This week Daniel O'Reilly, better known as Dapper Laughs has trended more times than Christmas. If you've been living under a rock the ITV2 comedian has been slammed for a YouTube video from his live show that see's the comedian glorify rape and even go as far as explicitly telling a female audience member she's 'gagging for a rape'.
Dapper rose to fame via the video social media app Vine. His posts consist of short clips that see him asking women on the street to show him their gash and 'how to get girls to perform oral sex'.
Dapper's vines normalise everyday sexism and the objectification of young women, they are often derogatory towards larger women with some clips showing men 'how to get fat women into bed...' with a slice of cake.
Others are more extreme and advocate violence towards women - in one clip O'Reilly asks 'how do you get a woman to show you her tits?' - a knife is revealed and he continues, 'turn around and lift up your fucking shirt'.
Earlier this week Dapper issued a short statement on Twitter to reassure us that he was only pushing the boundaries of entertainment and that meant taking risks. Dapper has become public enemy number one until Katie Hopkins gets back from her holidays.
Shortly after #DapperLaughs began to trend, ITV2 announced that the second series of 'On The Pull' has been axed after an online petition of 50,000 signatures had called for it.
On Tuesday Daniel appeared on News Night and faced some brilliant questioning from Emily Maitlis. In a somber black polo neck the comedian told Emily he was playing a character and of course does not condone sexism. He went on to say he'll stop playing the character and will stop it from being promoted - we should push for this to translate into him deleting Dapper's profiles from social media. So Dapper was to blame not Daniel?
I don't believe O'Reilly's defense or plea of juvenility - I'd like to ask him if he thought women would be more or less likely to be sexually assaulted as a result of his risk taking.
I think he was totally aware of his actions and genuinely found them amusing but I think the motive behind all of this was far darker - a hunger for fame.
Producing these pithy posts gained him followers - it's a short cut route to notoriety that the likes of the aforementioned Hopkins know how to navigate. A following, no matter how acquired equates to fame and if there is anything our society objectifies more than women its celebrity. So is celebrity culture to blame?
However, I don't think O'Reilly is the one we need to be worried about - the real problem here is the fact it had an audience and was given a platform.
Dapper was about to embark on a sell out tour of the UK, playing 800-1500 capacity venues all of which are owned by O2. His ITV2 show was commissioned and lined up for a second series - lets not forget the Vine clips were what got him commissioned in the first place, so are ITV and O2 to blame?
O'Reilly has 2.8m followers across 5 social media platforms - why have none of these platforms removed his content or shut down his profiles? A few months ago Facebook was closing accounts of drag queens that used stage names in place of birth names - hosting content that encourages everyday sexism and violence towards women is evidently not on the agenda, so is the Internet to blame?
Who is following him on these platforms? Young men. With celebrities like Dapper who endorse this lad humor can we blame the role models? As Abi Wilkinson revealed when she questioned Dapper's misogyny his thoughts are shared with thousands of young men across the world. So are men to blame?
In a generation where revenge porn is easier to get hold of than a working wage job the accessibility and glorification of violence towards women has been normalised. So is porn to blame?
If we can learn anything from Dapper it's that the great gender divide is wider than we might have thought, gender equality is way off even after this years summer of pop-feminism, porn is normalising violence towards women, men are still using violence and the treat of it to overpower women and so the world is more f**ked than we thought - or is it?
We know all of this stuff. I am telling you nothing new. Perhaps it's us who are to blame? Perhaps we need to move away from blame culture. We know this stuff exists but are passive towards it - this culture can be reversed.
...and for any young men reading this and genuinely wanting to know how do you get a woman to show you her tits? She'll show you them if she wants to. http://ift.tt/eA8V8J
from UK Comedy - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/14dMoYm
Dapper rose to fame via the video social media app Vine. His posts consist of short clips that see him asking women on the street to show him their gash and 'how to get girls to perform oral sex'.
Dapper's vines normalise everyday sexism and the objectification of young women, they are often derogatory towards larger women with some clips showing men 'how to get fat women into bed...' with a slice of cake.
Others are more extreme and advocate violence towards women - in one clip O'Reilly asks 'how do you get a woman to show you her tits?' - a knife is revealed and he continues, 'turn around and lift up your fucking shirt'.
Earlier this week Dapper issued a short statement on Twitter to reassure us that he was only pushing the boundaries of entertainment and that meant taking risks. Dapper has become public enemy number one until Katie Hopkins gets back from her holidays.
Shortly after #DapperLaughs began to trend, ITV2 announced that the second series of 'On The Pull' has been axed after an online petition of 50,000 signatures had called for it.
On Tuesday Daniel appeared on News Night and faced some brilliant questioning from Emily Maitlis. In a somber black polo neck the comedian told Emily he was playing a character and of course does not condone sexism. He went on to say he'll stop playing the character and will stop it from being promoted - we should push for this to translate into him deleting Dapper's profiles from social media. So Dapper was to blame not Daniel?
I don't believe O'Reilly's defense or plea of juvenility - I'd like to ask him if he thought women would be more or less likely to be sexually assaulted as a result of his risk taking.
I think he was totally aware of his actions and genuinely found them amusing but I think the motive behind all of this was far darker - a hunger for fame.
Producing these pithy posts gained him followers - it's a short cut route to notoriety that the likes of the aforementioned Hopkins know how to navigate. A following, no matter how acquired equates to fame and if there is anything our society objectifies more than women its celebrity. So is celebrity culture to blame?
However, I don't think O'Reilly is the one we need to be worried about - the real problem here is the fact it had an audience and was given a platform.
Dapper was about to embark on a sell out tour of the UK, playing 800-1500 capacity venues all of which are owned by O2. His ITV2 show was commissioned and lined up for a second series - lets not forget the Vine clips were what got him commissioned in the first place, so are ITV and O2 to blame?
O'Reilly has 2.8m followers across 5 social media platforms - why have none of these platforms removed his content or shut down his profiles? A few months ago Facebook was closing accounts of drag queens that used stage names in place of birth names - hosting content that encourages everyday sexism and violence towards women is evidently not on the agenda, so is the Internet to blame?
Who is following him on these platforms? Young men. With celebrities like Dapper who endorse this lad humor can we blame the role models? As Abi Wilkinson revealed when she questioned Dapper's misogyny his thoughts are shared with thousands of young men across the world. So are men to blame?
In a generation where revenge porn is easier to get hold of than a working wage job the accessibility and glorification of violence towards women has been normalised. So is porn to blame?
If we can learn anything from Dapper it's that the great gender divide is wider than we might have thought, gender equality is way off even after this years summer of pop-feminism, porn is normalising violence towards women, men are still using violence and the treat of it to overpower women and so the world is more f**ked than we thought - or is it?
We know all of this stuff. I am telling you nothing new. Perhaps it's us who are to blame? Perhaps we need to move away from blame culture. We know this stuff exists but are passive towards it - this culture can be reversed.
...and for any young men reading this and genuinely wanting to know how do you get a woman to show you her tits? She'll show you them if she wants to. http://ift.tt/eA8V8J
from UK Comedy - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/14dMoYm
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