Hunting for Humour, Rape Jokes and Reginald D.

Reginald D. Hunter has been accused of many ‘isms’, but with increasing success and several awards to his (now household) name, he appears to be thriving off the attention. Indeed, his current tour, “In the Midst of Crackers”, kicks off with a few jokes about recent criticism, including allegations of anti-Semitism, and ubiquitous quibbles about use of the N-word.  Halfway through his set at the Pleasance Grand Theatre, Edinburgh, I flattered myself in fearing that I may turn out to be the opening joke in his next show—the grumpy feminist who accused him of misogyny.

I somewhat missed the boat with Hunter’s rise to notoriety, catching only snippets of his shows on television, and hearing rave reviews from many sources—even my boyfriend’s grandmother is a fan. So, I went along to see him with an open mind, confident in the knowledge that he’d be a suitable inaugural Fringe experience—interesting, intelligent, and the only artist I’d spend more than a tenner on all week.

To be fair to Mr Hunter, he had the audience hanging on his every word, speaking interestingly on family life, honesty and male fantasies. Retrospectively however, the set was peppered with warning signs of the impending descent into what I felt was an incoherent and ignorant commentary on feminism, rape and sexualisation. Hunter spoke about his own infidelities and the needs of women with an amiable style that hid an inherent disrespect, telling us how he’d cheated in most relationships. After making a joke about Bernard Manning’s bigotry, he preceded to morph into a more articulate, more intelligent, and thus far more dangerous version of him.

Discussing rape jokes, a salient issue at the Fringe and in the media, Hunter said the following: “rape jokes [are] one of the few safe ways you can push back”. In Hunter’s opinion, it is important that comedians openly discuss issues such as sexism and racism, and I respect him for that. However, Hunter also riffed off the idea that an audience member hearing a rape joke will not immediately decide to go out and commit the offence. Sexism and misogyny aside, the comment was just ignorant. Of course that probably wouldn’t happen, but rape jokes are a huge part of the systematic trivialisation of rape—if we can joke about it, it can’t be that bad, right?

Unlike Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr, with their ironically predictable shock tactics , Hunter is praised for an provocative style that actually provokes something – discussion. On top of that, his style is ruminative and  treacherously charming, and as he admits, his rich drawl has a “tonal quality” that “makes everything [he says] sound like it’s true.” Of course it often isn’t, and admirably he acknowledges that. However, during a Fringe festival which saw a feminist comic take the Foster’s prize, an incredibly harrowing play performed by  Indian rape victims, and a whole string of women “shouting back”, Hunter’s musings were more than uncomfortable, they were outdated and uninformed.

More than that, his suggestion that “pseudo-feminists” were claiming rape as a wholly female issue (followed by a tasteless joke about male rape on navy boats) ignores the fact that modern feminism is about equality, and that rape is a human issue. For a man who warmly slips into philosophical musings on “oneness”, the last five minutes of his show were uncharacteristic, and delivered with a far darker tone than his material earlier in the set.

His final offence was perhaps his worst, and epitomises why he is so unsettling. In a joke about a friend’s “sexual desperation”, he alluded, albeit briefly, to the sexual appeal of scantily clad women and the way in which men react to them. The joke drew us in, encouraging us to laugh at the friend who felt compelled to shout “WOMEN!” whenever he saw them, but the implication that men need to control themselves around the opposite sex was uncomfortably close to the idea of  female sexual responsibility. Leaving the theatre I was offended and angry, and found it frustratingly difficult to explain why.

Hunter’s greatest skill lies in his comedic ability to make you question your boundaries, your sensibilities and yourself. Opening the show with a response to critics forces you to question your own reactions, lest you too become one of the easily offended, politically correct types who don’t ‘get it.’ Before writing this I got in touch with Hunter, who was very lovely and happy to respond. He wrote:

‘I’m genuinely disappointed to know that my rant “seemed” misogynist to you. It wasn’t. Nor am I, ma’am.’

