Raúl Péreza & Viveca S Greeneb. Social Semiotics. Volume 26, Issue 3, June 2016.

Introduction

Humor controversies can simultaneously reveal, deflect, and obscure relations of power, as well as the rhetorical/political nature of jokes. US comedian Daniel Tosh ignited one such controversy 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 an audience member yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” The comedian reportedly responded “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by, like, five guys? Like right now?” (McGlynn 2012). Controversy ensued as comedians, bloggers and media outlets defended (Corneau 2012) or condemned (Halper 2012) Tosh. Although Tosh later apologized, the incident crystallized into a televised debate regarding rape jokes, between comedian Jim Norton and feminist blogger Lindy West, on the cable show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.

In this paper, we examine the ideological frames (Van Dijk 2006) Norton and West draw upon in the “Comic vs. Feminist” debate, to map the boundaries of the current dominant framing and counter-framing of rape jokes in the US. According to Goffman, frames are essential in organizing experience by allowing individuals “to locate, perceive, identify, and label” objects and events (1974, 21). Frames, however, are not individually held but culturally shared and evolving. They are a collective resource that allow individuals to “make sense” of everyday life, often from conflicting perspectives (Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth 1998; Snow 2004). We contend Norton’s and West’s positions are representative of two frames that repeatedly surface in response to controversial sexist humor: a dominant patriarchal frame and an oppositional feminist counter-frame.

Moreover, we analyze in-depth interviews with college students regarding their views of both Tosh’s humor and his rape joke controversy to investigate the relative salience of these two competing frames among audiences. Examining audience reactions allows us to move from what Lewis (1994) describes as “the art of the possible” to “the realm of historical specificity” (19–20).

The goals of our study are to examine the ways individual audience interpretations resonate with, challenge, and complicate the dominant framing and counter-framing of misogynistic 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 to convince the audience of the idea that rape, a brutal and violent act, can be funny, entertaining and unserious (Kramer 2011). In light of our findings, we argue the dominant framing and interpretation of rape jokes reinforce patriarchal and free-market ideologies and denies the real-world implications of misogynistic humor (Bemiller and Schneider 2010; 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 leading proponent of this position, asserts:

Jokes, it is held, are disguised forms of aggression. They are not. Jokes, it is argued, are powerful. 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 to jokes infringes on the rights of individuals in general, humorists in particular, to express their sense of humor, however harmful it may be.

Yet, the rhetorical function of humor is revealed in its attempt to move a listener “from serious mode to humorous mode” (Smith 2009). Comedians frame discourse to be interpreted in a particular way, the expected outcome being laughter. Assuming a joke is one the listener can readily decipher, the listener can either display laughter, signaling a certain degree 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 unite and/or divide interlocutors (Meyer 2000; Mintz 1999). Greenbaum (1999) similarly contends that a comic act is “an inherently rhetorical discourse” that is designed to “convince the audience to look at the world through their comic vision” (33). As a rhetorical and political discourse, Meyer (2000) further suggests divisive humor “can unify a group participating in it” (323).

For instance, a critical assessment of Tosh’s rape joke illustrates the rhetorical/political nature of his joke. The joke directed at the female audience member presumably disrupting his routine (“Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by, like, five guys? Like right now?”) was both a display of power and an invitation for others to laugh at her. His joke of choice reinforced dominant gender roles between aggressive masculinity and submissive femininity. Tosh ostensibly used his rape joke to ridicule/discipline the audience member 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 to the performer. The uniting and dividing function of the joke was realized in the comedy community through the public support for and opposition to Tosh. As Willis (2005) observes, communities are often divided when the “seemingly simple pleasure of cracking jokes” is transformed into an arena of controversy (144). During such conflicts, a “dominant interpretation” often emerges and is upheld by those “in a position to enforce a particular meaning” (145).

