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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
@Josh Guerrin@facebook the only place I'll disagree with you is in that he told the story of what happened for effect. Meaning he realized or had some awareness of the badness of the event itself. Either he perceived it as a mortifying event (and was making fun of himself and badly) or he realized he'd done something yucky (but wasn't it sooooo funny how he laid that old girl.). He showed a level of contempt for his sexual partner which means to me, he's not completely clueless. Like if he was clueless, he might have been like =, "Wow that was a great time wasn't it?" He seemed callous to me, not awkward. Like she was a tool for him to get laid and then to laugh about. Eh. Anyway, I hope he gets the right kind of support and people around him and gets some things straightened out. Likely, none of us will ever know the truth or the outcome so we might should all let it go.
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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
@Josh Guerrin@facebook responded to you above.
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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
@Bklynkoi that's an amazing piece. Humans like their cruelty, don't they. Sorry you've had to go through it but I'm glad you've been able to name it and place it somewhere, the impact on you.
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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
@Josh Guerrin@facebook i don't know if I buy the "awkward and terrible with women" thing in cases like this. Did you read the article on communication I linked earlier? I think, in my heart of hearts, this guy engaged in creepy sex with a relatively unwilling woman who was probably drunk past the point of consent (which legally would make a scenario like this rape), and he milked the story for more creep factor because he was at ASSSCAT in front of his heroes. I don't think he'd ever consider what he did (if indeed he did it) wrong, even though the mass reaction to his alleged treatment of the woman was callous and frankly, contemptuous and in a zone of sexual misconduct we may not have a proper word for. This is kind of off topic to this comment, but to your other comment below....status games (and status wars) are sadly a feature of the primate make up, not a bug. Dominance and submission, bullying, etc we find these everywhere. I don't like it. I don't promote it. But this is the internet and this kind of gang up happens like...all the time and for far less egregious actions. In this case, I am (in a way) glad that the reaction from the improv community was WTF???? And the young man needs some real "look in the mirror" time about a) treating women the way he allegedly did, and b) how to tell a good story, cause he failed on that count. Women comedians and improvisers are tired of being in scenes and on stage where sex and rape jokes are the norm. Maybe that's part of the reaction. It's one thing when it's a fiction, on stage and I have to put up with it. It's damn well another when a person is basically bragging about being a terrible person in real life. Allegedly, I say, as I admit I don't really know the trufax of the actual sitch. Sadness all around.
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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
Groups throughout history have always policed each other and sometimes with pretty sadistic results. Tarred and feathered, Ridden out on a rail etc. In this case, the story was offensive to pretty much everyone who listened to it and people are reacting using the tools they have at hand. The internet. Is it a wise choice? Maybe not, cause we don't know the whole story. Is it the choice that winds up getting made? Yeah. And, in many ways it will serve a particular purpose of showing everyone who is reading the threads that that kind of storytelling (esp if true) is gonna get a very negative reaction from men and women, so on some level, the group policing is in place. As for ruining him, what I hope (if he indeed did the things he said he did) is that he actually gets some help/therapy/clarity that his actions and behaviors are plain wrong and that he can change. If he didn't do them, and the whole thing was supposed to be "funny" or some kind of Andy Kaufmanesque "Fuck You" to the audience, well....he needs to go back to improv class.
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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
I'll try to answer your question Josh, as best I know how. Sans and Besser are hosting a show. There is, probably, tremendous pressure to keep a show going, make the audience feel comfortable and move forward. My assumption is S and B were waiting for some comic platform/tilt moment in the story, and they used sarcasm and mocking humor to clue Angell in to their (and the audiences) increasing discomfort. He didn't clue in, or chose not to clue in either because he was socially awkward or because he's a real honest jerk. More on that in a minute. As a host myself, I think it's a very fine line between shifting the audience energy away from the negative moment, and flat out stopping the moment. They used humor to highlight his idiocy and then apparently called back the story in their Armando to highlight how terrible a story it was. They could have chosen to stop the show and said. Dude...that's the least cool story ever. I'd have been really happy with that response, as I think the audience would have. The audience respected Sans and Besser and would have gone with their leadership in that effort. But I think what they did in the moment, being surprised was also acceptable. I do wonder how the tone and reaction would have changed if there had been women on the stage. I wish there had been. As for your second post well....maybe he was socially awkward, but maybe he was relying on her fear or her drunkenness. Here are some links that indicate how often people DO interpret cues correctly and how often men who might want to take things farther use that "socially awkward" thing to get what they want. http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/mythcommunication-its-not-that-they-dont-understand-they-just-dont-like-the-answer/ http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/because_of_the_implication
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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
Also, Josh. There is a very very broad and deep gap in the ways men and women communicate in circumstances such as this. Let's say this event occurred just as he said. He might have believed she was giving him pity sex, like...ok this will be over in 2 minutes, and then he'll leave, I'll have a hangover but oh well. Maybe that's what happened. It's equally reasonable to assume she was drunk, discombobulated by a person she didn't call showing up at her door, who apparently let himself in and didn't leave when she asked. She might have been afraid, she might have been so drunk she couldn't truly consent or make a rational decision. Many women in that circumstance will opt to take the 2 minute non-violent fuck (even asking for a condom to protect themselves from disease), instead of risking that the guy will get angry and take the fuck. I know a lot of men don't seem to believe this is true, but it is. What looks like pity sex is often "just get him out of here sex." And it shows a clear disregard of the woman from the man's point in this case. He didn't care a whit that she was drunk and uncomfortable. Real consent, even in one nighter, means that each person's pleasure doesn't come at the expense of the other person's safety or comfort. I wish more people understood this. If they did we might all have a little bit less sex, but it was damn well be much better more satisfying sex.
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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
@joshGuerrin We don't know (for a fact) that the story he told was true. We don't know that it was a fiction, or an exaggeration, or something he heard someone else say, we don't know for a fact if this was some kind of Andy Kaufman-esque piece of performance art. What we do know is that he told a story that provokes a pretty repulsed response in most of the people who've watched it live, watched it on tape, so much so that his peers confronted him at parties after the event and we know he's not made a statement as to the truth or fiction of the story. His story, at BEST, is a story of callous, coercive sex with someone he didn't give a damn about. We've already discussed what the story could be at worst. I'm personally turned off by lynch mobs, but this is the wild wild west of the internet, and if you go on stage and tell that story, call it a true story, and allow yourself to be filmed, then Maude help you cause people are gonna react. I hope he didn't do what he said he did, cause if he did it speaks terribly about both his actions and how he believed telling "comic" stories about that action was a good idea. If he did do those things, I hope he gets some help.
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On One Night at Asssscat, or What to Do With a Date Rape Monologue
@Josh Guerrin@facebook Well, don't put me too high up on a pedestal. I'll probably just fall off. I think there is so so much more we need, as a culture, to do to really get people comfortable with healthy sexuality, sex ed, consent, joy and pleasure. Treating each other with kindness not contempt and so forth. We've got a long way to go. There are lots of stories like this. I've heard versions of them from men and from the woman's side. There is a lot of impolite and inhuman behavior going on out there. I don't know what to do about it. I mean, I'm totally following the story, googling links and wondering about things myself. Rubbernecking. Anyway, I'm gonna let it go and keep talking to my sons about how yes means yes and if you aren't sure, get a cup of coffee together and talk it out. Hard stuff. Shouldn't be that hard.