Thursday, June 20, 2013

My Feminist Writings Regarding Comedy

Since I have been posting so much of other people's stuff, my 
writing got lost. So, here are the three pieces I wrote lately: 
 
 
 
I'm very honored to have been asked to write a piece for the 
feminist website 
EveryDayVictimBlaming!
 
Here's my perspective on victim blaming in comedy:

The Subtle Oppression of Women by Comedy 

Portrait of a Feminist Comedian

  
The Pen is Mightier than the Rape Whistle 

My Hubby Comedian Chris Oliver Gets in on the Rape Joke Debate


It's OK To Have A Complicated Relationship With Art: More Thoughts On Rape Jokes

psychedelicatessen



http://www.psychedelicatessen.blogspot.com/2013/06/its-ok-to-have-complicated-relationship.html

Steubenville and the misplaced sympathy for Jane Doe's rapists

 Since the last article referred to this and it's great, check out...
 

Steubenville and the misplaced sympathy for Jane Doe's rapists

 
 
 
http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/18/steubenville-misplaced-sympathy-jane-doe-rapists

Tennis Star's Disappointing Comments and Apology


What Serena Williams 'taught me' about rape




http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/19/serena-williams-rape-comments-what-learn

Take Your Comedy Seriously – By Dylan Brody

 
 
http://www.americascomedy.com/take-your-comedy-seriously-by-dylan-brody/


http://jezebel.com/vice-published-a-fashion-spread-of-female-writer-suicid-513888861

Friday, June 14, 2013

Patton Oswalt Changes His Mind About Rape Jokes!!!!

Holy shit this just made me SO freaking happy!!!! Patton Oswalt admits he was wrong about rape jokes!! I love him again!!

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/06/patton_oswalt_on_rape_jokes_joke_stealing_and_heckling.html


Here's is the part pertaining to rape jokes: 

3. Rape Jokes
In 1992 I was in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition.  Out of a field of 40 competitors, I think I came in 38.  Maybe.

One of the comedians I competed against was named Vince Champ.  Handsome, friendly, 100% clean material.  He would gently – but not in a shrill or scolding way – chide some of the other comedians about their “blue” language, or “angry” subject material, or general, dark demeanor.  But nice to hang out with.  Polite.

Later that same year Vince won Star Search.  $100,000 grand prize.  A career launched.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

He’s now sitting in prison in Nebraska, serving a 55 to 70 year sentence for a string of rapes he committed at college campuses where he toured as a comedian.  College bookers loved him because his material was squeaky-clean and non-controversial.  I guess the Star Search producers agreed.
Vince is one example – there are others, believe me – where some of the friendliest, most harmless-seeming, and non-offensive comedians carry around some pretty horrific mental plumbing.  The comedians I’ve known who joke about rape – and genocide, racism, serial killers, drug addiction and everything else in the Dark Subjects Suitcase – tend to be, internally and in action, anti-violence, anti-bigotry, and decidedly anti-rape.  It’s their way – at least, it’s definitely my way – of dealing with the fact that all of this shittiness exists in the world.  It’s one of the ways I try to reduce the power and horror those subjects hold for me.  And since I’ve been a comedian longer than any of the people who blogged or wrote essays or argued about this, I was secure in thinking my point of view was right.  That “rape culture” was an illusion, that the examples of comedians telling “rape jokes” in which the victim was the punchline were exceptions that proved the rule.  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.  No one I know has ever expressed a desire to rape anyone.  My viewpoint must be right.  Right?

I had that same knee-jerk reaction when the whole Daniel Tosh incident went down.  Again, only looking at it from my experience.  And my experience, as a comedian, made me instantly defend him.  I still do, up to a point.  Here’s why: he was at an open mike.  Trying out a new joke.  A joke about rape.  A horrible subject but, like with all horrible subjects, the first thing a comedian will subconsciously think is, “Does a funny approach exist with which to approach this topic?”  He tried, and it didn’t go well.  I’ve done the same thing, with all sorts of topics.  Can I examine something that horrifies me and reduce the horror of it with humor?  It’s a foolish reflex and all comedians have it.

And, again, it was at an open mike.  Which created another knee-jerk reaction in me.  Open mikes are where, as a comedian, you’re supposed to be allowed to fuck up.  Like a flight simulator where you can create the sensation of spiking the nose of the plane into the tarmac without killing anyone (or yourself).  Open mikes are crucial for any working comedian who wants to keep developing new material, stretching what he or she does, and keeping themselves from burrowing into a creative rut.