Sexist Humor in Society

It is important to understand the ideological work that sexist/rape jokes and their circulation accomplish. Sexist jokes reflect and reinforce “a binary gender system where men and women are inherently different, and men are accorded more value” (Bemiller and Schneider 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 is a “spoiled sport,” someone with no sense of humor … In either case, she is hurt in the social encounter … . she has experienced subordination. (2010, 463)

Jokes that target women by demeaning and devaluing their personal and professional attributes, or that sexually objectify women, including through sexual violence, reinforce and normalize gender inequality and the subordination of women to men (Bemiller and Schneider 2010).

Research suggests the ideological and identity work of sexist/rape jokes also has realworld consequences. For instance, Ford (2000) finds exposure to sexist humor increases tolerance of discrimination against women. And increasingly, scholars find a connection between sexist humor, sexual harassment, discrimination, and tolerance for sexual violence and rape proclivity (Ford et al. 2008; Romero-Sánchez et al. 2010; Ryan and Kanjorski 1998; Thomae and Viki 2013).

Such humor is not uncontested. Today, with social media at their disposal, critical and tech-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. According to Kramer, the core of these debates is the identity-work performed by those who think rape jokes can be humorous vs. those who take offense. Although Kramer offers an insightful examination of the discursive structures of these debates among anonymous commenters, Kramer’s analysis largely focuses on the performativity of political identities, rather than analyzing the ideological frames that sustain these debates.

In what follows, we examine the ideological framing and counter-framing of rape/sexist jokes among a prominent male comedian, a feminist critic, and US undergraduate students to illustrate how “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Donaldson 1993), or a dominant patriarchal frame, mediates a discourse of acceptability among male and female participants in same-sex interview settings. We examine this dominant frame alongside a feminist counter-frame that regards such humor as constitutive of rape culture, what Ridgeway (2014) describes as “cultural practices [ … ] that excuse or otherwise tolerate sexual violence.”

Data and Methods

On 30 May 2013, Jim Norton and Lindy West participated in a segment titled “Comedian vs. Feminist” on the FX cable talk show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, with Norton fulfilling 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 dominant framing and counter-framing of rape jokes in the debate. The frames examined below emerged from a close reading and analysis of the debate and interview transcriptions.

According to Johnston (1995) “frame analysis is about how cognitive processing of events, 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 they are not stored privately, but shared socially; they ground and organize social representations. Van Dijk argues that through systematic examination of text and talk we can analyze how events are interpreted according to particular ideologies (1993). Labels, like frames, are also crucial both in the interpretation of jokes and the ideological positions that sustain them. For instance, although this televised debate occurred on a politically left-leaning comedy program, the title “Comic vs. Feminist” reinforces a dichotomy between presumably “fun-loving comics” and “humorless feminists.” In this way, humor reveals its capacity to discipline joker, target and audience (Billig 2005).

Alongside our mapping of the competing ideological frames in the debate, we examine college student responses to both Tosh’s show and the controversial incident, in order to analyze how audience responses resonate with the two competing frames (Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth 1998). Currently in its eighth season, Tosh.0 (2009–present) is “the top entertainment series across all of TV among men 18–24 on Tuesday nights” (O’Connell 2013). On his video-clip comedy show, Tosh serves up 7–8 video-clips, offering commentary, jokes, and ridicule similar to the disparaging comments often posted in response to similar online videos. Frequent targets on the show are people of color, overweight individuals, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender individuals, and, most consistently, women.

Students interviewed for this study were recruited through announcements in marketing, communication, and African American studies undergraduate classes at a large Northeastern university in the US. Advertised simply as a “Comedy Central Audience Study,” the interviews were conducted between September 2013 and March 2014. A majority of the students were familiar with the show, indicating they had seen “most” or “many” episodes prior to the interview. Participants’ ages ranged from 19 to 21, reflective of the show’s target audience, young adults. Groups ranged from 2 to 6 students. There were 23 participants in total, 6 male and 17 female, and groups were divided by sex. We included a disproportionate number of female students as we sought to explore how participants on the receiving 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. This selection strategy warrants mention as research suggests participants are more likely to speak 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 were asked open-ended questions (e.g. What did you think of the show in general?), allowing the participants to “impose their own definitions and frameworks of interpretation upon the subject under discussion” (Lewis 1991, 80). The interviewer then asked participants to elaborate their responses. In several groups, participants introduced the Laugh Factory 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 audio recorded. All participant names have been changed.

