Women interrupted
Jen Grant’s account of the sexual harassment that interrupted her act appeared in the Huffington Post Canada.
She starts by explaining that she does corporate comedy, with its strict limitations, because it pays better than clubs. She had a gig at a corporate country club. The organizer was nice, everything was fine.
I get introduced to the stage and within about three minutes I am interrupted by a male (late 30s/early 40s) saying to me: “There’s a 51 per cent chance that my buddy here will have sex with you. and I will take the other 49 per cent.”
Of course I was shocked to hear something like that at a squeaky clean corporate event IN A COUNTRY CLUB. I was taken aback but as a 16-year comedy veteran, I took a breath and tried to push past it and do my best to ignore him. I thought, “Oh great. I’ve got Mr. inappropriate audience dude that I will have to deal with.” It’s not going to be easy to do this show with this guy piping up. I never thought in a million years it would get a lot worse.
Then it got worse.
After a couple more minutes he says in a very “rapey” tone, “I bet you do” following one of my jokes. Women know what I mean when I say “rapey.” It’s that tone that makes you feel like they have verbally taken advantage of you. As he is saying these horrible things, I am embarrassed and feeling small. I am just trying to do my job and I can’t. I felt naked and vulnerable. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t put up with shit normally. I have developed thick skin from doing stand up comedy. You have to!
If she’d been in a club she could have responded and put the guy in his place, but she wasn’t so she couldn’t.
His words were cutting like a knife. I felt off balance and violated. I looked out into the crowd at one of the few women that were in the room (the crowd was 80 per cent male). She looked at me like “what the hell is going on?”
Then about five minutes later (25 minutes into my 45 minute set) he says to me (again with that tone), “Ohhh the things I would do to you.” It’s hard enough to focus on what you’re saying when someone is talking constantly between your jokes but when they are verbally abusive, it’s almost impossible.
I said to the crowd, “Really? Is this really happening right now?” At that point a man at the next table said to the guy, “You crossed the line”.
It’s hard to put into words how I felt at that moment. Scared. Objectified. Threatened. Invalidated.
I felt like I was going to cry. Turned my head for about 15 seconds, took a sip of water, told myself to just plug through, went to talk and my voice was all warbled like I was about to cry. Realized I couldn’t talk because I was so upset. Said into the microphone, “I’m sorry but I can’t do this.” Put the mic into the stand and walked off stage.
In 16 years —
I have NEVER cried on stage.
I have NEVER not done my time.
I have NEVER been abused that badly on stage.
I was not able to do my job because someone was sexually harassing me. As a stand up comic I do not have a Human Resources Department. The stage is my workplace and I was publicly humiliated, objectified and belittled.
When I got off stage I was shaking and bawling. The organizer came up to me extremely apologetic and said she didn’t hear what he was saying because she was at the back of the room. I believe her. She was surprised no one else around who could hear him didn’t say anything. It makes me think of what’s happening in the news this past week with “FHRITP.” Shauna Hunt shined a light on something that’s been happening for a year. Good for her for exposing it because it represents a bigger issue. I hope to do the same with this blog. Words have power. They hurt. They humiliate. They violate. Sexism might be better than it used to be, but it is still alive and well.
Remember that? Remember tv journalist Shauna Hunt and the guy who shouted “fuck her right in the pussy” at her while she was on camera? Remember how that was a thing?
Women are just living breathing targets, that’s all.
People keep saying that. “Sexism isn’t as bad now.” I’m not seeing that, myself. Women who got up on stage weren’t treated like that.
Or if they were, you didn’t hear about it. I suppose that’s possible too. Any entertainers from the 50s and 60s around?
The internet harassment had no parallel. Becoming a target just because you dared open your mouth wasn’t even on the map. There was the fear of speaking out in public that everyone has, but trolls had no megaphone.
Sexism was different then. And plenty vicious. But so is it now. Just differently so.
I think the reason it’s so bad now is actually a good one. The troglodyte men are scared and are desperate to get the genie of liberation back in the bottle. Sexual violence and humiliation was always a major tool to do that, and the fact that it’s so out in the open now is a sign of desperation.
Which makes it somehow more obnoxious. Be nice if the slime eel who harassed Jen Grant got fired.
