Standing Up To Misogynistic Comedy in Leeds

Rape is No Joke & Socialist Students at the protest in 2013 against Tequila UK

Just last week, misogynist comedian Dapper Laughs was set to tour the whole UK, performing in Glasgow, London, and amongst others, Leeds. When Leeds Socialist Students heard that he was planning to perform here, we immediately started a petition and were making plans to campaign to get his performance at the O2 Academy cancelled – the petition got around 80 signatures in under an hour, when we called victory, because his entire tour was cancelled off the back of similar pressure nationally. The next day he announced that the Dapper Laughs ‘character’ was to also be retired.

Mary Finch, Leeds Uni Socialist Students

Cardiff Student Union had already taken the decision to cancel his performance, after 700 students signed a petition demanding that he should be banned from campus. Thousands signed a petition to ITV2 demanding that they cancel his show ‘Dapper Laughs: On the Pull’, which was quite literally a compilation of footage of Dapper Laughs following, verbally abusing, and sexually harassing women in the street, as if this kind of behaviour is acceptable, and even funny. Dapper Laughs, and other misogynist comedians, reinforce the idea that it’s acceptable for men to behave this way, and that women just have to put up with it.

Socialist Students have been using the Rape is No Joke campaign in Leeds to tackle these issues across campus, day in, day out. At Leeds Beckett University, we won compulsory consent workshops that will be gradually implemented by the student union from 2015 onwards, and we’re campaigning to do the same at Leeds University. We’re hosting our own Rape is No Joke night on the 28^th November, at The Fenton pub in Leeds, to prove that you don’t need misogyny to have good comedy.

Front of the leaflet advertising the Leeds Rape is No Joke gig on the 28th November

Socialist Students set up the Rape is No Joke campaign two years ago to combat all the ideas and behaviour that Dapper Laughs represents. We want to make it clear that rape is not funny. Sexual harassment is not funny. Intimidating and abusing women is not funny. We should all have the right to feel safe. We should all have the right to walk home at night alone, without having to keep your hand in your pocket, thinking about how to use your keys as a makeshift weapon.

We have to challenge misogyny wherever we see it, on campus, in culture – and especially in politics. The three main parties, Labour, Lib Dem, and Tories alike, have slashed funding to services that women vitally rely on. Refuges for women suffering domestic abuse or rape are being slashed left, right, and centre.

The lack of affordable housing, directly caused by the fact that these parties refuse to invest in mass house building schemes, forces women to stay in abusive relationships, because they have nowhere else to go. Charities like Rape Crisis are having to take over and supplement the services the government won’t provide, but their stretched resources mean they often have to turn women who are vulnerable and in dangerous situations away.

Socialist Students campaigns against sexism wherever it occurs, whether it’s from Dapper Laughs, or David Cameron. The campaign that got Dapper Laughs’ tour cancelled, similar to the campaign to get Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ banned from campus student unions, sent a clear message: we will not stand for rape culture.

Campaigns against the cuts, and demanding full restored funding to those vital services, make it clear that women will not be treated as an afterthought, or a second-class priority. Only by taking to the streets and organising can we win full equality for women.