Comedic double standards [View all]

Last edited Mon Jul 16, 2012, 10:31 PM - Edit history (1)

So the news of late has been pretty heavily focused on the comedian Tosh and him making rape jokes against a particular heckler in the audience.

There is a great deal of debate as to whether he should be allowed to say such things and if he should be removed from the air for "taking it too far".

In other words there are some things you just don't joke about.

Ok, I didn't really want to start another Tosh thread. My interest though was in the comparison between that story and this one:

Kind of an old video but I just saw it recently. Anyway it is a clip from The Talk featuring a number of women making repeated and unabashed jokes about a man who had his penis cut off by his deranged wife who then threw it down a disposal (meaning no chance of reattachment).

They laugh about this incident for a good 6 minutes and yet there was hardly any backlash (in fairness Sara Gilbert did have a brief moment of clarity and said this is sexist before being shut down by a joke that the audience seemed to love).

Tosh made an off color joke about a hypothetical attack. He has made the news for many days now and spawned countless debates and at least one petition to see him removed from the air.

A number of female comedians and actresses made a series of jokes about a very real attack that permanently destroyed this mans life and there was virtually no backlash. It was all just good fun.

It would seem that if rape isn't funny then neither is castration. If one is crossing a line that comedians must not cross then so is the other.

So I guess my reason for posting this is to draw attention to this double standard and see if anyone had any theories as to why it exists and what can be done about it.