Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=csos20 Download by: [University of Denver - Main Library] Date: 07 January 2016, At: 10:32 Social Semiotics ISSN: 1035-0330 (Print) 1470-1219 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csos20 Debating rape jokes vs. rape culture: framing and counter-framing misogynistic comedy Raúl Pérez & Viveca S. Greene To cite this article: Raúl Pérez & Viveca S. Greene (2016): Debating rape jokes vs. rape culture: framing and counter-framing misogynistic comedy, Social Semiotics, DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2015.1134823 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2015.1134823 Published online: 06 Jan 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data
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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=csos20
Download by: [University of Denver - Main Library] Date: 07 January 2016, At: 10:32
Debating rape jokes vs. rape culture: framing andcounter-framing misogynistic comedy
Raúl Pérez & Viveca S. Greene
To cite this article: Raúl Pérez & Viveca S. Greene (2016): Debating rape jokes vs. rapeculture: framing and counter-framing misogynistic comedy, Social Semiotics, DOI:10.1080/10350330.2015.1134823
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2015.1134823
Debating rape jokes vs. rape culture: framing and counter-framing misogynistic comedyRaúl Péreza and Viveca S. Greeneb
aDepartment of Sociology and Criminology, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA; bSchool of Humanities,Arts & Cultural Studies, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, USA
ABSTRACTHumor controversies can simultaneously reveal and obscurerelations of power, as well as the rhetorical/political nature ofjokes. US comedian Daniel Tosh ignited one such controversy inJuly 2012 when he directed a rape joke toward a female audiencemember during a live performance in Hollywood, CA. This paperconsists of a two-part analysis of this humor controversy. First, weexamine a televised debate following this incident, between acomedian and feminist, to map the dominant framing andcounter-framing of rape jokes. We contend these positions arerepresentative of two frames that repeatedly surface in responseto controversial sexist humor: a dominant patriarchal frame and anoppositional feminist counter-frame. Second, we analyze thesaliency of these two frames among college students to observethe way individual interpretations resonate with, challenge, andcomplicate those frames. In light of our findings, we argue thedominant framing/interpretation of rape jokes reinforcepatriarchal and free-market ideologies, and deny real-worldimplications of misogynistic humor, particularly when comedians/audiences defend such jokes as harmless fun.
Twenty-first century America does not have a rape culture; what we have is an out-of-controllobby leading the public and our educational and political leaders down the wrong path.Rape-culture theory is doing little to help victims, but its power to poison the minds ofyoung women and lead to hostile environments for innocent males is immense. (Kitchens2014)
When we talk about rape culture, we’re discussing something more implicit than [a societythat outwardly promotes rape]. We’re talking about cultural practices [… ] that excuse orotherwise tolerate sexual violence. We’re talking about the way that we collectively thinkabout rape. More often than not, it’s situations in which sexual assault, rape, and general vio-lence are ignored, trivialized, normalized, or made into jokes. (Ridgeway 2014)
Introduction
Humor controversies can simultaneously reveal, deflect, and obscure relations of power, aswell as the rhetorical/political nature of jokes. US comedian Daniel Tosh ignited one suchcontroversy in July 2012 through a live stand-up performance at the Laugh Factory in
Hollywood, CA. During his performance, Tosh discussed the humor of rape jokes, and anaudience member yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” The comedian report-edly responded “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by, like, five guys? Like rightnow?” (McGlynn 2012). Controversy ensued as comedians, bloggers and media outletsdefended (Corneau 2012) or condemned (Halper 2012) Tosh. Although Tosh later apolo-gized, the incident crystallized into a televised debate regarding rape jokes, betweencomedian Jim Norton and feminist blogger Lindy West, on the cable show TotallyBiased with W. Kamau Bell.
In this paper, we examine the ideological frames (Van Dijk 2006) Norton and West drawupon in the “Comic vs. Feminist” debate, to map the boundaries of the current dominantframing and counter-framing of rape jokes in the US. According to Goffman, frames areessential in organizing experience by allowing individuals “to locate, perceive, identify,and label” objects and events (1974, 21). Frames, however, are not individually held butculturally shared and evolving. They are a collective resource that allow individuals to“make sense” of everyday life, often from conflicting perspectives (Levin, Schneider, andGaeth 1998; Snow 2004). We contend Norton’s and West’s positions are representativeof two frames that repeatedly surface in response to controversial sexist humor: a domi-nant patriarchal frame and an oppositional feminist counter-frame.
Moreover, we analyze in-depth interviews with college students regarding their viewsof both Tosh’s humor and his rape joke controversy to investigate the relative salience ofthese two competing frames among audiences. Examining audience reactions allows us tomove from what Lewis (1994) describes as “the art of the possible” to “the realm of histori-cal specificity” (19–20).
The goals of our study are to examine the ways individual audience interpretations res-onate with, challenge, and complicate the dominant framing and counter-framing of mis-ogynistic humor. Because jokes are rhetorical (Weaver 2010), jokes are political in nature,as are responses to jokes. The rhetorical function of patriarchal rape jokes is ostensibly toconvince the audience of the idea that rape, a brutal and violent act, can be funny, enter-taining and unserious (Kramer 2011). In light of our findings, we argue the dominantframing and interpretation of rape jokes reinforce patriarchal and free-market ideologiesand denies the real-world implications of misogynistic humor (Bemiller and Schneider2010; Ford, Wentzel, and Lorion 2001).