His surety made me question my own reaction even more, but I suppose that is the point of comedy such as this – to create questions. In truth, I am not sure I would label Hunter a misogynist, but in each brief allusion, joke or nugget he made a slight contribution to a culture of misogyny that I, among many others, no longer have time for. I’m disappointed too, Reginald.

Originally published by Bad Housekeeping. 

Singers who can't sing and cultural (s)expectations

Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Joe Strummer, and Shane McGowan have something in common. They are the distinctive voices 20th century music: raspy, gravelly, soulful, familiar, they can each be recognised after a only a few notes, and we love them for it. They have interesting voices. But, interesting covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? In this case, it's a sort of euphemism. It means, amazing and wonderful and striking, but let's face it, it also highlights the fact that none of these singers are exactly pitch perfect.

Now, I'm not saying that every musician must be tuneful - singing is a very personal thing, voices can be loved or hated, and many of the chaps I just listed are bluesy storytellers, whose voices preach like performance poets, much like modern hip-hop artists. However, there does seem to be a bit of a double standard when it comes to female artists and the quality of their voices.

We have our soul singers, Dusty Springfield, Etta James and the gang, we have pop princesses like young Miley and Taylor Swift, or folksy alternatives such as Laura Marling, amongst many, many others. The difference is, the majority of successful, mainstream female artists are just, well, in tune - at least to my untrained ear. They may have unusual styles and be distinctive, they may not all sound like Disney princesses, some of them may be autotuned (Britney, I'm looking at you here) but it's extremely rare to find a famous female singer who corresponds with the rough and ready boys club. 

Perhaps its a self-perpetuating thing. Liam Gallagher loved The Beatles, and teenage busker-boys the world over love to play Wonderwall in return for spare change and the hearts of teenage gals. If I had a pound for every indie boy I've seen mumble gruffly into a microphone, I'd be able to buy myself an auto-tune machine. 

Obviously, this isn't a catch all theory. Every now and again we get a lady-singer with a weird and wonderful anti-voice. Janis Joplin sounded like sandpaper, steel and whisky, Patti Smith like an ethereal-but-angry-Cate-Blanchett-as-Galadriel-style-wonder-woman, and Karen O, well, she takes the stage like some kind of amplified banshee goddess. These women are iconic and they are interesting, but most notably, they are marginal. You're far less likely to see a young girl take the stage at a local music night professing herself to be the new Bjork, than you are to see a gangly four-piece lad-band attempt to harmonise the latest Arctic Monkey's track. NB: A strong accent does not necessarily a solid performance make. 

An exception to this rule, as ever, is the punk scene. Bands such as Los Campesinos!, Sonic Boom 6 and the US noise-group Sleigh Bells feature female singers whose voices are completely tuneless, and it completely doesn't matter. Their voices texture the music - it just wouldn't be the same with a sickly sweet pitch perfect voice. 

However, the double standard still remains in prominent solo artists - women are expected to have either powerful voices, or sweet voices - anything less and they'll edit yo' tuneless ass. Maybe it's a relic of an angelic-voice ideal, maybe people believe that girls really can charm birds from trees with their vocal chords, or maybe, just maybe, it is yet another example of cultural (s)expectation. It's a shame really - I quite like my dulcet tones. 

Top 5 Singers Who Can't Sing

1) Bob Dylan

2) Janis Joplin

3) Los Campesinos! 

4) Tom Waits

5) And finally, Phoebe Buffay. The bad singers' singer. 

'Life and Style', and the myth of women's journalism

For all the lefty-liberal and progressive qualities of The Guardian, there is one element of its online design that seems oddly archaic, and a little unsettling. In the grand scheme of women's rights it isn't exactly at the forefront of our problems, but nevertheless it strikes me as odd, and got me thinking. My question is this: why, oh why, is the women's section of the newspaper tucked away in 'Life and Style'? 