Dominant Patriarchal Frame

Examining the dominant patriarchal frame, we begin with US comedian Jim Norton’s defense of rape jokes as innocuous and intended to amuse. A number of interwoven discourses comprise this frame. Here we draw attention to three and address how undergraduate 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 to understanding why rape jokes are harmless. The discourse of intentionality surfaces frequently when a given speech act is deemed inappropriate by others. It is used rhetorically by the speaker to deny ill-intent (Van Dijk 2006). It suggests meaning resides with the speaker, an idea literary theorists refer to as “authorial intent.” The discourse of intentionality maintains that as long as a comedian is “trying to be funny,” no harm is done, and no audience can legitimately claim offense.

Throughout the “Comic vs. Feminist” debate, Norton employs the intentionality discourse 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. Norton applies 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 be funny. I think that we all go into a comedy club knowing that, and there’s a great difference between 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 dominant androcentric framing of rape jokes by homogenizing audience interpretation of comedic performances. This rhetorical move positions intentionality as “obvious to everyone,” thus shielding potential criticism from audience members.

During the interviews, students relied heavily on the intentionality discourse in their interpretation 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’s just all for the sake of comedy. I don’t think [comedy] is really meant to hurt people?

Although Jackie showed some concern about the effect of disparaging comedy, she was uncertain about her position and ultimately suggested what matters are the intentions behind comedic performances.

Again, the intentionality discourse privileges the comic’s intentions over audience members’ personal experiences/criticism. Asked directly about Tosh’s rape joke controversy, one white male student responded, “If you’re gay or whatever, don’t go to a comedy thing because there’s a good chance someone’s gonna offend you.” In other words, despite the intentions of a performer, mainstream comedy is a space where a heteronormative 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 speech has 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 happening 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, there are 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 sometimes comedy does trivialize what is truly horrible. [ … ] The relief of comedy is that it takes things that aren’t funny and it allows us to laugh about them for an hour and then we have the rest 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 much contemporary humor scholarship that seeks to highlight the benefits of humor (Billig 2005). Yet, in a society where one-in-five women is the victim of sexual violence (CDC 2012), 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 violence 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 humor deployed/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 oppress the target (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 that Tosh 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. I mean if it was him just targeting one specific group, he definitely wouldn’t get away with it, if he 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” discourse to condone Tosh’s humor:

(Laurel, white female): [Tosh] targets so many different groups who he makes fun of. I feel like every episode it’s not like only gay people or only females or something like that, so I feel like that’s when it doesn’t matter ‘cause there are ten other groups that he’s making fun of at the same 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 particular social group “doesn’t matter” so long as others are also targeted. The discourse around equal-opportunity offenders – and the related discourse of intentionality – are thus inversely related to the notion that speech has an effect. That is, the more a receiver believes the author is well intentioned, and makes fun of an array of social groups, the less likely the receiver will view the author’s jokes as harmful. As the following section illustrates, viewing humor 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 this discourse, the audience should decide what is offensive, not critics who are regarded as over-reactive, pro-censorship, and eager to impose their agendas on an unwilling public. From this perspective, the audience should be understood as atomized individuals, rather than social groups with conflicting interests and different social positions. Norton reinforced this discourse when discussing the cancelation of his controversial US talkradio show “Opie and Anthony”:

A lot of times the trouble people will do is if you’re doing jokes they don’t like they begin to target your advertisers – because the market should dictate whether or not people enjoy 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, objecting to the idea that audiences have a right to “punish” performers by targeting financial resources. He views such resistance as orchestrated interference by groups intervening in an otherwise functional laissez-faire discursive exchange. Norton implies “getting in trouble” is a form of censorship. Ultimately, he contends all comedy must be tolerated, as there is no reasonable way to draw the line in a free speech/free-market society:

I think like Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] said – from South Park – it’s either all okay or none of it’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 ultimately democratic. From this perspective, rape jokes, however vulgar, are fair game.