Humor as rhetorical and political
A common defense of offensive humor is that it is “just a joke.” As Davies (2004), a leadingproponent of this position, asserts:
Jokes, it is held, are disguised forms of aggression. They are not. Jokes, it is argued, are power-ful. They are not. Jokes have never brought about any significant social or political change.Jokes, it is said, may if unchecked have dire social and political consequences. Nonsense(Davies 2004, 3).
From this perspective, jokes have no real or significant social consequence. Objecting tojokes infringes on the rights of individuals in general, humorists in particular, to expresstheir sense of humor, however harmful it may be.
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Yet, the rhetorical function of humor is revealed in its attempt to move a listener “fromserious mode to humorous mode” (Smith 2009). Comedians frame discourse to be inter-preted in a particular way, the expected outcome being laughter. Assuming a joke is onethe listener can readily decipher, the listener can either display laughter, signaling a certaindegree of acceptance and/or affinity with the joke teller (Fine and Soucey 2005), or“unlaughter” (Billig 2005), a conscious withholding of laughter as a form of resistance.Here, the political nature of humor becomes evident by the capacity of humor to uniteand/or divide interlocutors (Meyer 2000; Mintz 1999). Greenbaum (1999) similarly con-tends that a comic act is “an inherently rhetorical discourse” that is designed to “convincethe audience to look at the world through their comic vision” (33). As a rhetorical and pol-itical discourse, Meyer (2000) further suggests divisive humor “can unify a group participat-ing in it” (323).
For instance, a critical assessment of Tosh’s rape joke illustrates the rhetorical/politicalnature of his joke. The joke directed at the female audience member presumably disrupt-ing his routine (“Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by, like, five guys? Like rightnow?”) was both a display of power and an invitation for others to laugh at her. Hisjoke of choice reinforced dominant gender roles between aggressive masculinity and sub-missive femininity. Tosh ostensibly used his rape joke to ridicule/discipline the audiencemember to quell her criticism. That is, Tosh sought to win the audience to his side. The“unlaughter” of the audience member and her sympathizers was a form of resistance tothe performer. The uniting and dividing function of the joke was realized in the comedycommunity through the public support for and opposition to Tosh. As Willis (2005)observes, communities are often divided when the “seemingly simple pleasure of crackingjokes” is transformed into an arena of controversy (144). During such conflicts, a “dominantinterpretation” often emerges and is upheld by those “in a position to enforce a particularmeaning” (145).
Sexist humor in society
It is important to understand the ideological work that sexist/rape jokes and their circula-tion accomplish. Sexist jokes reflect and reinforce “a binary gender system where men andwomen are inherently different, and men are accorded more value” (Bemiller and Schnei-der 2010, 462). Bemiller and Schneider further contend that women are in a “double bind”when confronted with sexist jokes:
Women are left with two options – laugh at the joke or express dismay at the joke’s content…If she laughs, she is complicit in her own group’s humiliation. If she does not laugh then she isa “spoiled sport,” someone with no sense of humor… In either case, she is hurt in the socialencounter… . she has experienced subordination. (2010, 463)
Jokes that target women by demeaning and devaluing their personal and professionalattributes, or that sexually objectify women, including through sexual violence, reinforceand normalize gender inequality and the subordination of women to men (Bemiller andSchneider 2010).
Research suggests the ideological and identity work of sexist/rape jokes also has real-world consequences. For instance, Ford (2000) finds exposure to sexist humor increasestolerance of discrimination against women. And increasingly, scholars find a connection
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between sexist humor, sexual harassment, discrimination, and tolerance for sexual vio-lence and rape proclivity (Ford et al. 2008; Romero-Sánchez et al. 2010; Ryan and Kanjorski1998; Thomae and Viki 2013).
Such humor is not uncontested. Today, with social media at their disposal, critical andtech-savvy audiences have taken to the internet to voice their opposition. Kramer (2011),for instance, examined hundreds of online debates over the use of rape jokes. Accordingto Kramer, the core of these debates is the identity-work performed by those who thinkrape jokes can be humorous vs. those who take offense. Although Kramer offers an insight-ful examination of the discursive structures of these debates among anonymous commen-ters, Kramer’s analysis largely focuses on the performativity of political identities, ratherthan analyzing the ideological frames that sustain these debates.
In what follows, we examine the ideological framing and counter-framing of rape/sexistjokes among a prominent male comedian, a feminist critic, and US undergraduate stu-dents to illustrate how “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005;Donaldson 1993), or a dominant patriarchal frame, mediates a discourse of acceptabilityamong male and female participants in same-sex interview settings. We examine thisdominant frame alongside a feminist counter-frame that regards such humor as constitu-tive of rape culture, what Ridgeway (2014) describes as “cultural practices [… ] that excuseor otherwise tolerate sexual violence.”
Data and methods
On 30 May 2013, Jim Norton and Lindy West participated in a segment titled “Comedianvs. Feminist” on the FX cable talk show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, with Norton ful-filling the comedian role, West the feminist role, and Bell serving as moderator. The 16-minute video debate explored rape humor in the context of artistic intent and censorship.We use frame analysis (Goffman 1974; Johnston 1995; Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth 1998)and critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk 1993, 2006) to outline and examine the dominantframing and counter-framing of rape jokes in the debate. The frames examined belowemerged from a close reading and analysis of the debate and interview transcriptions.
