Two-way mirrors in the toilets: yet another sign that comedy has a sexist dark side

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/28/chicago-bar-two-way-mirror-womens-toilet

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After her set at a Chicago bar last weekend, comedian Tamale Rocks made a sickening discovery in the women’s toilets. Directly facing the toilet was a full-length mirror (always awkward to get acquainted with your own peeface, but not intrinsically sinister), behind the full-length mirror was a door (sure, fine), and behind the door was a dingy passage filled with cleaning supplies – the perfect vantage point to (potentially) check out the urethral openings of unsuspecting, unconsenting women through what, it turned out, was a two-way mirror. Horrified, Rocks documented the apparent privacy violation in a short video, which she later uploaded to YouTube. “Here’s to being a lady in comedy, am I right?” she quips at the video’s close.

Ronnie Lottz, owner of the bar (which, by the way, is called Cigars and Stripes, because my nation is a cornucopia of elegance and restraint), reportedly told Rocks that the mirror was “a continuation of the creepy-fun-house theme of his establishment” and “used to feature a monster head that lit up through the two-way mirror, scaring ladies as they used the restroom”. Ha ha ha ha, delightful! Because there’s nothing women like better than being taken by surprise, in private, while their genitals are exposed – except, perhaps, having your privacy violated by club owners named Ronnie!

(Strangely enough, according to Rocks, male urinators are deprived of such a diverting folly. The two-way mirror/defunct monster head setup was reserved for the ladies’ pleasure alone. Terrifically peculiar.)

In a follow-up interview with the women’s-interest blog Jezebel, Lottz expressed a multitude of fascinating opinions on why having a two-way mirror in a women’s toilet is completely above board and in no way resembles – even coincidentally! – the many, many, many cases of predatory men spying on and videotaping women in public toilets. (If you need convincing that spying on women in the bathroom is a pervasive male power fantasy, Google “women’s restroom camera” and call me when you find a link that isn’t porn, if you don’t die of old age first.)

Lottz’s observations include: “This is a fun-house, honey, and if you don’t like the two-way mirror, go fuck yourself”, “Look, this woman is looking for a viral video. There’s a big movement in reality TV to be outraged about feminism”, “We specialize in making people feel very uncomfortable.” And this remarkable turn of phrase: “I will burn this fucking place to the ground before I get rid of that mirror.”

Lottz later assured reporters that there was “no hanky panky going on in that bathroom” and Raw Story reports that, according to a local police chief, “‘everything is on the up and up’ at Lottz’s bar because the closet door was always open.” Well, case closed, I guess!

One of the go-to rebuttals any time anyone dares to suggest that comedy (like, let’s be honest, all facets of culture) might have a misogyny problem is: “Calm down – they’re just jokes.” As though there’s some sort of separation between humour and “real” life, a moat between comedy and the rest of human interaction. As though comedy is only capable of absorption, never influence.

(Oddly, the other refrain you hear over and over is that comedy is our single holy talisman against all suffering and injustice in the world, our only engine of catharsis, and if we critique it in any way, lo, the human race shall surely perish. If you could hurry up and decide which one it is – is comedy frivolous or sacred? Does it affect us deeply or not at all? – definitely let me know. I’ll be over here comprehending nuance like some sort of wizard.)

Art has as much potential to perpetuate oppressive power structures as it does to dismantle them. Few statements have garnered me more blowback than the time I called comedy clubs “hostile spaces” for women, and, jokingly, referred to them as “dark basements full of angry men”. But regardless of whether or not anyone has ever actually peeked through the glass at Lottz’s club, his response is an uncanny reflection of the disdain and hostility with which so many comedians treat women on stage. He would rather burn down his business than acquiesce to (or even momentarily entertain) a woman’s request for privacy and safety.

Jokes that mock rape victims or glorify sexual assault couldn’t possibly be indicative of an individual comic’s “real” feelings about rape, we’re told. Sure, OK, until you hear Bill Cosby blithely joking about Spanish Fly with Larry King in 1991, or on vinyl as far back as 1969, when he was just beginning his alleged 50-year sexual assault spree.

Until you think about how validated Cosby must have felt by that audience’s laughter – how rapists must have felt sitting in that crowd, watching on TV, or listening on their record players at home. Until you think about what young boys, who were just learning how to navigate women’s boundaries (and girls learning where to set their own and how permeable they should be), absorbed from their hero.

And, of course, decades of male comedians who milked lazy laughs – night after night, year after year – out of the characterisation of women as humourless, nagging sex-hyenas couldn’t possibly have contributed to an environment in which female comics and fans are dehumanised, objectified, and held back because of their gender. Even though when we complain about something as egregious as a literal window into the stall where we pee, we’re told, “go fuck yourself”. And if we complain about anything subtler, we’re hysterical, we’re oversensitive, we just don’t get it.

When will it be enough? When will you believe us? Do you need a man – say, Jon Krakauer, whose new book, Missoula, may have finally convinced other men that rape is real – to write a book about sleazy bookers and comedy condos and sausage-fest writers’ rooms and “Here’s your obligatory girl comic for the night”?

There’s no clearer evidence of misogyny in comedy than the fact that women’s experiences of misogyny in comedy are so roundly and eagerly dismissed.

Nah. Just “grow a thicker skin”, ladies. And maybe a looser one too. A skin so loose and thick that you can wrap it around yourself like Gandalf’s cloak and no one can see you pee. Here’s to being a lady in comedy.