Samantha Bee and Terry Crews teamed up to create a hilarious public service announcement on “Full Frontal,” urging unfunny people to stop making jokes about male sexual assault.
“When we talk about men and sexual assault, it’s usually about whether some slimeball was falsely accused or not, but false accusations are as rare as a fun bachelorette party,” Bee said, kicking off the segment with a monologue.
“The truth is about 1 out of 33 men in the U.S. have been victims of attempted or completed rape, meaning men are vastly more likely to be sexually assault than to be falsely accused of rape,” she continued. “Sexual assault of men is a real problem, and not a joke, despite the way we tend to talk about it.”
Bee played a clip of comedians making jokes about rape, specifically referencing the cliche of rape happening to men in prison. Other clips she showed included a news clip in which a rape joke was made by police as part of an anti-drunk driving campaign.
There was even a clip of a “drop the soap” joke that popped up in an episode of the cartoon “Spongebob Squarepants.”
“Rape is funny when it happens in jail to people we don’t like?” Bee asked. “People have a tendency to dismiss male sexual abuse, even when it happens to children, including people on a network that really really should have put its staff through sensitivity training by now.”
To encourage people to stop making jokes about sexual assault against boys and men, Bee played a public service announcement she’d made with Terry Crews. In June, Crews detailed his own experience of sexual assault in testimony before the U.S. Senate.
The pair advised anyone making jokes about prison rape or priests abusing alter boys to think twice.
“Stop telling those f—king jokes,” Crews said.
“They’re not funny,” Bee added. “They’ve never been funny.”
“You’re a hack and everyone knows it,” Crews put in.
The two then detailed a few things that actually are funny, like spit-takes — in which both Crews and Bee spit water in each other’s faces — and the idea of kids stacked on top of each other in a trench coat to try to get into a movie.
Crews also had another ridiculous comedy alternative to making rape jokes: A pie to the face, but with the pie full of bees.
“It’s like your name!” Crews laughed as Bee screamed in mock horror.