According to Johnston (1995) “frame analysis is about how cognitive processing ofevents, objects, and situations gets done in order to arrive at an interpretation” (218).By “cognitive processing,” discourse analysts typically refer not to individual cognition,but “social cognition,” or a shared understanding about how the social world operates.Ideological frames, contends Van Dijk (2006), play a key role in social cognition as theyare not stored privately, but shared socially; they ground and organize social represen-tations. Van Dijk argues that through systematic examination of text and talk we cananalyze how events are interpreted according to particular ideologies (1993). Labels, likeframes, are also crucial both in the interpretation of jokes and the ideological positionsthat sustain them. For instance, although this televised debate occurred on a politicallyleft-leaning comedy program, the title “Comic vs. Feminist” reinforces a dichotomybetween presumably “fun-loving comics” and “humorless feminists.” In this way, humorreveals its capacity to discipline joker, target and audience (Billig 2005).
Alongside our mapping of the competing ideological frames in the debate, we examinecollege student responses to both Tosh’s show and the controversial incident, in order toanalyze how audience responses resonate with the two competing frames (Levin,
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Schneider, and Gaeth 1998). Currently in its eighth season, Tosh.0 (2009–present) is “thetop entertainment series across all of TV among men 18–24 on Tuesday nights” (O’Connell2013). On his video-clip comedy show, Tosh serves up 7–8 video-clips, offering commen-tary, jokes, and ridicule similar to the disparaging comments often posted in response tosimilar online videos. Frequent targets on the show are people of color, overweight indi-viduals, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender individuals, and, most consistently,women.
Students interviewed for this study were recruited through announcements in market-ing, communication, and African American studies undergraduate classes at a large North-eastern university in the US. Advertised simply as a “Comedy Central Audience Study,” theinterviews were conducted between September 2013 and March 2014. A majority of thestudents were familiar with the show, indicating they had seen “most” or “many” episodesprior to the interview. Participants’ ages ranged from 19 to 21, reflective of the show’starget audience, young adults. Groups ranged from 2 to 6 students. There were 23 partici-pants in total, 6 male and 17 female, and groups were divided by sex. We included a dis-proportionate number of female students as we sought to explore how participants on thereceiving end of sexist jokes incorporated and/or contested a dominant patriarchal frame.Many participants attended with a friend, and one group consisted entirely of friends. Thisselection strategy warrants mention as research suggests participants are more likely tospeak openly and honestly when surrounded by in-group members (Eliasoph 1998).
After viewing an episode of Tosh.0 (“Hey Baby Girl,” Season 5, Episode 11), groups wereasked open-ended questions (e.g. What did you think of the show in general?), allowingthe participants to “impose their own definitions and frameworks of interpretation uponthe subject under discussion” (Lewis 1991, 80). The interviewer then asked participantsto elaborate their responses. In several groups, participants introduced the LaughFactory incident on their own. In groups where participants did not mention the incident,the interviewer asked participants if they heard about it. The interviews were audiorecorded. All participant names have been changed.
Dominant patriarchal frame
Examining the dominant patriarchal frame, we begin with US comedian Jim Norton’sdefense of rape jokes as innocuous and intended to amuse. A number of interwoven dis-courses comprise this frame. Here we draw attention to three and address how under-graduate students echoed/employed similar discourses in the interviews: (1)intentionality, (2) speech has no effect, and (3) let the market decide.
“If you’re trying to be funny, you’re ok”
Norton upholds the dominant patriarchal frame by maintaining intentionality as key tounderstanding why rape jokes are harmless. The discourse of intentionality surfaces fre-quently when a given speech act is deemed inappropriate by others. It is used rhetoricallyby the speaker to deny ill-intent (Van Dijk 2006). It suggests meaning resides with thespeaker, an idea literary theorists refer to as “authorial intent.” The discourse of intention-ality maintains that as long as a comedian is “trying to be funny,” no harm is done, and noaudience can legitimately claim offense.
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Throughout the “Comic vs. Feminist” debate, Norton employs the intentionality dis-course as a way to defend his position that jokes have no serious social consequence,and that a reasonable audience can distinguish between humor and hate. Nortonapplies this logic to rape jokes told on stage:
I just think as long as you’re trying to be funny you’re okay… as long as your intention is to befunny. I think that we all go into a comedy club knowing that, and there’s a great differencebetween even a harsh rape joke and saying, “All kidding aside folks [taps table] rape is good.”Like we all know the difference between that and, and comedy. (emphasis added)
By employing universal language (e.g. “we all”), Norton works to normalize a dominantandrocentric framing of rape jokes by homogenizing audience interpretation ofcomedic performances. This rhetorical move positions intentionality as “obvious to every-one,” thus shielding potential criticism from audience members.
During the interviews, students relied heavily on the intentionality discourse in theirinterpretation of Tosh.0:
Jenna (white female): [T]he show is not intending to hurt people’s feelings.Hillary (white female): [I]t’s a comedy show, it’s on Comedy Central so you know
they’re joking. It’s not something to take personally.Jackie (Black female): I guess in a way comedy kind of promotes… being offensive or
being ignorant towards people. But, I mean, the way I see it it’sjust all for the sake of comedy. I don’t think [comedy] is reallymeant to hurt people?
Although Jackie showed some concern about the effect of disparaging comedy, she wasuncertain about her position and ultimately suggested what matters are the intentionsbehind comedic performances.
Again, the intentionality discourse privileges the comic’s intentions over audiencemembers’ personal experiences/criticism. Asked directly about Tosh’s rape joke contro-versy, one white male student responded, “If you’re gay or whatever, don’t go to acomedy thing because there’s a good chance someone’s gonna offend you.” In otherwords, despite the intentions of a performer, mainstream comedy is a space where a het-eronormative order dominates.
