Suzanne Harrington: Listen to the ‘comedian’ about gym gear, ladies

Host Shane Gillis during his recent appearance on Saturday Night Live. He had already been pulled off SNL in 2019 after racist and homophobic ‘jokes’ he’d made resurfaced. Picture: Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images

When a man who looks like he has not been inside anywhere in a very long time, least of all a gym, tells women they look like whores, you’d imagine some saddo on the internet furiously typing from his mother’s basement.

Not on camera in front of millions, being transmitted live to a nation watching a high-profile US sketch show.

And yet here we are — the man presenting Saturday Night Live telling women that they look like whores in their gym clothes. Listen to the ‘comedian’, ladies.

Shane Gillis made his 'women look like whores' comment in the midst of the Cornell University gang rape furore concerning seven men accused of raping a young woman at a frat house.

One of the men allegedly sent a message to a Snapchat group of 57 men, alerting them to the presence of “free pussy”. None of the 57 men intervened on behalf of the unconscious woman.

They became known as the Cornell 7, which sounds like a boy band. Some of the sanctions imposed on them reportedly included writing an essay — imagine Bart Simpson’s blackboard lines: “I must not gang rape unconscious women, I must not gang rape unconscious women.”

You’d be reminded of Emerald Fennell’s 2020 film Promising Young Woman, where the futures of promising young men are prioritised over the actual lives of young women. Same as it ever was.

You’d assume therefore that the women-look-like-whores-at-the-gym routine on Saturday Night Live was a random misstep, some incel clown failing to read the room. 

You’d assume that casually calling women whores in 2026 does not fly. You’d be wrong.

Gillis, who nobody outside the US ever heard of until last week, had already been pulled off Saturday Night Live in 2019 after racist and homophobic ‘jokes’ he’d made resurfaced.

But SNL’s creator, Lorne Michaels, is a fan, and so Gillis was reinstated in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

In the midst of widespread fury about how privileged young men were initially treated after allegedly gang-raping a drugged woman, a highly respected satirical platform responds with 'women look like whores'.

Kate Manne, ironically a professor of philosophy at Cornell University, wrote about the patterns and logic of misogyny in her landmark 2017 book Down Girl.

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How it is essentially a control tool to maintain gender inequity, “a social and political phenomenon with psychological, structural, and institutional manifestations”. How it is distinct from sexism.

Sexism, she says, is an ideology where women are inherently believed to owe men intangibles like attention, care, sex. (See also: childcare, housework). This is because women are caring and nurturing and naturally love looking after everyone for free.

Sexism teaches how women exist to give, men exist to take; men are individuals, women interchangeable.

The role of misogyny is to act as sexism’s attack dog, policing women who fail to slot into sexism’s worldview.

If women conform to this ideology and have nice hair, they can end up as White House press secretary. Or a trad wife like Melania. Just never, ever president. Hillary knows. Kamala knows.

When women don’t conform, misogyny goes after them. Or as Kate Manne puts it: “Sexism wears a lab coat; misogyny goes on witch hunts.”

The only difference between Iranian ‘morality’ police who kill women for not wearing headscarves and American ‘comedians’ calling women whores for wearing gym shorts is points on a spectrum.