rodmanstreet: girl genius

Anonymous asked:

I would like to know if you genuinely believe that Louis CK has something against women. He has two kids both daughters, so I would like to believe that he has a great amount of respect for women. I do not find rape jokes funny, but I also do not think that making a rape joke means that you "hate" women. The say way, I have been to Louis CK show had he said nigger 3+ times. I do not think that he hates black people.

No, I don’t think that Louis CK hates women, and actually I just listened to the WTF podcast with Amy Poehler on Saturday night and heard her talking about him and how she feels like he gets along with women really well and feels comfortable around them etc etc. She talked about that for a few minutes, actually. When I wrote earlier about there being some sort of misogyny at play in this conversation, I meant, in a poorly thought out and poorly written way (I even tagged that it was poorly written, and if I had known that this would snowball like this I would have put more effort into that post) — I meant more of an institutional misogyny, where comics can say, you know what, yeah this is probably terrible, but I’m going to do it anyway. My jokes are more important. Where he can go on The Daily Show and say that he A) understands why there is a problem and B) still doesn’t care. I was musing about that disconnect. Louis CK is a smart, smart guy, and he even said himself that he SEES WHY IT’S AN ISSUE, and his conclusion is still to say “Shut the fuck up for a minute.” That’s where I say, why is this smart guy still perpetuating this?

When I said misogyny earlier, I was thinking more on a larger scale of comedians thinking that their shitty jokes are more important than women’s safety, but in the case of Louis CK, I’m not sure. I honestly think he’s smarter than making a shitty rape joke (and there are good jokes that involve rape, let’s not get into that discussion), and I really don’t think that he would stoop to making the kind of rape joke that Tosh might make, or that some other hack might make, because he’s better than that and because I think he sees where the problems might lie. He can read a room. What I don’t understand is why he’s going on The Daily Show and kind of wishy washy walking the line and playing both sides.

Why are comedians so afraid of saying, “Hey, that was shitty?”

And why are comedians willing to see the difference between a joke that uses the n-word and a hateful, racist remark, but unwilling to see the difference between a joke that uses the word rape and a really nasty, misogynist comment? Just because it’s said on a stage by a comedian doesn’t mean it’s funny, and doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry consequences.