“Comedy is not a cause of what happens in society”
A second discourse used by Norton to support a dominant patriarchal frame is the speechhas no effect discourse. As Norton contends:
Comedy is not a cause of what happens in society; a lot of times it’s a reaction to what’s hap-pening and a reflection of what’s happening, and comic speech has never inspired violence.
Norton reflects Davies’ (2004) position by reiterating that jokes are harmless. However,Norton argues that while there are no negative social consequences to humor, thereare positive social benefits to telling/laughing at offensive humor:
I understand why rape is an offensive awful thing, no one is saying it’s not. But sometimescomedy does trivialize what is truly horrible. [… ] The relief of comedy is that it takes
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things that aren’t funny and it allows us to laugh about them for an hour and then we have therest of the day to look at them like they’re as horrible and sad as they really are.
The idea that jokes provide positive cognitive/emotional functions is reflected in muchcontemporary humor scholarship that seeks to highlight the benefits of humor (Billig2005). Yet, in a society where one-in-five women is the victim of sexual violence (CDC2012), rape jokes do not merely offer momentary comic relief for a “truly horrible” act.As research suggests, such jokes can also normalize and increase tolerance for sexual vio-lence against women (Ford 2000; Romero-Sánchez et al. 2010; Thomae and Viki 2013).Moreover, it is important to note that there is a significant difference between humordeployed/defended by in-group vs. out-group members, if used by those higher vs.lower on the social hierarchy, and whether such jokes are used to support or oppressthe target1 (Billig 2005; Lewis 2006; Lockyer and Pickering 2005; Pérez 2013).
Among male participants, the idea that jokes were harmless regardless of the identity/social position of the teller/target was widely accepted. However, they often noted thatTosh had to deliver his jokes strategically to circumvent opposition from targeted/offended groups. As Ian (Hispanic male) explained:
[He’s] not just making fun of one specific group, like a group of white people, or whoever it is. Imean if it was him just targeting one specific group, he definitely wouldn’t get away with it, ifhe was always making Black jokes or making fat jokes. He kinda takes on the whole spectrum.
Likewise, white female students initially relied on this “equal-opportunity offender”2 dis-course to condone Tosh’s humor:
(Laurel, white female): [Tosh] targets so many different groups who he makes fun of. I feel likeevery episode it’s not like only gay people or only females or something like that, so I feel likethat’s when it doesn’t matter ‘cause there are ten other groups that he’s making fun of at thesame time, so I feel like no one ends up feeling that bad.
According to Laurel and others operating within this frame, making fun of a particularsocial group “doesn’t matter” so long as others are also targeted. The discourse aroundequal-opportunity offenders – and the related discourse of intentionality – are thus inver-sely related to the notion that speech has an effect. That is, the more a receiver believesthe author is well intentioned, and makes fun of an array of social groups, the less likely thereceiver will view the author’s jokes as harmful. As the following section illustrates, viewinghumor from this perspective readily lends itself to free-market ideology.
“Let the market decide”
We refer to a third discourse Norton relies on as let the market decide. According to thisdiscourse, the audience should decide what is offensive, not critics who are regarded asover-reactive, pro-censorship, and eager to impose their agendas on an unwillingpublic. From this perspective, the audience should be understood as atomized individuals,rather than social groups with conflicting interests and different social positions. Nortonreinforced this discourse when discussing the cancelation of his controversial US talk-radio show “Opie and Anthony”:
A lot of times the trouble people will do is if you’re doing jokes they don’t like they beginto target your advertisers – because the market should dictate whether or not people enjoy
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you – but they’ll go to the advertisers and say, “they’re making fun of things that we don’t like,so remove your financial support,” which is a way to punish.
Norton expressed hostility over organized opposition from offended audiences, object-ing to the idea that audiences have a right to “punish” performers by targetingfinancial resources. He views such resistance as orchestrated interference by groupsintervening in an otherwise functional laissez-faire discursive exchange. Nortonimplies “getting in trouble” is a form of censorship. Ultimately, he contends allcomedy must be tolerated, as there is no reasonable way to draw the line in a freespeech/free-market society:
I think like Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] said – from South Park – it’s either all okay or none ofit’s okay… . If we go down that road of “hey don’t make fun of this, don’t make fun of that”then people have a very legit argument to be like “well don’t mention Hitler in any context,because there’s never a humorous” – so I’m just not comfortable going down that road.
This all-or-nothing position on jokes suggests that an unregulated form of discourse is ulti-mately democratic. From this perspective, rape jokes, however vulgar, are fair game.
Students, for the most part, held audience members responsible for their reactions. AsZoe (white female) asked rhetorically: “It’s like, what do you expect when you watch it?You’re doing this to yourself, you don’t HAVE to hear it.” Jack (white male) noted with cer-tainty that Tosh delivers what he wants as an audience member. Explaining what he likesabout the show, Jack said:
The fact that [Tosh] pushes the boundaries. [… ] I don’t think he’s too funny, but some of thestuff he says, he pushes it, and I think people want to see that. I think people want to see howfar people will push it on TV.
Jack found Tosh more rebellious than humorous, and believed that “boundary pushing” iswhat pulls in other audience members to his show.
