Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby never set out to become an international superstar, but since her groundbreaking comedy special Nanette, her every move goes viral.
The latest: a brilliant speech at The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Women in Entertainment event, which called out men for having too much power in defining good and bad behaviour.
“I want to speak about the very big problem I have with the good men, especially the good who take it upon themselves to talk about the bad men,” she told the room.
“I am sick of turning my television on at the end of the day to find anywhere up to 12 ‘Jimmys’ giving me their hot take. My problem is that according to the Jimmys, there are only two types of bad men. There are the Weinstein, Bill Cosby types, who are so utterly horrible that they might as well be a different species to the Jimmys…
“And then there are the FOJs – the friends of Jimmys. These are apparently good men who misread the rules. Garden-variety consent dyslexics. They have the rule book, but they just skimmed it.
“My issue is that when good men talk about bad men they always ignore the line in the sand,” she continued. “The line in the sand that is inevitably drawn whenever a good man talks about bad men. ‘I am a good man, here is the line, there are all the bad men.’
“We need to talk about how men will draw a different line for every different occasion. They have a line for the locker room, a line for when their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters are watching, another line for when they’re drunk and fratting, another line for non-disclosure, a line for friends and a line for foes.
“You know why we need to talk about this line between good men and bad men? Because it’s only good men who get to draw that line,” Gadsby continued. “And guess what? All men believe they are good.
‘This world – a world full of good men who do very bad things and still believe in their heart of hearts that they are good men because they have not crossed the line, because they move the line for their own good. Women should be in control of that line, no question.”
Cue (another) round of applause for Gadsby.
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