Students, for the most part, held audience members responsible for their reactions. As Zoe (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 certainty that Tosh delivers what he wants as an audience member. Explaining what he likes about the show, Jack said:

The fact that [Tosh] pushes the boundaries. [ … ] I don’t think he’s too funny, but some of the stuff he says, he pushes it, and I think people want to see that. I think people want to see how far people will push it on TV.

Jack found Tosh more rebellious than humorous, and believed that “boundary pushing” is what pulls in other audience members to his show.

“Letting the market decide” was a powerful discourse both Norton and students used to lift responsibility from joke tellers. The underlying logic in this discourse is that all voices carry 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 imbedded in an unequal social system where the boundaries between media and reality, fun and violence, 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. According to this frame, uncritical rape jokes are an endorsement of sexual violence, as such humor contributes to rape culture. Moreover, such jokes do not exist in a political vacuum. 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 used by West to counter the dominant patriarchal frame, and address how participants employed/failed to employ similar discourses in interviews: (1) the fallacy of authorial intention, (2) the cultural impact of misogynistic humor, and (3) the questionable legitimacy of ratings-driven media.

“Intention is a false argument”

An oppositional feminist counter-frame rejects the notion that meaning is anchored in authorial (or comedic) intention. It also repositions the arbitrator from one who identifies with the male comic to one who identifies with female audience members. As West tells Norton:

I’m sure it’s super comfortable and nice to believe that there aren’t systemic forces that are affected by speech, but that’s not true and those of us who are affected by those forces know that that’s not true.

From the perspective of the intentionality discourse, the receiver either successfully decodes the intended meaning or misreads the true intentions of the author. For discourse that is ambivalent, like humor, the author/comedian can always assert that a joke was misinterpreted when challenged (Weaver 2011). West rejects Norton’s argument that intentionality matters, however, by noting that his “comfortable” position as a white male comedian prevents him from recognizing the “systemic forces that are affected by speech” regardless of intention. In other words, her rejection of the intentionality discourse is closely tied to her rejection of the speech has no effect discourse.

In the Totally Biased debate, West explicitly challenges the notion that speech has no effect, 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 the world “hot lava” … and everything you say on the stage exists in some sacred loophole that’s exempt from criticism … Rape, domestic violence, brutalization, marginalization, the struggle to make yourself heard – all of this shit is REAL to a lot of people. They’re not cute little 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 discourse, and in recent years have employed terms like “hipster racism” and “hipster sexism” to refer to the practice of presumably liberal whites/males making derogatory jokes about people of color and women under the guise of irony or satire (see Greene 2012; Peterson 2008; Van Kerckhove 2007).

Although several students, especially female students of color, were likewise critical of disparaging humor inside and outside a comedic setting, they had difficulty challenging the 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 and they’re saying mean stuff and everybody laughs? I think that’s how like [Tosh.O] is kind of intended, like he’s the bully person, he’s the one that says the mean stuff, but like everyone’s on his side so they’re laughing at what he’s saying even though it’s offensive. So I feel 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 intentions, Gloria’s characterization of Tosh as a popular bully suggests that an uncritical reading of the show/character ignores the political functions of humor, particularly in the form of ridicule (Billig 2005), and renders the comic as harmless when audiences “take his side.”

“Contributing to a culture that perpetuates rape”

West responds to Norton’s claim that speech has no effect by noting that women are often silenced around sexual assault. Clearly frustrated with Norton and the argument that comedy is harmless, she counters:

You don’t get to say that uh, “comedy is this sacred powerful vital thing that we have to protect, because it’s speaking truth to power [ … ],” and then also be like “well, it’s just a joke, 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 broader culture that tolerates sexual violence against women. Critical scholars have worked to make similar connections between sexist jokes and sexual violence against women. Thomae and Viki (2013), for instance, found that sexist attitudes and self-reported rape proclivity 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 attitudes regarding misogynistic jokes and their relationship to gender inequality and sexual violence. Most white female participants reported liking Tosh, but also consistently reported feeling upset and unsafe when other people, especially strangers, told similar jokes in “real life.” However, as interviews with white female students progressed, they began thinking more critically about comedy and expressed uncertainty about how comedians’ jokes actually 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 that they 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 the absence of, such reflection the mediating stage/screen provided a sense of distance and safety to white female viewers, which was absent when jokes were told in everyday contexts. That mediated distance and its scripted nature allow audiences to readily interpret such discourses from a dominant patriarchal frame.