“Letting the market decide”was a powerful discourse both Norton and students used tolift responsibility from joke tellers. The underlying logic in this discourse is that all voicescarry equal weight in the marketplace of ideas. That individuals can simply tune in or out.However, as the feminist counter-frame suggests, misogynistic humor is deeply imbeddedin an unequal social system where the boundaries between media and reality, fun and vio-lence, are increasingly blurred. Audiences can tune out specific programs or entertainers,but not the larger cultural and structural inequalities in society.
Oppositional feminist counter-frame
Blogger Lindy West operates largely within an oppositional feminist counter-frame. Accord-ing to this frame, uncritical rape jokes are an endorsement of sexual violence, as suchhumor contributes to rape culture. Moreover, such jokes do not exist in a politicalvacuum. Rather, they are powerful forms of language that can shape people’s views on,and acceptance of, rape and sexism. Here we draw attention to three discourses usedby West to counter the dominant patriarchal frame, and address how participantsemployed/failed to employ similar discourses in interviews: (1) the fallacy of authorialintention, (2) the cultural impact of misogynistic humor, and (3) the questionable legiti-macy of ratings-driven media.
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“Intention is a false argument”
An oppositional feminist counter-frame rejects the notion that meaning is anchored inauthorial (or comedic) intention. It also repositions the arbitrator from one who identifieswith the male comic to one who identifies with female audience members. As West tellsNorton:
I’m sure it’s super comfortable and nice to believe that there aren’t systemic forces that areaffected by speech, but that’s not true and those of us who are affected by those forcesknow that that’s not true.
From the perspective of the intentionality discourse, the receiver either successfullydecodes the intended meaning or misreads the true intentions of the author. For dis-course that is ambivalent, like humor, the author/comedian can always assert that ajoke was misinterpreted when challenged (Weaver 2011). West rejects Norton’s argu-ment that intentionality matters, however, by noting that his “comfortable” positionas a white male comedian prevents him from recognizing the “systemic forces thatare affected by speech” regardless of intention. In other words, her rejection of theintentionality discourse is closely tied to her rejection of the speech has no effectdiscourse.
In the Totally Biased debate, West explicitly challenges the notion that speech has noeffect, but fails to fully articulate a counter-discourse to intentionality. Elsewhere,however, she critiques white male comedians and the intentionality discourse:
It’s not a game. It’s not like you get to declare the comedy stage “base” and the rest of theworld “hot lava”… and everything you say on the stage exists in some sacred loopholethat’s exempt from criticism… Rape, domestic violence, brutalization, marginalization, thestruggle to make yourself heard – all of this shit is REAL to a lot of people. They’re not cutelittle thought experiments for you to mess around with without pushback. (West 2013a)
Like West, other feminist and anti-racist writers have objected to the intentionality dis-course, and in recent years have employed terms like “hipster racism” and “hipstersexism” to refer to the practice of presumably liberal whites/males making derogatoryjokes about people of color and women under the guise of irony or satire (see Greene2012; Peterson 2008; Van Kerckhove 2007).
Although several students, especially female students of color, were likewise critical ofdisparaging humor inside and outside a comedic setting, they had difficulty challengingthe discourse of intentionality. Gloria (Black female), offered a rare critique:
You know how when somebody bullies somebody and there’s like a crowd of people andthey’re saying mean stuff and everybody laughs? I think that’s how like [Tosh.O] is kind ofintended, like he’s the bully person, he’s the one that says the mean stuff, but like every-one’s on his side so they’re laughing at what he’s saying even though it’s offensive. So Ifeel like that’s how maybe the show came about or, you know, the meaning behind it.
In contrast to Norton’s assertion that the comic’s sense of humor reflects their good inten-tions, Gloria’s characterization of Tosh as a popular bully suggests that an uncriticalreading of the show/character ignores the political functions of humor, particularly inthe form of ridicule (Billig 2005), and renders the comic as harmless when audiences“take his side.”
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“Contributing to a culture that perpetuates rape”
West responds to Norton’s claim that speech has no effect by noting that women are oftensilenced around sexual assault. Clearly frustrated with Norton and the argument thatcomedy is harmless, she counters:
You don’t get to say that uh, “comedy is this sacred powerful vital thing that we have toprotect, because it’s speaking truth to power [… ],” and then also be like “well, it’s just ajoke, I mean language doesn’t affect our lives at all, so shut up.”
Pointing out this contradiction, West then explains how, despite claims of gender equality,women remain unsafe in contemporary society and that rape jokes contribute to a broaderculture that tolerates sexual violence against women. Critical scholars have worked tomake similar connections between sexist jokes and sexual violence against women.Thomae and Viki (2013), for instance, found that sexist attitudes and self-reported rapeproclivity are correlated with exposure and tolerance of sexist humor (264). However,such studies/findings are generally unpublicized and unknown.
Female students had difficulty working through conflicting feelings and attitudesregarding misogynistic jokes and their relationship to gender inequality and sexual vio-lence. Most white female participants reported liking Tosh, but also consistently reportedfeeling upset and unsafe when other people, especially strangers, told similar jokes in “reallife.” However, as interviews with white female students progressed, they began thinkingmore critically about comedy and expressed uncertainty about how comedians’ jokesactually differ from those told by strangers. As Eileen (white female) noted:
If I heard something like [a sexist Tosh joke] on the bus and I didn’t know them or know thatthey were maybe quoting such-and-such, I would be like “this guy, what a douchebag!” Like,why would you say that in public to so many people? But that’s exactly what [Tosh] is doing!
