Shane Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live over the weekend, and the response to the comedian’s opening monologue has been fast and mostly furious.
On Saturday, Gillis took the stage and almost immediately insulted women with a joke that pretty indisputably did not land.
In what first sounded like self-deprecating humor, the comedian vented about needing to lose weight and his awkward trips to the gym. Quickly, it turned into a misogynistic jab about women’s outfits.
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now,” Gillis quipped.
When awkward laughter trickled in, he followed up with, “I’m sorry—there’s no other way to describe—have you seen the shorts?”
Gillis then went into detail about women’s gym clothing and how men aren’t “allowed to look.” Gillis even added that, given so many women now film their workouts, he’s likely in the background of a handful of TikTok videos staring at them with his jaw on the floor.
Timing that’s hard to ignore
Immediately, much of the internet had a scathing response to what many seemed to consider not only unfunny, but misogynistic and problematic.
That was especially true given that much of the country is incensed over new details that have come to light in the case of the “Cornell 7″—the fraternity brothers who allegedly drugged and raped a young woman in 2024 and talked about the situation in a massive group text.
The lawsuit sparked a social media movement in which women have been sharing their stories of sexual assault and, in many cases, naming their alleged assaulters.
Jessica Valenti, a gender and politics writer who writes the Abortion, Every Day newsletter, had a searing response to Gillis’s monologue, in which she asserted that Gillis didn’t make a mistake or simply go too far, but knew exactly what he was doing.
“Shane Gillis knows there’s a national conversation about sexual assault,” Valenti said, adding, “This is his contribution to that conversation.”
Valenti continued, pressing that the normalizing of misogyny is a straight line to a culture that allows rape.
“This is what turns young men into rapists. When you demean and denigrate and dehumanize women . . . what do you think rape culture is?” she argued.
Fast Company reached out to a rep for Gillis for comment.
“Could not be more tone deaf”
Valenti then pointed the finger at not just Gillis, but the show that gave him a stage. “ Saturday Night Live platformed rape culture in maybe the country’s biggest reckoning on sexual assault and they should be f***ing ashamed,” she said.
Actor and comedian Dan Levy weighed in, too, with a video post on Instagram. “Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them ‘whores’ misogynists.
“There’s a difference there,” Levy said. He went on to assert that men show their bodies equally at the gym, and said he was “speechless” that the monologue was allowed to be made on live TV.
Other celebrities added their two cents on Levy’s post. Elizabeth Banks wrote, “Nailed it” in the comments, while Hacks actor Hannah Einbinder simply wrote, “Thank you dan.”
While much of the internet is unapologetically roasting Gillis over the monologue, SNL has, so far, been silent.
In a move that appears to support Gillis’s choice of words, SNL shared the clip of Gillis’s monologue on Instagram after the controversy was well underway. While some commenters on the post said they enjoyed the set, most viewers aired their disappointment.
“ SNL , I love you, but this could not be more tone deaf in light of recent events,” one comment reads. “This is so hard to watch,” another reads.
Fast Company reached out to NBC for a comment on the incident and the growing backlash, but we haven’t heard back.
This is not the first time that Gillis has been at the center of a controversy at the iconic comedy sketch show.
Back in 2019, he was fired as an SNL cast member just days after being hired. His firing came after a 2018 clip of his “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” resurfaced, where the star had used a racial slur against Asians.
Gillis apologized following the massive backlash at the time. Meanwhile, producer Lorne Michaels said the show had been unaware of the comedian’s comments. Gillis has hosted the show three times since his firing.
In spite of the fact that so many view Gillis’s humor as racist and misogynistic, the star has a massive fanbase.
So much so that he just broke a world record for the size of his crowd. In July, the comedian performed at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field and drew a record-smashing crowd, selling the most-ever tickets for a solo comedy show.
So while the world continues to wonder how rape culture persists, it keeps giving the stage to misogyny again and again.