The unmediated and seemingly unscripted rape joke Tosh told at the Laugh Factory blurred these boundaries, and female students discussed it with ambivalence. For instance, 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’t think it was funny, and she actually like challenged him, and I think he did something where he said 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 that was common among female respondents: “Rape is really something that’s like awful, so I can see from both sides, that it’s just a joke. But at the same time it’s really not something that should be joked about.” Despite this ambivalence, the fact that Elsa simultaneously evaluated Tosh’s comments as “just a joke” and as an invitation for men to rape a specific woman suggests she senses that jokes can also be threats and can have effects, though she was unable to fully reconcile these two positions.

Another way students gestured toward, or addressed, the real-life effects of sexist /rape jokes was through the language of desensitization. Participants in three of the four female interview groups used the word “desensitized” to describe their feelings. Take the following:

Anne (white female): I feel like we’re desensitized to it. [ … ]. I don’t take it personally, which maybe is a bad thing; maybe we should take these things personally – well, not personally, but like “it’s not okay that people are still talking about women like this.” But it’s such a big thing that people do? You just kind of go along with it?

However tentatively, female students suggested the unchallenged prevalence of misogynistic humor created greater tolerance of sexist discourse not just among males but also among 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 “repeated exposure” (2011, 631).

Anderson (2012) argues that this experience of accepting jokes about sexual assault is a central 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 everyone caught in its wake. Rape culture first desensitizes, then degrades, and finally dehumanizes its subjects, prompting regular people to blithely laugh at rape jokes.

Although some of the language female students employed, including “desensitized,” indicated they were partially aware of the way continued exposure to sexism increased their acceptance of it, they were largely unable to articulate a critique of misogynistic humor from a feminist counter-frame. Students were notably uncomfortable with embracing feminism as a mode of critique, and had difficulty stepping outside the dominant patriarchal frame and rejecting it.

Perhaps one reason students were so hesitant to align themselves with feminism, or to make use of feminist discourse, is because “feminism” is often ridiculed in patriarchal culture, and feminists are routinely described as “humorless” (Franzini 1996). In this way, anti-feminist discourse and humor work to discipline and steer otherwise critically oriented 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 attitudes towards women. They articulated their discomfort with jokes about violent acts against women and saw a connection between jokes on stage/screen and jokes in real life. In other words, they began to consciously recognize that continuous exposure to misogynistic 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 counter Norton’s laissez-faire notion of letting the market dictate the acceptability of misogynistic humor in public. For instance, although West suggested there should be consequences for jokes that cross the line, she was quick to assert she was not advocating censorship:

[E]verything has repercussions, so if you’re talking about legal repercussions … I do not think that comedy should be censored and we’re not here to talk about censorship and I’m pretty sure we agree.

Here, West was caught between her professional commitments as a writer to uphold freedom of expression, and her ideological values as a feminist critic/activist dutifully taking 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 debate remained underdeveloped:

What I’m talking about is the kind of repercussions where you choose to say something that traumatizes a person who’s already been victimized and then I choose to call you a dick and that’s the repercussions.

Publicly challenging speech acts in a society that extols free speech is, in some sense, no small feat. Were she to advocate “censorship,” West would risk alienating her position as a feminist 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 racial ridicule (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 have often used collective action, not just more speech, to challenge oppressive humor. Such actions are precisely what Norton considers foul play, as his comments regarding listeners’ boycotts of his radio show’s advertisers demonstrate. Nevertheless, given the ideological dominance of Norton’s free-market logic, West had difficulty challenging it by failing to note such collective efforts to contest oppressive humor.