Even Daniel admitted, in his apology, that the joke wasn’t going well, that when the girl interrupted him (well, heckled, really) he reacted badly.  The same way I reacted badly when an audience member started taping one of my newer, more nebulous bits with her camera phone a few months earlier.  Daniel’s bad reaction I don’t defend.  His attempting to find humor in the subject of rape – again, a horrifying reality that, like other horrifying realities, can sometimes be attacked with humor?  I defend that.  Still defend.  Will always defend.
What it came down to, for me, was this: let a comedian get to the end of his joke.  If it’s not funny then?  Fine.  Blast away.  In person, on the internet, anywhere.  It’s an open mike.  Comedians can take it.  We bomb all the time.  We go too far all the time.  It’s in our nature.

And don’t interrupt a comedian during the set-up.  A lot of times, a set-up is deliberately meant to shock, to reverse your normal valences, to kick you a few points off your axis.  If you heard the beginning of Lenny Bruce’s joke where he blurts out, “How many niggers do we have here tonight?”, and then stood up and motherfucked him into silence and stormed out?  You’d be correct – based solely on what you saw and heard – that Lenny was a virulent racist.  But if you rode the shockwave, and listened until the end of the bit, you’d see he was attacking something – racism – that he found abhorrent and was, in fact, so horrified by it that he was willing to risk alienating an audience to make his point.

So that’s how I saw the whole “rape joke” controversy.  And, again, my view was based on my experience as a comedian.  25 years experience, you know?  This was about censorship, and the limits of comedy, and the freedom to create and fuck up while you hone what you create.

But remember what I was talking about, in the first two sections of this?  In the “Thievery” section and then the “Heckling” section?  About how people only bring their own perceptions and experiences to bear when reacting to something?  And, since they’re speaking honestly from their experience, they truly think they’re correct?  Dismissive, even?  See if any of these sound familiar:

There’s no “evidence” of a “rape culture” in this country.  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone, so why am I being lumped in as the enemy?  If these bloggers and feminists make “rape jokes” taboo, or “rape” as a subject off-limits no matter what the approach, then it’ll just lead to more censorship.  
They sure sound familiar to me because I, at various points, was saying them.  Either out loud, or to myself, or to other comedian and non-comedian friends when we would argue about this.  I had my viewpoint, and it was based on solid experience, and it…was…fucking…wrong.

Let’s go backwards through those bullshit conclusions, shall we?  First off: no one is trying to make rape, as a subject, off-limitsNo one is talking about censorship.  In this past week of re-reading the blogs, going through the comment threads, and re-scrolling the Twitter arguments, I haven’t once found a single statement, feminist or otherwise, saying that rape shouldn’t be joked under any circumstance, regardless of context.  Not one example of this.

In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this, especially from feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim.

Why, after all of my years of striving to write original material (and, at times, becoming annoyingly self-righteous about it) and struggling find new viewpoints or untried approaches to any subject, did I suddenly balk and protest when an articulate, intelligent and, at times, angry contingent of people were asking my to apply the same principles to the subject of rape?  Any edgy or taboo subject can become just as hackneyed as an acceptable or non-controversial one if the exact same approach is made every time.  But I wasn’t willing to hear that.

And let’s go back even further.  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.  Never had the impulse.  So why was I feeling like I was being lumped in with those who were, or who took a cavalier attitude about rape, or even made rape jokes to begin with?  Why did I feel some massive, undeserved sense of injustice about my place in this whole controversy?
The answer to that is in the first inc
orrect assumption.  The one that says there’s no a “rape culture” in this country.  How can there be?  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.

Do you see the illogic in that leap?  I didn’t at first.  Missed it completely.  So let’s look at some similar examples:

Just because you 100% believe that comedians don’t write their own jokes doesn’t make it so.  And making the leap from your evidence-free belief to dismissing comedians who complain about joke theft is willful ignorance on your part, invoked for your own comfort.  Same way with heckling.  Just because you 100% feel that a show wherein a heckler disrupted the evening was better than one that didn’t have that disruption does not make it the truth.  And to make the leap from your own personal memory to insisting that comedians feel the same way that you do is indefensible horseshit.

And just because I find rape disgusting, and have never had that impulse, doesn’t mean I can make a leap into the minds of women and dismiss how they feel day to day, moment to moment, in ways both blatant and subtle, from other men, and the way the media represents the world they live in, and from what they hear in songs, see in movies, and witness on stage in a comedy club.

