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Dan Levy has hit out at comedian Shane Gillis for saying women dressed like “wh***s” in the gym on Saturday Night Live.
Comedian Gillis – who was hired to join SNL in 2019 but swiftly fired after videos of him using homophobic and racist language resurfaced – returned to host the US version of the sketch comedy show for the third time on Saturday (10 October) night.
In his opening monologue, the controversial stand-up comic, 38, said that women at the gym “dress like wh***s now”, adding: “Look, I’m sorry there’s no other way to describe it.”
The comment was met with intense backlash online, with Schitt’s Creek creator Levy, 43, sharing a video to Instagram on Monday (12 October) criticising Gillis’s comments.
“Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores, it makes the men calling them whores misogynists. There’s a difference there,” Levy said, adding that he’d “seen more men’s nipples at the gym than I’ve ever seen women showing their bodies off”.
He continued: “I’m speechless that something like that can exist on live national television, and to be honest more men need to be standing up in opposition to it, because it’s complacency that has created the environment with which women are sexually assaulted and it’s a ’conversation’ as opposed to a crime.
“Men need to be defending women more. This is not a women’s issue, this is an everybody issue. Because the more that men objectify women in the media, the more that other men see them as objects and treat them as objects.”
Levy ended his video by reiterating that women “are not objects”, before playfully adding: “They are superior human beings to men. And I’m sorry if this gets me in trouble with the internet, but f***.”
The Independent has contacted Gillis’s representatives for comment.
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Commenters on Levy’s post were in agreement, with actor Elizabeth Banks writing: “Nailed it.”
Another said that the episode felt “truly tone deaf” given the ongoing discussion around misogyny in the wake of the events at Cornell University, where seven fraternity members allegedly sexually assaulted an unconscious woman.
“Last night’s SNL was one of the most blatant displays of the gender intelligence/literacy gap (both emotional and intellectual) I’ve ever seen on television,“ write another commenter.
“[Musical guest] Rosalía was literally singing in multiple languages, en pointe, about spirituality and introspection, while Shane Gillis stood in jeans and sneakers making misogynistic jokes about what women wear to the gym.”
Gillis’s comments on Saturday Night Live come in sharp contrast to the show’s UK counterpart, where Weekend Update hosts Ania Magliano and Paddy Young have been repeatedly praised for “speaking truth to power“ on the show’s second series.