For most students, a critique of free-market logic regarding humor was largely out of reach. Of 23 students interviewed, only 2 countered the discourse of letting the market decide, and both did so in the context of discussions about racial as well as gender representation 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, you know! You might be highly rated for the wrong reasons, but in media it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re being watched. So it could be like he’s being really offensive, people are offended and they keep watching it, but he knows that he’s being offensive so he keeps being offensive to get more ratings.

In another group, Willa (Black/Latina female) also rejected an uncritical belief in “the market.” Asked how Tosh might have a top-rated show given the offensive nature of his 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’s bringing in a profit … I feel like [Tosh] does know better, but he just doesn’t care … Like you 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, which they did by noting that media institutions are unconcerned with the public good, high ratings may well be an indication of a negative cycle of media production and consumption, and television should be held to higher standards than what is profitable. Their status as critical and self-aware young women of color positioned them ideologically outside the dominant patriarchal frame, and their enrollment in an introductory level African American history course may also partially have accounted for their access to discourses that challenged the legitimacy of the market as the arbitrator of value.

Discussion

In this paper, we examined two competing efforts to influence public perception of sexist and 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 of extreme sexist jokes reveal the underlying logic of the dominant patriarchal framing of misogynistic humor in a neoliberal patriarchal society. As illustrated above, the recurrence of the dominant discourses to support Tosh’s humor were readily deployed by participants and worked to reinforce hegemonic androcentric and market ideologies. These discourses were generally accepted as common sense interpretations of comedy. As Van Dijk (2006) observes, “Sometimes, ideologies become shared so widely that they seem to have become part of the generally accepted attitudes of an entire community, as obvious beliefs or opinion, or common sense.” In our review of the West/Norton debate, and student responses to Tosh.0, it was clear that challenging those ideologies was difficult.

Of the discourses examined above, intentionality was most routinely employed to defend Tosh’s humor and support a dominant patriarchal frame. Like Norton, white male and female participants believed Tosh was well intentioned: his goal was not to hurt women, but rather to be funny. The salience of this discourse among male participants was perhaps due, in part, to a racial and gendered affiliation with Tosh. As John (white male) explained: “[Tosh] is just kind 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 of Tosh.0, are generally not targeted with identity-specific jokes in the way participants in other groups are. Thus, their belief in the discourse of intentionality was absolute. That said, white female students reported similar viewing habits of Tosh.0, and drew on the intentionality discourse as well. White female students only grew critical of the notion of intentionality when situating Tosh’s jokes in other public contexts. Female students of color, in contrast, reported seeing “hardly any” episodes of Tosh.0 prior to the interview, were most critical of Tosh overall, and were notably more skeptical of his intentions than white students.

When criticism surfaced among white female participants, it was often tenuous and ambivalent. An exchange between female students in one group illustrates such ambivalence 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 does definitely cross some boundaries, like as far as things like being gross or like sexual or racist or whatever. [ … ] But I don’t think that just ‘cause we’re females we can’t handle that.

This exchange highlights Bemiller and Schneider’s point that women are in a lose–lose situation when confronted with sexist jokes: “by laughing she supports a patriarchal system, but not laughing further decreases her social power” (2010, 463). Moreover, the student reactions above further illustrate the power of the dominant patriarchal frame in facilitating the acceptance of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005).

When white female students did reject the dominant patriarchal frame they often failed to use a feminist counter-frame. Instead, they formulated a position of skepticism from within the dominant frame while trying to resolve their own ambivalent feelings about sexist comedy. White female participants grew increasingly critical of sexist humor and their own complicity as the interviews progressed. As Veronica (white female) commented late in her interview:

You learn how to laugh at it. Like, “Oh, this is funny now. We can make fun of gay people or people 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 offer discomfort rather than pleasure (Condit 1989). Generally, an oppositional feminist counterframe 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 seemed to threaten those who employed a critical perspective.