'Life and Style' is a weirdly nebulous part of any news or magazine publication, generally containing high quality photographs of the latest fashionable pan-something dish, pseudo-scientific articles on whether vitamins actually work, and passionate arguments for why this new style of yoga really will change your life. The sections tend to be a mix of tips and trends, with a pinch of celeb gossip and the occasional link to dating sites and the like. I don't mean to describe these features pejoratively; they form light reading in most newspapers and they are what they are. It's just that they don't exactly fall under hard hitting news, unlike a lot of the pieces that are featured in the 'Women' sub-section. The Guardian tabs (see below) arguably suggest that the Women sub-section contains articles that are only as important as those of 'Fashion' or 'Food', or if we were to be really fussy (and why shouldn't we be) suggest that they are less important, due to their placing. Just as Culture and Sport come after the News on the main page, Women come after other more significant sections. 

It should be said at this point that a) I love The Guardian, and b) it's certainly not the only publication guilty of struggling to find an apt place for a women's section. Although The Telegraph place their Women section alongside the other main sections of the newspaper, the frankly hilarious page title "Wonder Women" is suggestive of an ideal readership of multi-tasking, stiletto wearing power Mums shouting "I can have it all!", baby monitor in one hand and Blackberry in the other. That may have been a bit of a tirade, but it's more than a little patronising, and Theresa May was staring from under the headlines at me during writing so I was immediately ticked off. In comparison to the Daily Mail's 'Femail', both The Telegraph and The Guardian are positively saintly in their representation of women - at least both contain comment pieces on the most important women's issues of the moment, i.e. online sexism, female campaigns. As we can see in the snapshot below, the Femail section contains a huge advert for WeightWatchers (you are too fat, Femail readers), an article about Gwyneth Paltrow, and the new trend of nipple surgery. 

At least The Guardian do not automatically assume that its female readers will be interested in babies and weddings, or for that matter, assume that readers of the opposite gender will not. The Mail however seem to be using their Femail section to perpetuate and encode a stereotype of womanhood that many female journalists are explicitly fighting against. 

It is perhaps not the paper that's the problem, but the idea of a "women's section" to begin with - a place for female journalism, directed at female readers. Criticising a space for women to share their views and read about issues affecting them may sound a little counter-intuitive, but the fact is, this kind of marginalisation is outdated. Thirty years ago a women's section would have been a breakthrough in the media, and rightly so, but surely we are now living in an age where women's news is mainstream news, the subjects important to everyone regardless of gender. For example, within The Guardian's women section is a subsection for feminism - a movement now commonly regarded to be the business of anyone who cares for equal rights, no matter what sex they are or which gender they identify with. 

To be fair to The Guardian their stories can be tagged under any section, as former Guardian IA Martin Belam kindly pointed out to me, and there is a subsection for women under News. However, the branch of Life and Style still sends out a bad message. Although it may initially seem strange when newspapers and magazines don't have a women's section, it actually means that stories which could be interpreted as by females and for females have actually been assimilated into the mainstream sections and editorials to which they belong. Before writing this piece I (being a complete wannabe journo-geek) asked feminist author and writer Laurie Penny for her opinion on the matter, to which she gave a crackingly succinct response, noting that these type of sections cover 

"'Women's-issues journalism' or, as I like to call it, 'journalism'."

And therein lies the whole point of this issue - there is no such thing as women's journalism. Indeed, articles such as the many recent ones on Twitter abuse, misogyny and campaigns such as No More Page Three are of as much importance to men as they are to women, and in many cases are supported by men as well as women. These issues are universal, and so maybe newspapers should consider treating them as such.

Bartoli and the Beast

Bartoli and the Beast: an easy title for a touchy subject. Yesterday during Marion Bartoli's storming performance in the Wimbledon final, John Inverdale posed the following question:

"Do you think Bartoli's dad told her when she was little: 'You're never going to be a looker, you'll never be a Sharapova, so you have to be scrappy and fight'?"