During the interview Eileen moved from clearly delineating two contexts (real life vs.comedy) to suggesting the two cannot be so easily separated. Prior to, or in theabsence of, such reflection the mediating stage/screen provided a sense of distanceand safety to white female viewers, which was absent when jokes were told in everydaycontexts. That mediated distance and its scripted nature allow audiences to readily inter-pret such discourses from a dominant patriarchal frame.
The unmediated and seemingly unscripted rape joke Tosh told at the Laugh Factoryblurred these boundaries, and female students discussed it with ambivalence. Forinstance, Elsa (white/Asian) recounted her understanding of the incident:
There was something where [Tosh] made a rape joke and then someone in the audience didn’tthink it was funny, and she actually like challenged him, and I think he did something where hesaid he would invite guys in the audience to go and rape her, but that it was just a joke.
When asked what she thought of the incident, Elsa took a position of ambivalence thatwas common among female respondents: “Rape is really something that’s like awful, soI can see from both sides, that it’s just a joke. But at the same time it’s really not somethingthat should be joked about.” Despite this ambivalence, the fact that Elsa simultaneouslyevaluated Tosh’s comments as “just a joke” and as an invitation for men to rape a specificwoman suggests she senses that jokes can also be threats and can have effects, thoughshe was unable to fully reconcile these two positions.
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Another way students gestured toward, or addressed, the real-life effects of sexist /rapejokes was through the language of desensitization. Participants in three of the four femaleinterview groups used the word “desensitized” to describe their feelings. Take thefollowing:
Anne (white female): I feel like we’re desensitized to it. [… ]. I don’t take it personally, whichmaybe is a bad thing; maybe we should take these things personally –well, not personally, butlike “it’s not okay that people are still talking about women like this.” But it’s such a big thingthat people do? You just kind of go along with it?
However tentatively, female students suggested the unchallenged prevalence of misogy-nistic humor created greater tolerance of sexist discourse not just among males but alsoamong women. As Krahé et al. contend, this is precisely how desensitization operates, as it“is a process involving changes in emotional responsiveness” that stem from “repeatedexposure” (2011, 631).
Anderson (2012) argues that this experience of accepting jokes about sexual assault is acentral component of rape culture:
Rape is invoked as entertainment, dismissed as “horsing around,” and deployed as a weapon.Although the victims of rape culture are disproportionately female, it negatively affects every-one caught in its wake. Rape culture first desensitizes, then degrades, and finally dehumanizesits subjects, prompting regular people to blithely laugh at rape jokes.
Although some of the language female students employed, including “desensitized,” indi-cated they were partially aware of the way continued exposure to sexism increased theiracceptance of it, they were largely unable to articulate a critique of misogynistic humorfrom a feminist counter-frame. Students were notably uncomfortable with embracing fem-inism as a mode of critique, and had difficulty stepping outside the dominant patriarchalframe and rejecting it.
Perhaps one reason students were so hesitant to align themselves with feminism, or tomake use of feminist discourse, is because “feminism” is often ridiculed in patriarchalculture, and feminists are routinely described as “humorless” (Franzini 1996). In this way,anti-feminist discourse and humor work to discipline and steer otherwise criticallyoriented individuals away from an openly feminist position, and reinforces a feminist/comic binary. Yet, simply through an open-ended interview process in same-sex groups,young women began to note how misogynistic humor can reinforce harmful attitudestowards women. They articulated their discomfort with jokes about violent acts againstwomen and saw a connection between jokes on stage/screen and jokes in real life. Inother words, they began to consciously recognize that continuous exposure to misogynis-tic humor leaves them feeling desensitized to troubling attitudes about women, gender,and power.
“If you want to make that product… I can choose to call you a dick”
Illustrating how powerful anti-censorship discourse is in the US, West struggled to counterNorton’s laissez-faire notion of letting the market dictate the acceptability of misogynistichumor in public. For instance, although West suggested there should be consequences forjokes that cross the line, she was quick to assert she was not advocating censorship:
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[E]verything has repercussions, so if you’re talking about legal repercussions… I do not thinkthat comedy should be censored and we’re not here to talk about censorship and I’m prettysure we agree.
Here, West was caught between her professional commitments as a writer to upholdfreedom of expression, and her ideological values as a feminist critic/activist dutifullytaking a public position on the power of language to harm marginalized groups.However, by failing to take a stronger position, her counter-argument in this debateremained underdeveloped:
What I’m talking about is the kind of repercussions where you choose to say something thattraumatizes a person who’s already been victimized and then I choose to call you a dick andthat’s the repercussions.
Publicly challenging speech acts in a society that extols free speech is, in some sense, nosmall feat. Were she to advocate “censorship,”West would risk alienating her position as afeminist journalist struggling to convince an audience that rape jokes are socially harmful.Therefore, West concludes “more speech” is the solution to disparaging humor. However,as a review of US comedy history suggests, it is possible to successfully challenge racialridicule (Kibler 2015; Pérez 2014). From boycotts and pickets of venues and performers,to interrupting performances by taking over the stage, the targets of racial ridicule haveoften used collective action, not just more speech, to challenge oppressive humor. Suchactions are precisely what Norton considers foul play, as his comments regarding listeners’boycotts of his radio show’s advertisers demonstrate. Nevertheless, given the ideologicaldominance of Norton’s free-market logic, West had difficulty challenging it by failing tonote such collective efforts to contest oppressive humor.
