Hear me out on this, but I’m a bit wary of approaching these sorts of scenarios with condemnation these days and I am leaning more towards the side of comedians. Being in the medical profession, I see the (dark) humour in a lot of scenarios that are completely inappropriate. Whether that’s a result of years of training, exposure, becoming “numb” to sensitivities, or part of a personality flaw in me, I don’t know, but I’m sure it doesn’t make me a bad person because I know I don’t actually believe the joke that emerges from such scenarios. I’ve been at the funeral of a child in a professional capacity and something happened that could have easily been scripted by Ricky Gervais as an episode of The Office. I was caught between seeing whether anyone else was thinking the same but also not wanting to catch the eye of someone who might set me off laughing. The funniness was in the absurdity of the situation and when I told it to medical friends later, they were in stitches. It doesn’t mean any of us think it’s appropriate to laugh at a child’s funeral.
I haven’t seen the episode, but Sean Locke probably constructed the scenario in his head of the normally glamorous Riley being made unglamorous and came up with a joke that he knew would shock and get a laugh in the context of an adult rated show. I don’t think, by inference, you can draw any conclusions as to his personal views on women as a result. I personally accept that a comedian’s jokes are not necessarily a reflection of that person. Watch Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on Netflix, Seinfeld discusses this a lot! It’s complex and to conflate the two risks sanitising comedy to the point where no one is offended. And it would be great if it wasn’t women on the receiving end, but then you have to agree that Ricky Gervais can’t joke about Caitlyn Jenner being terrible for women drivers, or John Cleese should be banned from Twitter for his recent jokes. All of Cleese’s tweets were constructed from the absurdity of what he was replying to.
You either ban all comedy or none of it. A comedian’s job is to get a laugh and it’s not always a reflection on the person. If Locke tells that joke somewhere else and it goes down like a lead balloon then he is likely to mentally note “jokes about wanking over women aren’t a go anymore”. A more useful analysis is not “Is Sean Locke a misogynist for making that joke?” but instead “Why do jokes like that still land well on late night adult rated tv shows?” I think eventually they won’t, in the same way Bernard Manning and Benny Hill wouldn’t be successful now.
I’m just very wary these days of telling comedians who make jokes I don’t like to shut up, because it's only a matter of time before someone else more woke tells a comedian who jokes about something I do agree with to shut up.
And then we’re all doomed to a life of sanitised misery.