Safety On
Last week at one of my favorite comedy rooms a shit storm was born and it shows no sign of dying down. What began as a very funny joke was completely misread by a person who then hijacked the room by making a really weird, irritating stand and got so under the performer's skin he was rude to her. The list of comics who would have utterly demolished this person is, I'm guessing, all comics. Her behaviour was reprehensible, but because she thought she was fighting for a cause and because she and her friends are in fact monstrous bullies with a lot of power their ludicrous take on things made it into a major Melbourne paper with the nightmare words, "Comedian Ray Badran tells audience member to 'die' for objecting to rape joke".
I've spoken with several people who were in the room, particularly a feminist woman whose appraisal of the heckler's behaviour was purely scornful. The heckler was a piece of shit and this was proved when her and her friends used their comparatively immense power to plant that bullshit story where it could be used, I suppose, to ruin Ray Badran's life.
I am so not fucking stunned that some feminists believe what they see in print 100% uncritically and have used the occasion to cheapen discourse, score cheap points, grandstand using a real and innocent person's life and work as nothing more than fuel. Comedians are usually people who have been bullied, are outsiders and don't need to be fucking paraded through town as moral failures. However, social media has given birth to a horrifying new form of bullying that is always about groups using their power and suction to destroy people's livelihoods, personal life and mental health.
No issue, not even rape or murder, is justification for behaving like a leaderless mob of hateful idiots who only come together when it's time to fuck someone up.
As I understand it this clusterfuck has brought actual misogynists out of the woodwork and the whole thing is now a nightmare of people getting hurt.
I write this only to make it clear that this shit is terrifying and confusing and social media campaigners need to be very clear and do their fact checking before launching words that will inevitably hurt many, many people and many of them quite badly.
I've spoken with several people who were in the room, particularly a feminist woman whose appraisal of the heckler's behaviour was purely scornful. The heckler was a piece of shit and this was proved when her and her friends used their comparatively immense power to plant that bullshit story where it could be used, I suppose, to ruin Ray Badran's life.
I am so not fucking stunned that some feminists believe what they see in print 100% uncritically and have used the occasion to cheapen discourse, score cheap points, grandstand using a real and innocent person's life and work as nothing more than fuel. Comedians are usually people who have been bullied, are outsiders and don't need to be fucking paraded through town as moral failures. However, social media has given birth to a horrifying new form of bullying that is always about groups using their power and suction to destroy people's livelihoods, personal life and mental health.
No issue, not even rape or murder, is justification for behaving like a leaderless mob of hateful idiots who only come together when it's time to fuck someone up.
As I understand it this clusterfuck has brought actual misogynists out of the woodwork and the whole thing is now a nightmare of people getting hurt.
I write this only to make it clear that this shit is terrifying and confusing and social media campaigners need to be very clear and do their fact checking before launching words that will inevitably hurt many, many people and many of them quite badly.
Comments
Post a Comment