Shane Gillis Insulted Women on SNL. Christians Should Say Plainly That He Was Wrong.
Shane Gillis used his SNL monologue to call women in workout clothes a crude name for prostitutes. NBC has not commented. Modesty matters, but Jesus put the burden on the man.
Comedian Shane Gillis went on "Saturday Night Live" last weekend and used a vulgar word for prostitutes to describe women who wear tight workout clothes. Days later, the backlash is still growing, and NBC has said nothing.
Plenty of the criticism has come from people who share little else with this magazine's readers. On this point they are right, and Christians should say so plainly.
What he said
Gillis, a stand-up comic and podcaster, opened his monologue by saying he had not been to the gym in a while and did not know how women dress there now. He said women at the gym now dress like prostitutes, using a cruder word, according to Variety, and added, "Look, I'm sorry, there's no other way to describe [it]." He went on to describe the shorts in crude detail.
"SNL" and NBC have not commented publicly on the backlash or answered requests for comment, CNN reported. CNN noted that the show has long ridden out controversies over its hosts in silence.
Gillis has history with the show. He was fired as a cast member days after his hiring was announced, when clips surfaced of him using an ethnic slur against Chinese people, a mock Asian accent and gay slurs on his podcast, CNN reported. He described himself then as a "comedian who pushes boundaries."
The reaction
Jessie Leo, a graphic designer who works on the show, wrote on Instagram that she wondered how she could ever feel comfortable going to NBC's human resources office after the company approved the joke, CNN reported. Former cast members Cecily Strong and Ego Nwodim mocked the joke with photos of their own workout clothes.
Actor Dan Levy posted a video. Wearing short shorts to the gym does not make women what Gillis called them, he said, but it does make the men who say it "misogynists," according to Variety. Actress Martha Plimpton said Gillis "deserves a spanking from his mom."
What Scripture says about the man who looks
Some will defend Gillis as a comic who refuses to bow to political correctness. Some may even say he had a point about how people dress at the gym. Those are two separate questions, and it matters to keep them apart.
Modesty is a real virtue. Paul told Timothy that women should adorn themselves "in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety" (1 Timothy 2:9), and Christian families can and should teach their sons and daughters to dress with dignity. Christians do not have to pretend that every fashion is harmless.
But Gillis was not making a case for modesty. He was calling women a name that means they sell their bodies, on national television, for the price of a laugh. And when the Bible speaks to a man noticing a woman's body, it puts the burden on him. "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart," Jesus said in Matthew 5:28. He did not tell men to blame what the woman was wearing.
Paul also gave a rule for how Christian men treat women: "the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity" (1 Timothy 5:2). No man calls his sister that name on national television. A culture that laughs at that line has lost something.
The joke also cheapens a word Scripture treats seriously. The Bible uses harlotry as a picture of unfaithfulness to God. It is not a casual insult for someone whose shorts you do not like.
Silence is a choice too
NBC chose to put this monologue on the air, and it is choosing not to answer for it. That silence tells young viewers that contempt for women is just edgy entertainment. Christian parents, as Dock Line has said about what comes out of Hollywood, should watch closely what their families take in.
It is fair to criticize the hypocrisy of an industry that discovers its concern for women only when it is politically convenient. But hypocrisy in the critics does not make the joke right. Christians can say both things at once.
Comedy can puncture pride, expose foolishness and make people laugh at themselves. At its best it tells the truth. Calling women that name for going to the gym does none of that. It is the kind of "foolish talking" and "jesting" Paul said is "not convenient" for believers (Ephesians 5:4). The better laugh is one nobody has to be degraded to earn.
Hero photo: D. Benjamin Miller via Wikimedia Commons, CC0, cropped and resized.