There is a collective consciousness that can detect the presence (and approach) of something good or bad, in society or the world, before any hard “evidence” exists.  It’s happening now with the concept of “rape culture.”  Which, by the way, isn’t a concept.  It’s a reality.  I’m just not the one who’s going to bring it into focus.  But I’ve read enough viewpoints, and spoken to enough of my female friends (comedians and non-comedians) to know it isn’t some vaporous hysteria, some false meme or convenient catch-phrase.
I’m a comedian.  I value and love what I do.  And I value and love the fact that this sort of furious debate is going on about the art form I’ve decided to spend my life pursuing.  If it wasn’t, it would mean all of the joke thief defenders and heckler supporters are right, that stand-up comedy is some low, disposable form of carnival distraction, a party trick anyone can do.  It’s obviously not.  This debate proves it.  And I don’t want to be on the side of the debate that only argues from its own limited experience.  And I don’t need the sense memory of an actor, or a degree from Columbia, or a moody, desert god to tell me that.

I’m a man.  I get to be wrong.  And I get to change

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Hate Speech


Hate speech

From Wikipedia

Hate speech is, outside the law, communication that vilifies a person or a group based on discrimination against that person or group.[1][2]



In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group. The law may identify a protected individual or a protected group by certain characteristics.[3][4][5][6]

In some countries, a victim of hate speech may seek redress under civil law, criminal law, or both. A website that uses hate speech is called a hate site. Most of these sites contain Internet forums and news briefs that emphasize a particular viewpoint. There has been debate over how freedom of speech applies to the Internet.

Critics have argued that the term "hate speech" is a contemporary example of Newspeak, used to silence critics of social policies that have been poorly implemented in a rush to appear politically correct.[7]
 

CUNT

I want to write for Jezebel, Bust, Jane or Ms. Magazine. Or maybe I should just make this blog the new feminist mag and call it Cunt

Why It’s Okay to Tell Rape Jokes by Roseanne

I disagree with this. When I have time, I will write why.


 
http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2013/06/10/why-it-s-okay-to-tell-rape-jokes.html?source=socialflow&account=thedailybeast&medium=twitter

Monday, June 10, 2013

The Pen is Mightier than the Rape Whistle by Bobbie Oliver

Comedian Jim Norton never sent anyone rape threats. Daniel Tosh never threatened to rape anyone (ok, except that one time). But, their fans sent a barrage of rape and death threats to women who spoke out against them (or in Norton’s case, to a woman who just had a civil debate with him on TV, Lindy West). Joe Rogan seems like a smart caring guy who would never personally hack the comic Jamie Kilstein’s Twitter account and post rape jokes. But, his fans did it with the hashtag #deathsquad during the fight between Rogan and Kilstein.

Why use rape jokes as a form of putting people in their place who disagree with you or “act up”? Why are the fans going that route? Is it only because rape was the topic at hand? Or does it go deeper than that? Can we consider just for a moment the idea that a comic’s words can affect individuals and groups of people. Comics, is it possible that maybe the fans aren’t processing the subtle nuances of your jokes and ideas the way you hoped they would? [Someone came up to me once and said, “I love your Paris Hilton joke.” No!!! It’s a Scooter Libby joke!] A lot of comics believe that feminists are seeing something in their jokes that isn’t there. Could it be that the fans see the same thing the feminists see?

Every comic worth his/her weight in chicken fingers knows that words have power. In the new documentary on Richard Pryor, Paul Mooney said “Richard understood that words are powerful.” If you don’t get that, maybe you should make your living off something other than words. We comics choose words very carefully in our jokes, to create imagery, melody, metaphors, similes, to invoke emotion…. to provide the most bang for our buck. We care so much about words that free speech is our number one issue over all else. Or as Jamie Kilstein sarcastically put it: "As comedians, we don't have health care, get paid shitty, and have no union. The hill we chose to die on was rape jokes."

I am here to protect Lindy West’s free speech. I am here to defend and protect the free speech of the women that spoke out against Daniel Tosh. The issue is not rape jokes. The issue is that people have the right to respond to and have a dialogue about those jokes without getting death threats and rape threats and silenced. Lindy West was not a heckler who went to a comedy club and interrupted a live performance and deserved to be shouted down. She wrote her opinions in Jezebel magazine and, when invited, participated in a televised debate, and then got overwhelmed with threats to her safety for SPEAKING HER OPINION. Her right to free speech is under attack. Comics, to the rescue!!! Um, comics? Comics??

