Tag Archives: men

Delving Deep Inside Amy Schumer

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By Nian Hu

 

The significance of society’s inability to find women funny

It is a (supposedly) well-established fact that women just aren’t funny. As a result, it’s tough being a woman in comedy. Take Amy Schumer, comedian du jour. A talented and unabashed stand up comic and sketch writer, it’s easy to see why everyone is talking about her all of a sudden. In “Last F*ckable Day” she rips apart Hollywood’s sexist treatment of aging actresses. In “Milk Milk Lemonade” she parodies the booty craze. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Her show Inside Amy Schumer is ruthless. She leaves no avenue unspared. She turns left and right, bashing stereotypes and gender roles and sexism and societal hypocrisies. And all the

while, she is downright hilarious.

 

But look down at the comments section, and you might wonder if the commenters just watched the same video you did. Her sketch may be a satire of Bill Cosby fans, but all the commenters can see is her weight and the shapeliness of her legs. Compare this to the comments that male comedians typically receive on their YouTube videos. Commenters on a Louis CK video usually gush over how funny he is and marvel at his talent. But commenters on an Amy Schumer video systematically criticize her weight, call her ugly, compare her to various unflattering animals—and then go on to admire her rear end and discuss the likelihood that he would sleep with her (implicit in this discussion, of course, is the assumption that a talented woman such as herself would have sex with a 40-year old man living in his mother’s basement writing hateful YouTube comments).

 

No discussion about how funny she is. No mention of her talent. Just comment after comment about her body. And Schumer, perceptive as always, has already skewered this relentless objectification in her skit “Twelve Angry Men,” a parody of the classic movie—except this time the men are debating whether or not Schumer is “hot enough for TV.” And through this skit, a deeply depressing truth is revealed: No matter what she does, no matter how many jokes about her own vagina she makes, many people will never see Amy Schumer as funny.

 

And it’s not just Amy Schumer that they have trouble finding funny. It’s women in general. A 2012 study found that most people, men and women alike, tend to ascribe funnier cartoon captions to men rather than to women–even when they’ve already been told the writer was a woman. Simply put, it’s hard for people to see women as funny.

 

But what does it matter, right? As Christopher Hitchens once said, and as Amy Schumer video commenters often echo, maybe women aren’t funny because they’ve never needed to be funny. I mean, it’s just evolution. Throughout the years, as dinosaurs evolved into chickens and as carrier pigeons evolved into iPhones, human males evolved a sense of humor because it got them laid more often. One knock-knock joke, and before he knows it, the lucky man is a father to a litter of funny boys and unfunny girls. Or something like that. Science!

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but while humor is a lot of things, it’s a lot more than just a flirting device used by men to woo women. Sidenote: if “Damn girl, that dress looks good on you but it’d look even better on my bedroom floor” is what you consider humor, consider me unimpressed.

 

No, humor is far more powerful than that. And that’s why it’s important that our society finds it so difficult to put “funny” and “woman” together. Humor—particularly satire—is a tool of social commentary and criticism. It’s a way for people to hold up a mirror in front of society’s face and point out all the pockmarks. Women, of all people, know that society is deeply flawed. When we routinely get paid less than our male colleagues, and , and when the length of our skirts determines whether or not we deserve to live—well, how could we not turn to humor to shine a light on society’s failings? It sucks to acknowledge these truths, but it sucks even more to pretend they don’t exist. And one way of making it suck less is by using comedy to reveal how shitty life is sometimes. And that’s a huge part of the reason why Amy Schumer has been so successful, with sketches like “Girl, You Don’t Need No Makeup” making fun of unrealistic “natural beauty” expectations and sketches like “Hello M’Lady” satirising those pushy guys convinced they’re in the “friendzone.” They get people to laugh, but they get them to start thinking, too.

 

So the question is not so much, “Can women be funny?” Humor, like most things in life, is subjective. Clearly I find Amy Schumer hilarious, but her style of humor is definitely not for everybody. The real question we should be asking is, “Why does that matter?” Why does it matter that most people find it so hard to believe that women can be funny?

It matters because humor is the voice, and oppression is the joke. And when you say “women aren’t funny,” you’re essentially silencing an entire population by telling them their voice isn’t important, and their oppression isn’t real. Society’s inability to find women funny isn’t just an antique strips them of a vital weapon.