For most students, a critique of free-market logic regarding humor was largely out ofreach. Of 23 students interviewed, only 2 countered the discourse of letting the marketdecide, and both did so in the context of discussions about racial as well as gender rep-resentation on Tosh.0. As Gloria (Black female) observed:
[E]ven though he’s highly rated I don’t know if that’s a good thing. It might be a bad thing, youknow! Youmight be highly rated for the wrong reasons, but in media it doesn’t really matter aslong as you’re being watched. So it could be like he’s being really offensive, people areoffended and they keep watching it, but he knows that he’s being offensive so he keepsbeing offensive to get more ratings.
In another group, Willa (Black/Latina female) also rejected an uncritical belief in “themarket.” Asked how Tosh might have a top-rated show given the offensive nature ofhis comedy, Willa responded with exasperation:
[A]s long as they’re making their money they don’t care what’s on the air… as long as it’sbringing in a profit… I feel like [Tosh] does know better, but he just doesn’t care… Likeyou could be doing so much more with an audience that big.
Again, Gloria and Willa were alone in critiquing the let the market decide discourse, whichthey did by noting that media institutions are unconcerned with the public good, highratings may well be an indication of a negative cycle of media production and consump-tion, and television should be held to higher standards than what is profitable. Their statusas critical and self-aware young women of color positioned them ideologically outside thedominant patriarchal frame, and their enrollment in an introductory level African American
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history course may also partially have accounted for their access to discourses that chal-lenged the legitimacy of the market as the arbitrator of value.
Discussion
In this paper, we examined two competing efforts to influence public perception of sexistand rape jokes, and analyzed the salience of these discourses among college students.Based on our findings, we contend the primary discourses used to support the use ofextreme sexist jokes reveal the underlying logic of the dominant patriarchal framing of mis-ogynistic humor in a neoliberal patriarchal society. As illustrated above, the recurrence ofthe dominant discourses to support Tosh’s humor were readily deployed by participantsand worked to reinforce hegemonic androcentric and market ideologies. These discourseswere generally accepted as common sense interpretations of comedy. As Van Dijk (2006)observes, “Sometimes, ideologies become shared so widely that they seem to havebecome part of the generally accepted attitudes of an entire community, as obviousbeliefs or opinion, or common sense.” In our review of the West/Norton debate, andstudent responses to Tosh.0, it was clear that challenging those ideologies was difficult.
Of the discourses examined above, intentionalitywasmost routinely employed to defendTosh’s humor and support a dominant patriarchal frame. Like Norton, whitemale and femaleparticipants believed Tosh was well intentioned: his goal was not to hurt women, but ratherto be funny. The salience of this discourse amongmale participantswas perhaps due, in part,to a racial and gendered affiliation with Tosh. As John (white male) explained: “[Tosh] is justkind of like being like your friend, like on the couch, like watching [the videos] with you.”Young men in this study, all of whom reported having seen “most” or “many” episodes ofTosh.0, are generally not targeted with identity-specific jokes in the way participants inother groups are. Thus, their belief in the discourse of intentionality was absolute. Thatsaid, white female students reported similar viewing habits of Tosh.0, and drew on the inten-tionality discourse aswell.White female students only grewcritical of the notionof intention-ality when situating Tosh’s jokes in other public contexts. Female students of color, incontrast, reported seeing “hardly any” episodes of Tosh.0 prior to the interview, were mostcritical of Toshoverall, andwere notablymore skeptical of his intentions thanwhite students.
When criticism surfaced among white female participants, it was often tenuous andambivalent. An exchange between female students in one group illustrates such ambiva-lence and the power of the dominant patriarchal frame to shape audience perceptions.When the interviewer noted male participants did not think women watched Tosh.0,female participants were surprised:
Elsa (white/Asian): Seriously?
Veronica (white): Because they probably think it’s too much for us to handle. He doesdefinitely cross some boundaries, like as far as things like beinggross or like sexual or racist or whatever. [… ] But I don’t thinkthat just ‘cause we’re females we can’t handle that.
This exchange highlights Bemiller and Schneider’s point that women are in a lose–losesituation when confronted with sexist jokes: “by laughing she supports a patriarchal
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system, but not laughing further decreases her social power” (2010, 463). Moreover, thestudent reactions above further illustrate the power of the dominant patriarchal framein facilitating the acceptance of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt2005).
When white female students did reject the dominant patriarchal frame they often failedto use a feminist counter-frame. Instead, they formulated a position of skepticism fromwithin the dominant frame while trying to resolve their own ambivalent feelings aboutsexist comedy. White female participants grew increasingly critical of sexist humor andtheir own complicity as the interviews progressed. As Veronica (white female) commentedlate in her interview:
you learn how to laugh at it. Like, “Oh, this is funny now. We can make fun of gay people orpeople who get raped!” It’s kind of insane if you think about it, but we do it, myself included.
However, such insights only surfaced after sustained discussion.As cultural studies scholars note, oppositional readings of media texts tend to require
access to alternative discourses, entail more work on the part of the interpreter, and offerdiscomfort rather than pleasure (Condit 1989). Generally, an oppositional feminist counter-frame was absent or rendered mute in our study when jokes were described as innocuous,when a critical counter-frame was not readily available, and when stigmatization seemedto threaten those who employed a critical perspective.
Gender and racial identity, along with access to critical pedagogies, correlated with par-ticipants’ willingness and ability to challenge dominant ideological positions in theirinterpretations of humor and humor controversies. Female students of color were mostvocal in challenging Tosh’s racist and sexist humor, as well as the discourses used todefend it. Yet, rejecting the dominant patriarchal frame was primarily grounded in ananti-racist counter-frame. Moreover, they did so with an awareness of the social cost ofexpressing their opinions. As Sandra (Black female) suggested, “If you do say something,you’re just another ‘angry Black woman.’”