These women and men have the right to respond to art, to anything. But, what are they even going on and on about? What is this rape culture anyway? What does comedy have to do with any of this? The Pen is Mightier than the Sword. Do you believe that comedy, poetry, art, journalism, writing, etc can be forces for good? Do you believe that movements have been started from the powerful words of charismatic leaders? Or sustained in the universal pep talk telling us that we are ok and to stay the course? Richard Pryor and George Carlin had the same thing that Martin Luther King, Jesus, Maya Angelou, John Kennedy and Barack Obama have: words and charisma. 


If you believe that words can be used for good, then why not evil? How can words stir people to act, to respond, to feel? Jokes reinforce the status quo or challenge the status quo. The status quo in our culture (not just “over there”) is that rape is treated differently than other crimes. Rape and rape victims are treated like a joke, dismissed, diminished, questioned, interrogated. It is a common belief that rape accusations are often false, when studies show that rape has no higher a % of false claims than any other crimes and, in fact, is underreported and under-convicted. When people are robbed or murdered, we never hear: Well, why did he go up to the room with him? He must have wanted to get murdered. Why did he wear that expensive watch if he didn’t want his wrist broken and his watch stolen? He flaunts that watch all over town. Watch whore.

MRA groups tout that in domestic violence cases, often the “women started it” by pushing a man and he just pushed her back to defend himself blah blah blah. Cut to your mental picture of Rihanna’s beaten and bloody face. I have heard in conversations about violence against women, men bring up alimony and gold diggers as if a woman’s behavior (however misguided) is an invitation to a beating. In all the mass shootings in America over the past few years, I wonder if any of the victims were gold diggers. C’mon! They clearly had it coming. Especially those kids. Or maybe victims are just victims and the perpetrators are to blame…. Nah!

What did the Stubenville kids hear about rape besides what they were taught in our culture? What they heard was: jokes from comedians that make fun of victims and condone non-consensual sex, the media coming out against sports figure’s rape victims blaming the women’s behavior and doubting their stories, movies that sexualize and glorify rape and other violent crimes and, finally, feminist writers and speakers representing the other side that those kids are not exposed to and would never listen to anyway (because everyone knows feminists are man-hating lesbians who should be threatened with rape for speaking).

In Stubenville, the parents, teachers, law enforcement officials, coaches and friends all thought that the future of those boys were more important than the rape victim and dismissed what happened to her as unimportant and worse, a joke. Now tell yourself this just happens in Stubenville. Anonymous, the group that exposed the Stubenville rape cover-up, stated that they were inundated with requests for help from rape victims all over the country (and the world) after that incident.

We can’t even protect our women in the military. While 1 in 4 civilian women are raped, that number goes up for women in the armed forces. [Men, think about why you are afraid to go to prison] What helped begin to change the attitudes toward rape in the military and how the victims are treated? A documentary: The Invisible War. Art started the change. Words. The pen is mightier than the rape whistle. We can not be silenced. Our very lives depend on free speech.

We are very lucky to have free speech. I could not do my job without this right. It is precious and must be protected. But, if you read the U.S. Constitution, you’ll notice that free speech doesn’t just cover comedians. It includes feminist bloggers, and gasp, any people who don’t agree with you. Comics, while you may still not believe your jokes contribute to culture or that your words have any effect, watch how your fans are reacting to what you are saying. Maybe they aren’t in on the joke. Maybe this issue is complex and the dialogue deserves to be continued. Maybe both sides should be allowed to speak.

Dylan Brody's Neighbor's Couch

Check me out on America's Comedy: my interview on Dylan Brody's Neighbor's Couch regarding the Tao of Comedy and rape jokes 












http://www.americascomedy.com/bobbie-oliver-and-the-tao-of-comedy-interview/

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Lindy West Backlash for Speaking Up



http://jezebel.com/if-comedy-has-no-lady-problem-why-am-i-getting-so-many-511214385

Hilarious comic Paul Cibis regarding rape

Great video. This is how you use comedy for good and not evil 
 
 
 
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_a_d0xqivCc

Psychedelicatessen Radio: Misogyny.0

In case you missed it:
This is a year old, but I never posted it here. 

Chris and Bobbie discuss misogyny in the world of stand up comedy, including recent events involving Daniel Tosh, Adam Carolla and Eddie Brill.



The Rape Joke Debate Between Lindy West and Jim Norton

Lindy West and Jim Norton debate rape jokes 
from this week's Totally Biased 
 




http://t.co/QGze23Yda8