeling. Forcing people to go to a comic is out of the question. Forcing people to book comics they cannot support is also an idiotic idea. I simply do not have any alternative. Is that bad? Does that mean that the bad feeling I get is stupid, just because I cannot present a solution? If I had a solution I would have said so, instead of asking the question and voicing my bad feelings about something. Yes, I know that this is extremly unhelpful. This is, why I was actually hoping to get some new ideas here.
On the Twisted Inspiration thread:
*Allowing* racist, homophobic, sexist, rapey speech, comedic or otherwise, is not the same as *accepting* that speech. It’s pretty much always allowed in our society, particularly in a private venue, but I, for one, am heartened that it is decreasingly accepted. You can’t force or insist on acceptance.
Thanks, Alan. Glad you enjoyed it.
I’m posting this one with the probably futile hope that someone who clicks on it will be led to say, “Oh! That’s what they mean by ‘rape culture’ and ‘teach boys not to rape’!”
http://zite.to/1NjzdsR
I think this is it exactly. I know when I was a kid I was very uncomfortable with Andrew Dice Clay. He was always controversial, but back then, he could be cast as not understood by the stodgy old pearl clutchers only. MTV and Comedy Central is saying he’s cool, so he must be. Now with the internet to democratize what speech is heard, you can’t do that cultural wide gaslight anymore.
First of all, it’s not that any one is saying certain topics of humor are off limits. What we’re saying is that it’s okay to be offended by a joke that makes a target out of a marginalized group or a victim. There’s a big difference between Damon Wayans saying some women are unrapable bitches and Amy Schumer’s sketch about the trial of Bill Cosby. The former is mocking rape victims and using misogynist stereotypes to undermine them. The latter was satirizing rape culture.
Secondly, why the obsession with a line we have to draw? Comedy is subjective and different people are going to find different things offensive. Are you saying that we set a line arbitrarily and if a college administration and the student boy finds a comedian offensive, if the comedian falls on the right side of this arbitrary line, they should be required to be booked anyway? I’m confused as to what you think the purpose of this line is.
@Twisted Inspiration: Be aware that while you may not have malice, you come across as arguing in bad faith. This doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, just that you need to be a little careful. I’m the same (I still worry massively about how I come across) so you’re not in bad company. Just be aware.
One of the things that most contributes to that coming-across issue is the anonymity of the internet. Tell us about yourself. Where are you from? Do you have a background in journalism or politics or anything like that which gives you an insight into the issue? What led you to feminism? Once we understand who you are and where you’re coming from, it becomes much clearer and your behaviour will make sense in context.
@WWTH:
This. Oh god, exactly this. I can’t remember how many times I felt uncomfortable with what was being sold to me as “this is what funny/cool is”, but had no way to effectively push back because the cultural conversation was a one-way thing and was dominated by the marketing industry. The internet has, in this as in so many things, changed the world vastly for the better.
(I didn’t have Andrew Dice Clay, obvs, but we had cultural equivalents.)
Okay, I know it’s bad form to laugh at my own jokes, but I liked that bit of snark up there and Photoshopped it.
http://i.imgur.com/vFIEYty.jpg
Did you ‘shop that? That’s amazingly well done. Also funny as hell. May I steal it?
So you want to take away the venues right to book who they want? That “small group” of bookers is deciding on behalf of their OWN venue as is their right.
Offensive comics and people who want to hear rape jokes can go to another comedy club with a less discerning booker, start they’re own club to showcase their awfulness, or look/post online.
Literally every single anti-rape/racist/homophobia content protest I’ve ever seen has been petition based or raising awareness by peaceful protest on social media. Please give a real life example of a group organizing such a harassment campaign against such content.