Gender and racial identity, along with access to critical pedagogies, correlated with participants’ willingness and ability to challenge dominant ideological positions in their interpretations of humor and humor controversies. Female students of color were most vocal in challenging Tosh’s racist and sexist humor, as well as the discourses used to defend it. Yet, rejecting the dominant patriarchal frame was primarily grounded in an anti-racist counter-frame. Moreover, they did so with an awareness of the social cost of expressing 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 to the dominant frame, its discourses were generally not salient for student audiences. The feminist discourses West articulated were largely absent in our participant interviews. In the end, it was difficult for participants to use an oppositional feminist counter-frame in a culture that socializes people to laugh at sexist humor by marginalizing and ridiculing feminist critics, placing undue emphasis on comedic intentions, and stigmatizing detractors as humorless killjoys.

Conclusion

In the wake of the “Comic vs. Feminist” debate, West received a series of vitriolic online comments. She responded publicly, taking the opportunity to clarify her position about the way comedy can be used to support rape culture, and to illustrate that such vicious comments only underscore her argument:

How did [online critics] try and prove me wrong? How did they try to demonstrate that comedy, 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 debate would have been better if it had just been Jim raping me. (West 2013b; emphasis in original)

Norton promptly issued his own response and pleaded with his supporters to “stop attacking her” (Norton 2013). During the initial debate, Norton, an established white heterosexual male comedian, worked to enforce the notion that rape jokes are harmless. After, the limits of this logic were revealed by the attacks West received, and through Norton’s public efforts to regulate online commenters who were ostensibly issuing what they considered funny responses.

In this paper we sought to illustrate the rhetorical and political nature of misogynistic humor. We highlighted two competing frames and the discourses that sustain them. Although others have critically examined sexist/rape jokes (Bemiller and Schneider 2010; Cox 2015; Ford 2000; Kramer 2011), such work has largely focused on examining the contents of the jokes or individual attitudes in order to connect them to broader issues of gender inequality. In contrast, here we focused our analysis on the shared ideological frames and the attendant discourses used to accept or challenge such humor. We illustrated how jokes are a site of political and ideological struggle. Understanding how jokes, comedic performances, and media texts function within culture entails analyzing how audiences construct meanings. Rather than examining how the legitimation and contestation of such humor was informed by notions of how jokes/comedy operates, we highlighted how conflicting gender and market ideologies, as well as intersectional identities and access to critical pedagogies, mediate meaning-making discourses around humor for performers, audiences and critics.

In a culture industry dominated by white heterosexual males (Gilbert 2004; Krefting 2014), commercial sexist humor finds social acceptance in a post-civil rights era where open gender discrimination and sexual violence against women has become socially unacceptable. The public disavowal of gender discrimination creates space for such humor to breach norms/taboos around offensive gender discourse, thus making sexist humor socially cathartic (Berger 2014). Yet, to be commercially viable, gender ridicule is often delivered strategically (e.g. “equal-opportunity offender”), while proponents adhere to free-market discourse (e.g. “let the market decide”) to legitimize sexist humor. Such humor is further legitimized when broadcast on a nationally syndicated comedy network program. In other words, in a post-civil rights and androcentric society, sexist humor readily finds an audience and remains profitable.

Although our sample is small and we make no claims about the generalizability of our findings, we contend young men’s complicity in telling and uncritically consuming misogynistic humor, and young women’s overall desensitization to – and internalization of – such jokes as ones they should readily enjoy, reflect and reinforce a dominant patriarchal frame, or what Click et al. refer to as the “culturally authoritative form of 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 humor rests in the sexist system from which jokes emerge” (2010, 463). Thus, in a “post-feminist” era where female agency is equated with sexual freedom (McRobbie 2004), misogynistic humor that targets victims rather than perpetrators of sexual violence operate hegemonically. In the end, a viable challenge to such humor will require educating the public, as well as organized and visible opposition (Kibler 2015; Pérez 2014). But opposition will remain stillborn so long as targets and audiences believe they are “just jokes.”