What About Russell Brand’s Performance at the VMAs?

In all the Kanye West/Taylor Swift kerfuffle, we seem to have let Russell Brand’s disgusting jokes slide. In the beginning of the show, Brand addressed the rumors about Lady Gaga’s sex. He said that the rumors were sexist, because people assumed that a woman with such a strong and confident expression of sexuality must really be a man. What great insight, right? That all went to crap when he ended that bit with this,

And if I pull her leotard to one side and find something a little extra there, I will just make it stiff and hang my hat on it.

He knows the rumors aren’t true and, more importantly, totally sexist. But then he reignites the rumor by implying that maybe the rumors are true after all. Either put the rumors to bed, or don’t talk about them at all. Don’t send mixed messages like that. If that wasn’t enough, he later made another really offensive “joke.” This was directed at Megan Fox of Transformers fame: 

“She has admitted she is a little bit cuckoo upstairs and I have trained in psychiatry. So, Megan, if you do have a little dizzy spell, love, I could probably slip you a little pill. You can go and have a lie down in my dressing room. You might get some crazy dreams about being visited by a scarecrow, a perfumed weirdo leaning over you. But let me tell you, that’s a common side-effect. Megan, take your medicine.”

Uh, did he just say that he was going to slip Megan Fox a roofie and rape her? Yes, he did. This story isn’t getting much play at all, which goes to show how accepting people are about rape. 

We really can’t let things like this slide. I don’t think a lot of feminists even watch the VMAs, because award shows like this are a cesspool of sexist and other highly offensive talk. But that’s precisely why we should be watching these shows. We have to be on the lookout for offensive language. Shielding ourselves from it only helps us; it doesn’t bring us any closer to exposing it and calling people out on it.