Twisted Inspiration,
I don’t know. If you don’t have a solution, maybe the productive thing to do would be to examine where your bad feelings come from. As Cerberus said, the most privileged and dominant people have had a platform to say whatever they want with no consequences for a long time. So long that it feels natural and any change feels uncomfortable and weird, especially to people who are old enough to remember the pre social media days. But it’s not a natural state for men, white people, wealthy people, cishet people to be granted the platform. That’s an artificial state imposed by culture. It’s a system. But it feels ingrained so when people have been marginalized slowly make enough gains to change this, it’s strange and seems wrong to people.
It’s hard to analyze further where your bad feelings may be coming from without knowing your gender, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation etc. But I can say that your posts did sound like someone arguing from a place of privilege. Particularly since this thread, although the conversation was expanded beyond this, originated with a comedian declaring rape victims liars because they’re unrapable. You seemed to be kind of unaware of the “bad feelings” something like this inspired in a lot of the posters here when you made a post sympathetic to the freeze peach side of things.
@EJ
Yeah, thankyou! ^^; And of course, that’s what it’s there for. Who knows, having it in meme form might finally drive it through some freeze peacher’s head. =P
Also, with regards to the college thing, I don’t know if my experience is typical, but at my school bands and comedians were actually booked by a student committee rather than the administration. I’m not sure if this is atypical or usual. But at least at my school, entertainment booked was representative of what students wanted and not what the administration wanted us to see.
@ Mockingbird
That link was especially interesting to me; so thank you once again.
I don’t know if you’ve spotted, but self defence is one of my things. I’m constantly posting recommendations for Gavin DeBecker’s ‘Gift of Fear’. I think it’s the best ‘self defence’ book ever written; even though a lot of people wouldn’t consider it as such.
SD brings up a whole range of issues. Advice vs Victim Blaming; the ‘diversionary’ tactic that nearly all self defence relies on. ‘could’ not ‘should’, what feeling ’empowered’ says about society, why ‘don’t die of politeness’ is my standard advice etc.
I could go on about this for ages. Great article.
de Becker’s book is amazing. I absolutely love it. Good call, Alan.
Hmmm… I’m coming in on the end of this, but about the booking of comics.
No, comics don’t have some God-given “right” to be booked by certain venues, and if they don’t like that, either change their act, or suck it up and find out what their desired audience *does* want, and deliver that.
I do have problems with the decision that it’s okay-er to mock someone if they have a choice in the matter, because I don’t think that’s a standard that’s actually held. It’s okay to mock fat people (many will tell us) because fat is a choice. It’s okay to mock religious people, we are told, because religious belief is a choice.
Technically these things are often a choice, but the mean-spirited mocking of them still pisses me off. (So often it is done with no gentleness.) I’ve been told that fat people are fair game for so long now, but mocking other types of appearances are off the table. (And sometimes those who want to mock fat people have types of appearances that they *don’t* want to be mocked. So it’s a one-way street with them. They get to make fun of a fat person, but a fat person couldn’t do it back to them.)
And when it comes to religion, many think that their own religion is not okay to mock, but all those nutcases over there, with their weird religion, are *fine* to mock. I can see how dismally that will work out! (I actually think it works best if you mock your own religion, and leave it at that, and not try to take down anyone else’s. But that’s just me.)
If you belong to a group that is in the “okay to mock” category, then after a while it must get very tiresome and old. And then to have people always tell you to get used to it, you need to have a sense of humor, you aren’t “allowed” to be offended.
I guess it takes a certain type of comedian, and a particular type of humor. I find that some comedians are so good at doing it in a way that makes it feel good for us to laugh at ourselves. Other comedians are out for blood, and there’s no way it’s going to be funny to anyone who is a member of the group being singled out.
I have no answers, just the observation that being a comedian must be terribly difficult at times.
@peristyle re: mocking and shaming fat people – no one WANTS to be fat. Growing up fat, bullied and void of self confidence is horrible. People are dicks and fat people are an easy, socially acceptable target. There are many reasons that people end up overweight. Calling it a choice is a gross, insulting oversimplification.