The Definition of Rape–Bring men into the conversation

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By Nian Hu

(Nian Hu ’18, Student of Harward, a Crimson editorial executive)

 

Femme Fatale

Rape (noun)–”unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.”

 

For decades, women have been taught how to prevent rape from happening to them. Women learn that they can prevent rape if they abide by an extensive set of rules: Don’t forget to carry a rape whistle or pepper spray. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t leave your drink uncovered. Actually, just don’t drink at all. Don’t wear anything provocative. Don’t stay out late. Don’t go anywhere without an escort. Don’t go to frat parties. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.

 

If you forget any of these things, however, all bets are off. Too drunk? Asking for it. Wearing a short skirt? Asking for it. Passed out unconscious? Asking for it.

 

But this begs the inevitable question: Why are women always being taught how to avoid rape, but men are never taught—quite simply—to not rape?

 

It’s impossible to teach men to not rape, the argument goes. There will always be rapists. There’s nothing you can do about it except make sure that you’re not their next victim. Women need to be cautious and vigilant, always armed and prepared to prevent a rape. Take proper precautions, and you should be safe. Fail to take proper precautions, and then you only have yourself to blame when you get raped. After all, if you leave a Ferrari in a bad neighborhood and it gets stolen by thieves, that’s nobody’s fault but your own. What else would you expect when you leave such a tempting object in front of people with no self-control and no moral compass?

 

But this logic is fundamentally unsound and preposterous. Women are not Ferraris. They are human beings. When you compare a woman to a Ferrari, you’re dehumanizing and objectifying her—she’s no longer an individual with thoughts and feelings at that point, she’s just a pair of breasts and a vagina. You cannot compare the theft of an inanimate object to the physical assault and violation of a living, breathing human being. There is absolutely no comparison.

 

I am not a Ferrari. I am a human being. And the only time I’m asking for it is when I actually open up my mouth and ask for it.

 

But there’s something even more crucially flawed in this logic, an aspect that is often overlooked. It’s the fundamental assumption that men are inherently monsters. In arguing that women need to be taught how to avoid rape, it presupposes that rape is inevitable, that men have no self-control. It presupposes that men simply won’t be able to help themselves from taking advantage of a woman.

 

And in this way, the rape culture is just as unfair and insidious to men as it is to women. Women may be the Ferraris, shiny pretty inanimate objects, but men are the thieves, monsters with no self-control and no moral compass.

 

And this notion is not unique to the rape culture. This idea is reinforced over and over again in society. The popular saying “boys will be boys” tells men that society doesn’t expect anything better from them. Society expects them to be aggressive and stoic and hyper-masculine, always getting into trouble and making a mess. Anything less would make them a “pussy” or “gay.” Society expects men to be the troublemakers and mess-makers of the world, and then expects women to be the ones to clean up their mess. And that’s not fair to either of us.

 

We need to get rid of this underlying assumption that men are inherently aggressive and violent without a shred of self-control or morality. Only then can we see that it is indeed possible to teach men to not rape.

 

Right now, boys and men are not fully included in conversations about rape. At the University of Iowa, at a discussion about sexual assault, women pulled out the weapons and objects that they carry every day to keep themselves safe—and while none of the women were surprised by the number of rape whistles and cans of pepper spray in the room, the men were shocked. That was probably the first time these men were actively involved in a discussion about sexual assault.

 

Furthermore, studies have found that a lot of men don’t think rape is rape. In a 2014 study, researchers discovered that while only 13.6 percent of men said they would rape a woman, 31.7 percent said they would force a woman to have sexual intercourse. The 20-point divide suggests that many men don’t exactly know what rape means. They don’t even realize that what they’re doing is considered rape. It suggests that we have a lot of work to do in terms of educating men on rape and consent and including them in these discussions.

 

We need to stop putting so much of the onus of rape on girls and women, and start bringing boys and men into the conversation as well. For decades, women have been taught how to prevent rape from happening to them. It’s high time we start teaching men how to not rape and how to have consensual sex instead.

 

Consent (noun)–”permission for something to happen or agreement to do something.”

 

Caption of picture : Nian Hu in 2013 Winter in NY.