Cumming School of Medicine events explore what we can learn about sexual violence through comedy

Sexual violence educator Dr. Kiara Mikita, PhD, with the Cumming School of Medicine’s Office of Faculty Development, is taking a different approach to Sexual Violence Awareness Month (SVAM) this May. Events this year will explore comedy’s potential to help expand conversations about sexual violence through facilitated workshops, panels and discussions alongside major names in comedy.   

The month's events are co-hosted by Mikita and Em Cooper, a stand-up comedian who produced and hosted the Rape is Real & Everywhere comedy show that toured Canada pre-#MeToo. Cooper currently runs a training and facilitation business called Cathartic Laughs focused on making the hard stuff funny.   

Cooper will lead workshops helping people who genuinely want to, but think they can’t, make jokes anymore, and for those who want to use humour to explore harm. Panels will involve Cooper, Mikita, and other experts from UCalgary, Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse (CCASA), Jane Doe (a Canadian artist, activist, and author of A Book About Rape), and Meg MacKay of Crave/APTN’s Don’t Even.   

The month will also feature Q-&-As with comedians who have produced work at the intersection of sexual violence and humour, learning about their insights. 

Mikita will talk with Aurora Browne of Baroness von Sketch Show, and Cooper with Academy Award-nominated writer and comedian Jena Friedman of Soft Focus and Indefensible, who has written for Nobody Wants This on Netflix as well as The Late Show with David Letterman, and was a field producer on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.   

We asked Mikita about the unique role and possibilities comedy offers in conversations about sexual violence.    

What was your planning process like when choosing comedy to talk about sexual violence?     

It mattered to me that we were clear about not trivialising or making light of sexual violence by exploring comedy about it. People rightfully say that sexual violence can never be funny, and I agree with them. In my many years of work in this area, I’ve never found sexual violence funny.   

I would say, however, that awareness raising about sexual violence using comedy can be. I’m grateful to be co-hosting this month’s events with Em Cooper who thoughtfully co-developed some of the approaches we’re taking this month and some of its central workshops. They generously met my request to contribute to this article, and I’d like to offer some of their wisdom in these responses. 

For example, to help explain why it can serve as an entry point into learning about challenging issues, Em observes that “comedy can offer us new ways to look at things while playfully lowering our guard in the process.”    

We hope to use comedy to inspire consideration, reflection, and awareness about this under-explored issue, an invitation that we think cleverly constructed jokes, sets, and sketches can powerfully invite us to do.    

If jokes have the potential to cause harm, why focus on telling them for SVAM?   

Really, I suppose, all jokes have the potential to cause harm, no matter what the topic. We know that the potential increases when jokes take up social issues that people often sidestep or avoid. Comedy’s capacity to intelligently and critically — but imaginatively — invite people into awareness about those issues is precisely why I wanted to explore sexual violence and comedy for SVAM.    

There are plenty of harmful ways of using comedy, and while we may allude to them throughout the month, they aren’t our focus. To be clear: this is not a month of ‘anything counts and anything goes’ comedy, just as explorations of other social issues don’t involve free-for-all assessments either.     

This is a month for exploration and nuanced critique of matters central to sexual violence, and how comedy’s capacity to subversively centre and skillfully interrogate social issues is something that more conventional approaches can’t or don’t do as well.    

Em says that “comedy, like any art form, can contribute to marginalization, but it can also contribute to solidarity. People are afraid of making jokes, but if they are receptive to feedback, there is much to learn. The process of responding to feedback is how we get funnier — it’s how we get better comedy. 

"Thinking about how to be funny in your day-to-day life with humour and heart is a way for people to be as expressive and as connected as possible, while being curious and proactive about how their words impact others.”    

Tell us about the guests you selected for the SVAM events and why you chose them.    

Since May is focused on exploring what we can learn from comedy about sexual violence, it only made sense that the month would be filled with the insights of those who have experience with either or both. 

Our panels involve diverse voices including comedians, activist artists, and people who have or are working on the front lines of sexual violence prevention, intervention, and response, with overlap between these categories.   

We expect to learn a great deal from conversations that will explore the panel’s thematic questions, like “where’s the line in joke telling?”, “what can we learn and apply from comedy about sexual violence?”, “should we separate the art from the artist, or the joke from the teller?”, and “So, is it safe to make jokes?”   

We also anticipate learning a great deal from Aurora Browne and Jena Friedman who will describe why and how they decided to create work that focuses specifically on the intersection of sexual violence and comedy.

Are there any sessions that you think will be particularly insightful?   

While the lineup of guests suggests that the whole month will be outstanding, I’m particularly excited about the applied workshops. For anyone who has worried about taking things too far when making jokes, Em’s Do and Learn workshops will be really reassuring and funny. 

Learning from Em when helping prepare the - what I’m calling - how-to-really-be-funny-and-land sessions has been a masterclass in how mindful really great comedy is.   

Em’s approach shows how funny you can be if, as a foundation, you’re attuned to where you are, who you’re with when you’re making jokes. I have never laughed like this, nor more appreciated thinking about why I was laughing!     

I’m also looking forward to the embodied shift in perspective people will feel from the improv workshops. I have witnessed and experienced the kind of from-the-inside-of-your-body-out understanding that Dennis Cahill’s facilitation generates — with police, healthcare, and human service professionals. 

Dennis engenders awareness of how to stay present and be mindful of how we occupy space like nothing else I’ve seen or done before or since.    

What do you hope attendees gain from the sessions?     

I hope that people learn something about sexual violence, about comedy, and about the possibilities of learning in unexpected ways through unconventional mediums. 

My co-host Em has said that “Engaging with comedy gives space to people who feel like comedy ‘isn’t for them’ to see that there are different types of humour, and that they too can play around with joking about things like personal challenges. 

They might be able to see that comedy can facilitate a helpful distance from personal hardship that gives room for some pretty humorous observations.”   

I hope that this work offers an invitation into awareness about a social issue that affects nearly half of us, mostly in silence, and that folks are curious enough to learn more about what they can do about it and how they can show up for others.    

I also emphatically second the sentiment in what Em says: “I hope people have fun. I have been part of accountability processes, I have had many folks disclose stories of sexual violence to me and I toured a show about sexual violence. It can get pretty hard and sad. Laughter is a form of resistance to me. It’s important.”    

Anyone with an @ucalgary.ca email can register to attend these events. See the full lineup and reserve your spot here.