How is Misogyny Still a Punchline?

It felt like a throwback to the 1980s. It also felt quintessentially 2026.

This past weekend, the comedian and podcaster Shane Gillis sparked outrage during his Saturday Night Live opening monologue when he described women wearing gym shorts as being dressed “like whores.”

I scoffed when I first read the headlines. Whores? Really? That's the best he can do? The insult was so out of date, it felt almost — in a very twisted way — nostalgic.

We're a quarter of the way through the 21st century. We've supposedly retired plenty of once-common prejudices and stereotypes. Or at least we'd like to think we have. But shaming women for what they wear? Apparently, that one's still up for debate. Also up for debate: whether women wearing tight shorts are inviting men to stare, and whether filming themselves at the gym somehow makes them hypocrites for objecting to unwanted attention. At least, that seems to be the premise of Gillis's routine.

I love good comedy. It plays an essential role in democracy: challenging authority, exposing hypocrisy, pushing boundaries. Satire should be a cornerstone of a vibrant media landscape. I’m not advocating for a grim, humorless, bra-burning world in which we have lost sight of how funny things can be and how necessary it is to poke fun at ourselves. But there is a difference between pushing boundaries and recycling prejudice. Whether it's misogyny, racism, antisemitism or any other form of bigotry, there's nothing original about degrading people for who they are, what they believe, how they look or — indeed — what they wear.

Much has already been written about Gillis's remarks and how offensive they were. The actor Dan Levy called them misogynistic, while the former S.N.L. cast member Ego Nwodim responded with a gym selfie captioned “Whore reporting for duty.” But the hardest thing for me to stomach is Gillis's timing. This? Now? Against the backdrop of the horrific sexual assault allegations unfolding at Cornell? At a moment when we should be interrogating the attitudes that allow sexual violence to persist, a celebrated comedian is turning the degradation of women into a punchline on U.S. national television. 

Gillis is no stranger to controversy. In 2019, S.N.L. dropped him before his debut after racist and homophobic remarks surfaced. Yet the show has since repeatedly welcomed him back. I can almost hear the rationalizations. Yes, but people think he’s funny. Yes, but it's satire. Yes, but people are soooo sensitive. There's always a yes, but. Think of the ratings! The money! The attention! This is capitalism, baby. And somehow, with each one the exceptions keep getting broader, the excuses more accommodating. 

Of course, jokes have long relied on silly stereotypes — the meddling mother-in-law, the bumbling dad, the hapless husband, the fish out of water — but there are punchlines and then there are punchlines. The best comedians can do something interesting with these familiar tropes. They make us laugh because we recognize an uncomfortable truth. 

We insist that comedy exists in a separate universe, immune from the consequences of the words involved. It's just a joke. Except, of course, when it falls flat, as it did in this recent S.N.L. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t even very clever. 

A few months ago, I went to see a comedian whose entire set revolved around the idea that women are incompetent shopaholics and terrible drivers. I found myself wondering whether I'd accidentally wandered into a stand-up gig, circa 1985. The jokes weren't especially shocking. I didn’t feel upset or angry or even particularly offended. They were just tired and lazy. I was bored. But that is sort of the point. These stereotypes have become so familiar we barely register them.

The forensic psychologist Gill Harrop wrote this week in Psychology Today, that dismissing something as “just a joke” is also a judgment on those who don't find it funny. It suggests the problem isn't the joke but the person who fails to laugh. It's a neat trick: The comedian gets a free pass; the critic becomes the stickler; the one who’s no fun.

But the consequences go beyond making critics feel humorless. “Misogyny operates through comedy because when you get people to laugh along with you at the objectification and dehumanization of women, you're getting people to be complicit,” Leora Tanenbaum, the author of “Sexy Selfie Nation: Standing Up for Yourself in Today's Toxic, Sexist Culture,” told me when I asked her about this. “You are manufacturing consent of the degradation of women.”

Free speech doesn't mean freedom from criticism. But comedy doesn't exist outside the culture that produces and consumes it. A joke doesn't become harmless just because someone laughs.

In 2026, the question isn't whether Shane Gillis has the right to make a joke. Of course he does. The question is how we remain so willing to laugh at women’s degradation while simultaneously being shocked by the allegations of horrific sexual violence. At the very least, it's time we stopped pretending these two things exist in separate worlds.