John Oliver Brilliantly Picked Apart The Online Harassment Of Women On ‘Last Week Tonight’
"If you're thinking, 'Come on, that doesn't seem like that big a problem', congratulations on your white penis."
From Gamergate to Supanova, the behaviour of men towards women online has become a topic of the times. Stories of rape and death threats, doxxing, revenge porn and generally despicable and dangerous attitudes are pretty familiar by now among online communities, but have only limited awareness in the wider media. Just last week Sunrise responded to news of yet another photo-hacking scandal by asking what it would take “for women to get the message about taking and sending nude photos,” prompting writer Clem Ford to post a topless photo of herself online in protest — an act that led to Ford receiving a series of rape and death threats.
It’s that culture of accepted violence and victim blaming that John Oliver tackles in his latest Last Week Tonight feature, unpicking the depth of the problem and some of the attitudes that prevent its solving. As Oliver says, “If you’re thinking ‘come on, that doesn’t seem like that big a problem’, congratulations on your white penis.”
As if to prove that point, some giant adolescent crybabies commenters have already begun taking exception to Sarkeesian’s five-second appearance in the video, which somehow negates all sixteen minutes of it because *insert high-pitched whining sounds here*. John Oliver is officially dead to the Gamergate/men’s rights corner of the internet, as if you needed another reason to like him.