Well done, Marion. Well done. Against all the odds, ugly as they may have been, you have achieved the impossible! With your scrappy skills and fighting spirit you beat that pretty little blonde thing from Germany and brought home a Grand Slam. Shame though really, Sabine would've looked much better with Djokovic or Murray at the Championship Dinner... Inverdale's comment was sexist and it was ignorant, but what's worse is that this incident is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to attitude towards sportswomen, female presenters, and even the female companions of men in the game. Inverdale's comments were positively generous compared to some of the vitriolic bile on Twitter:

This isn't everyday or 'casual' sexism, it's hate speech. The language is of the animalistic and sexual persuasion associated with female insults, and the trivialisation of violence and rape is truly disturbing. Perhaps the most revealing of them all is the comment by Steve Cremen (fourth on the left) that Bartoli "cannot be the new face of Wimbledon." That's what female tennis players have been reduced to: faces. But an exclusively pretty face, mind. If Marion isn't good enough, who is? Lisicki? In all honesty, Bartoli's pretty blonde opponent is being equally demeaned by these comments. By placing her as the counterpart to Bartoli's beastliness, she becomes a somewhat creepy Tennis Barbie-bot, detracting from the fact that, like Bartoli, she is an extremely talented and extremely pleasant woman. 

It seems astonishing that 40 years on from the Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean-King and Bobby Riggs, tennis is still tinted with sexism. But in this context, the origins of the issues are not only between the men and women in the tour, but rather the pundits and presenters who are responsible for broadcasting to millions. Inverdale isn't the only Wimbledon bod guilty of patronising women. Just look at the way the ladies of the players' boxes are treated. Well treated may not be the right word - rather they are zoomed in on, played in slow motion and are often to be found "fighting for their men." Andrew Castle is particularly guilty of this, waxing lyrical about the fact that Kim Sears apparently has actual magical powers that affect boyfriend Andy Murray's decisions on court with every flick of the hair. Yes, this is arguably a personal gripe at a fairly innocuous turn of phrase, but it touches at the roots of the wider problem. Inverdale described his comments as being meant in a "nice way", and once people start veiling blatantly sexist remarks under the banner of good old British banter, or jolly ruddy good Wimbledon fun (pass the Pimms), we lose sight of real problem at the heart of female sport. 

There are countless examples of the double standards in tennis, from the camera's focus on players' girlfriends rather than boyfriends, to the constant argument about how much noise women make on court. Unfortunately, these gender binaries are often perpetuated by the players themselves. Recently, Jo-Wilfred Tsonga proved that his science isn't as strong as his serve, suggesting that women aren't as consistent on the tour due to "hormones". Hormones. He may as well have blamed it all on periods. Equally, Gilles Simon complained that women's tennis is less exciting than men's in a public interview, to which Serena Williams retorted:

‘Women's tennis is really awesome. We fought for years with Billie Jean King, to get equal pay ... Maria (Sharapova)'s right – a lot more people are watching her than him. She’s way hotter than he is."

Yeah, girl power, Serena. Gilles may be a bit of a shit but at least Maria's smoking hot. She probably deserved to win Wimbledon, for 6ft blonde women everywhere. For all the "Sharapova's." Here we see the problem is as rooted in the players as it is in the pundits. What exactly is it to be a "Sharapova"? Inverdale succeeds in both dehumanising a champion tennis player, and creating her as the mould for every attractive, leggy non-Bartoli out there. Inverdale's idiocy aside, I'm not sure Bartoli would ever want to be a Sharapova, (currently embroiled in a love rivalry with frenemy Serena Williams instead of powering her way to a Grand Slam title as Marion did so beautifully.) In all the nastiness and superficiality, Bartoli played the match and reacted to the incident with a grace that has nothing to do with looks. Her response to Inverdale encapsulates what is truly at stake in professional tennis:

"It doesn't matter, honestly. I am not blonde, yes. That is a fact. Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. I'm sorry. But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes. And to share this moment with my dad was absolutely amazing and I am so proud of it.

There's a lady with her priorities straight and her dignity in tact - that's pretty hot to me.