Thus, although an oppositional feminist counter-frame potentially poses a challenge tothe dominant frame, its discourses were generally not salient for student audiences. Thefeminist discourses West articulated were largely absent in our participant interviews. Inthe end, it was difficult for participants to use an oppositional feminist counter-frame ina culture that socializes people to laugh at sexist humor by marginalizing and ridiculingfeminist critics, placing undue emphasis on comedic intentions, and stigmatizing detrac-tors as humorless killjoys.
Conclusion
In the wake of the “Comic vs. Feminist” debate, West received a series of vitriolic onlinecomments. She responded publicly, taking the opportunity to clarify her position aboutthe way comedy can be used to support rape culture, and to illustrate that such viciouscomments only underscore her argument:
How did [online critics] try and prove me wrong? How did they try to demonstrate thatcomedy, in general, doesn’t have issues with women? By threatening to rape and kill me,telling me I’m just bitter because I’m too fat to get raped, and suggesting that the debatewould have been better if it had just been Jim raping me. (West 2013b; emphasis in original)
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Norton promptly issued his own response and pleaded with his supporters to “stop attack-ing her” (Norton 2013). During the initial debate, Norton, an established white heterosex-ual male comedian, worked to enforce the notion that rape jokes are harmless. After, thelimits of this logic were revealed by the attacks West received, and through Norton’s publicefforts to regulate online commenters who were ostensibly issuing what they consideredfunny responses.
In this paper we sought to illustrate the rhetorical and political nature of misogynistichumor. We highlighted two competing frames and the discourses that sustain them.Although others have critically examined sexist/rape jokes (Bemiller and Schneider2010; Cox 2015; Ford 2000; Kramer 2011), such work has largely focused on examiningthe contents of the jokes or individual attitudes in order to connect them to broaderissues of gender inequality. In contrast, here we focused our analysis on the shared ideo-logical frames and the attendant discourses used to accept or challenge such humor. Weillustrated how jokes are a site of political and ideological struggle. Understanding howjokes, comedic performances, and media texts function within culture entails analyzinghow audiences construct meanings. Rather than examining how the legitimation and con-testation of such humor was informed by notions of how jokes/comedy operates, we high-lighted how conflicting gender and market ideologies, as well as intersectional identitiesand access to critical pedagogies, mediate meaning-making discourses around humor forperformers, audiences and critics.
In a culture industry dominated by white heterosexual males (Gilbert 2004; Krefting2014), commercial sexist humor finds social acceptance in a post-civil rights era whereopen gender discrimination and sexual violence against women has become socially unac-ceptable. The public disavowal of gender discrimination creates space for such humor tobreach norms/taboos around offensive gender discourse, thus making sexist humorsocially cathartic (Berger 2014). Yet, to be commercially viable, gender ridicule is oftendelivered strategically (e.g. “equal-opportunity offender”), while proponents adhere tofree-market discourse (e.g. “let the market decide”) to legitimize sexist humor. Suchhumor is further legitimized when broadcast on a nationally syndicated comedynetwork program. In other words, in a post-civil rights and androcentric society, sexisthumor readily finds an audience and remains profitable.
Although our sample is small and we make no claims about the generalizability ofour findings, we contend young men’s complicity in telling and uncritically consumingmisogynistic humor, and young women’s overall desensitization to – and internaliz-ation of – such jokes as ones they should readily enjoy, reflect and reinforce a domi-nant patriarchal frame, or what Click et al. refer to as the “culturally authoritative formof masculinity that supports the dominance of men and the subordination of women”(2014, 3). Moreover, as Bemiller and Schneider remind us, “the potency of such humorrests in the sexist system from which jokes emerge” (2010, 463). Thus, in a “post-fem-inist” era where female agency is equated with sexual freedom (McRobbie 2004), mis-ogynistic humor that targets victims rather than perpetrators of sexual violence operatehegemonically. In the end, a viable challenge to such humor will require educating thepublic, as well as organized and visible opposition (Kibler 2015; Pérez 2014). But oppo-sition will remain stillborn so long as targets and audiences believe they are “justjokes.”
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Notes
1. Not all rape jokes target the victim or trivialize the violence. See, for instance, comedian WandaSykes joke about “detachable pussies” in her 2006 HBO comedy special Sick and Tired:
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our pussies were detachable? … Just think of the freedom thatyou would have! You get home from work, it’s getting a little dark outside. You like: “Oh, Iwould like to go for a jog, but … It’s getting too dark! … Oh! I’ll just leave it at home!”…It could be pitch-black, you still out there just jogging! Enjoying yourself! You know? Ifsome crazy guy jumps out the bushes like “AAH!” You like “I left it at home! … Sorry! Ihave absolutely nothing of value on me. I’m pussy-less!”
2. It is worth noting that the “equal-opportunity offender” strategy only emerged in the post-civilrights era, following sustained protests from targeted groups against the prevalence of racial ridi-cule (see Pérez 2014). The fallacy of this logic is that it is not possible to offend equally in unequalsocieties.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Raúl Pérez is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Denver. Hiswork has been published in the journals of Discourse & Society and Ethnicities, and has been featuredin Time magazine, The Grio, and Latino Rebels.
Viveca S. Greene is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Hampshire College. She is co-editor of ADecade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America. Her work hasappeared in The Nation, In Media Res, and We the Media: A Citizen’s Guide to Fighting for MediaDemocracy.
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