Quixote, I can only speak for my little corner of my little country, over say the last 40 year +/-.
Apologies for mangling all rules of punctuation in the following…
I reckon in many ways individual sexism is very widespread, but less rigid about roles than it used to be (people aren’t generally shocked at the idea of a woman doing a job and having/not having children – yeah yeah some are). Societal sexism is softer than it used to be as a result, but just as pervasive as the air that we breathe (sure we accept woman having jobs and choosing whether or not to have children, but those bitches better not be too uppity, or ol, or ugly, or slutty, or….). Sexism when expressed publicly is now often done both anonymously and online. When this occurs it is far more viscous, threatening and degrading than ever. I think it’s because until the internet came along you couldn’t get viscous nasty degrading stuff out widely without co-operation from papers, TV or radio. There were gate keepers who had standards. They may have agreed with you (or not), but they couldn’t use the kind of vile phrasing so common now because the Broadcasting Standards Authority and Censor wouldn’t have had a bar of it. That confined most people to expressing themselves vocally where they could not hide behind a shroud on anonymity. That keeps most people in some kind of check.
To invoke the rubbish and overused 80/20 rule: I think that the attitudes of 80% [1] of people have improved to at least some extent, but the behaviour of the 20% who hold the same attitude has got one hell of a lot worse.
[1] Actual percentage may vary.
I certainly hope the creep gets in trouble for it. He didn’t just harass the entertainer. He created a hostile work environment for every woman at that company, because now they know that he’s happy to spread his vile thoughts, so who knows what he’s been saying about them in the break room. Who would even feel safe working late with him around?
@Quixote:
I think it’s a direct parallel to the well-documented “racism without racists” cultural trend: http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/us/ferguson-racism-or-racial-bias/
In that vein, I was every bit as disturbed by this guy:
Just unpacking those 4 words, and the context and brazenness of their usage; it comes across as “Dude. Yes, of course sexual objectification of women is funny… but you gotta be subtle to be funny… you know, with clever entendres, sly winks, and nudges. You aren’t being funny because you’re being too overt.”
Putting myself in his head for a moment, I suspect that this guy actually believed himself to be standing up for the comedian, and for women in general.
I totally empathize with Samantha’s sentiment about the “boldly sexist asshole” needing to be fired along the lines of “Who would even feel safe working late with him around?” I think this is the boss whose overt sexism makes for slam-dunk discrimination lawsuits; who can’t help but make comments like “Oooh, looking good today, Janice! You should wear blouses like *that* more often”.
On the other hand, the “you crossed the line” guy is the boss who’s going to have that thought, but keep it to himself (taking pride in how not-a-sexist he is for doing so). And who, two weeks later, is going to put Jim, not Janice, in charge of the next big project. Not because he’s sexist, but because he’s pragmatic, and just wants to ensure everyone’s mind stays focused on the job, not on Janice’s chest.
Kevin, that fits my experience very well. As one of the first women in our science department (yes, in 2006 they hired only the second woman ever!), I experienced things that most men didn’t have to. My boss expressed surprise when he had to deal with sexist issues from students, because he understood we were living in a “post-feminist” society – he grew up in 1980s Iowa, where no one was sexist, right? Meanwhile, he was subjecting me to degrading activities that were clearly sexist in their intent, giving women who worked for him nicknames like “Sunshine”, and interfering in my class in a way he would never do with a male. In addition, he deemed my qualifications inadequate to sit on a search committee for a new science instructor, in spite of the fact that I have more credentials than anyone else in my department. He would be horrified if someone told him he was sexist; but it shows in ways he doesn’t understand. And many of the males shake their heads in total bewilderment if you point out things that are sexist, because they don’t see them.
Samantha: I wondered about that point, so I went to the original HuffPo Canada article. Here’s what she says about the follow-up:
Not firing, sadly, but not nothing, either; it’s at least an actual reprimand with impact.
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We don’t live in a single, homogeneous society where any particular social progress has been finished and done. Denmark and Pakistan are both part of the same world ‘community’ and the standards of each are carried out in parallel.
That guy at the next table maybe quite secure in his Taliban standards. Or an angry drunk spewing resentment that his functioning brain would have filtered out long before.
Thanks, Freemage.