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Cameron Esposito hadnt been planning to talk about hersexual assaultonstage.
Esposito doesnt just talk about the show as if shes on a mission; sheison a mission.
And she wants as many people to see it as possible, as soon as it is possible.
Tune in toGood Oneevery Monday onSpotify,Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Before we talk about you talking about sexual assault onstage, I want to talk aboutnottalking about it onstage.
Its hard for me to talk about this because I had one of those experiences in college.
So this all happened against the backdrop of realizing things about my church.
And our culture puts so much of womens value on their fuckability.
I also had somebody who repeatedly encouraged me to put myself in bad positions.
He also provided the alcohol.
I used to tell this story to people as a funny joke.
Like this is how disconnected I was from my own agency, and my agency over my body.
Yeah, this guy totally got me drunk!
It was a male friend of mine who said, Cameron, what youre describing is date rape.
And I thought about it and I was like, Oh, yeah.
That is what happened.
But this is such a taboo topic, I didnt know this had happened to me.
That was not my story.
So, I havent talked about it on stage because how do you fit all of that information in.
What I figured out is that you have to do the full hour.
You cant just do it halfway.
You have to really do it.
And this felt like the time to do that.
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As a comic, you are constantly pulling from your own experiences.
It mustve been hard to have this thing that you felt you couldnt talk about.
My parents didnt take it well at first.
I didnt have friends that I could tell.
The first person I told didnt talk to me for the rest of the school year.
I dont know that Ive ever really re-trusted people.
And then this man wanted something from me that I couldnt give, and so he took it.
That was another marker.
I will maybe never recover from having had that happen to me.
This is where Im at.
Thats what happened for me with the election.
I just couldnt not talk about it anymore.
I waited for someone to say what I felt about this topic.
I didnt feel like I wanted to bethevoice on this.
I wanted to hear some voices.
Instead, what I saw was a lot of centering of dudes who did bad things.
And, man, thats not the first place my brain goes.
I want to know how are you still alive?
If this happened to you, how are you doing?
What is your day like?
How did you have a relationship after this?
How do you have sex when sex is related to sexual violence?
Rape is not sex, but how do you separate the two?
When youre in recovery from an eating disorder, you still need to eat.
How do you go out in the world?
How are you not scared?
And its not one guy.
We can take down whatever the growing number is.
The eight dudes whose names we all know.
And that doesnt change shit.
They should be shamed and they should face consequences, but this is culture.
This isnt eight guys.
Yeah, and if anything, having eight guys makes it easier for people to move on.Absolutely.
Having the eight guys separates you from the eight guys.
I want to talk to straight, cisgender dudes about this.
I understand that you probably are afraid.
Youre afraid that you might fall into this category.
Maybe you were young, maybe you didnt get sex ed.
Maybe culture didnt prepare you to be at college with alcohol around.
And maybe you never knew that women had agency over their own bodies.
And I want to hang with you, and I want to fix that.
Or at least talk about it.
Its always these really black and white cases.
Thats also what tends to be joked about.
These are rape jokes.
Jokes about culture and my experience and my whole life, this hour, this is rape jokes.
Women are unfunny harpies that are telling you what you cant talk about.
Because that is something that has been a part of my life.
And in 2014,I wrote a column in the A.V.
Clubabout how I want comics to tell rape jokes.
The thing is rape jokes are usually kind of bad.
Theyre not well done.
Theyre not really interesting.
I havent seen a ton of rape jokes that I feel break new ground.
Just be good at it.
Care enough to be good at it.
Have more respect for yourself as a comic than just using a taboo word to get a laugh.
I dont do that.
I have never used taboo words to get a laugh.
Thats a challenge that I would throw to other comics: I dont need to do that.
Dont just throw something out.
Its not like I think that this conversation is gonna be over or fixed.
But what I do see is that were moving on a little bit.
I wouldnt be doing this if I didnt think I had something to say.
I would like to enter the pantheon of this conversation.
Its power and its brutality.
The fact that thats so blurry, we clearly need to do more education and have more conversations.
That needs to happen now.
