Before this weekend, I wouldn’t have been able to pick comedian Shane Gillis out of a lineup. I know he’s been around, I know he’s hosted SNL before, but wow, he’s forgettable. Apparently, he’s known for his “average white guy” humor and for being friendly with right-wing culture warrior types. That came up during his monologue as he hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend. Just a couple of minutes into his monologue, he made a disgusting joke about going to the gym these days, in 2026. The joke? “I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now… there’s no other way to describe it.” Really? No other way? I’ve queued it to that section.
So, obviously, it was a big choice to tell women that they’re “dressing like whores” when they’re wearing gym clothes. It’s not funny and it feels out-of-touch with basically everything in society, in comedy, in the current cultural moment. By the way, it’s also out-of-touch with fashion, where athleisure and athleticwear companies are seeing a huge amount of growth as most women wear sweatpants or leggings all the time. You know who ended up clapping back on Shane Gillis? Dan Levy. Dan posted the video below, where he says in part: “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.”
Preach it Dan! 🙌 https://t.co/fy1cM363yV
— Tas 🇨🇦🥯🍱☠️ (@sushiandcyanide) October 12, 2026
Screencap courtesy of SNL.
We turned on the show when we got home on Saturday night, heard this and turned it off. I do not understand why this man was hosting the show. I recall him being unfunny the last time.
Yes between that joke and him name dropping Joe rogan as his friend I turned it off and considered cancelling peacock. No thank you SNL no thank you.
Never heard of this guy and now I will make sure I never listen to him!! On the other hand, kudos to Dan Levy for what he said condemning this, it’s too bad more men are not speaking up against this!
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long.”
Yeah, Shane. We can tell.
#TeamDan ❤️
I miss the old SNL casts.
It’s been a revolving door of castmates and I’m turned off with your show now.
Your host, Shane Gillis’ jokes were not funny, found him to be disgusting and his jokes were in poor taste. I work out all the time and I wear athletic wear when I’m not in the gym.
He should get his ass to the gym bc he certainly needs it.
You’re just a bitter, jealous man of all the buffed bods you see, both men and women!!
SNL needs to do better otherwise I would rather watch a Netflix movie than waste me time watching a show that’s not funny anymore
We have SNL UK now. You should watch our instead, it’s really good. I’ve barely ever seen US SNL but if this guy is an indicator I won’t seek it out.
I saw this and was so disgusted. Before this I hadn’t a clue who he was and now I don’t want to. I’m so sick of men or really anyone judging women’s clothing, bodies, choices or lives.
What was the audience’s reaction? We need to bring back throwing rotten tomatoes!
Dan Levy has become my hero in the 5 minutes that have just elapsed. ❤️🙏🏻 THANK YOU DAN.
This is on Lorne Michaels, big time, for platforming this man again. Did Gillis use this monologue during the final run through? If so, Michaels needs to finally exit NBC. If Gillis just winged it on air, why wasn’t the delay used? Has Lorne Michaels issued an apology? Not as of this morning, and I expect he won’t.
Gillis has never been funny, has a long-standing reputation of being a racist and misogynistic ahole.
I hope both men go down in flames.
Exactly. Michaels is ridiculous for having him host.
I live that Dan Levy’s whole vibe is like how is this even still happening? Step TF up men. Who knew I could love him more?
Dan Levy is always the best. And seriously, what year is it? It’s a horrific *and* outdated “joke” (there isn’t even a joke there?).
Dude looks old enough to have witnessed the 90s aerobic-buttfloss-leotard-era!
What is this incel yapping about? Women can dress however they want.
And if he’s not pretty much any 80s movie includes a scene of mom stretching in front of the tv with them butt cheeks in full display. 🤣
He does this stuff so deliberately and desperately to stir up the MAGAts that are his fans that I hate to even see him get this much attention.
Way to not read the room, SNL.
This thing is the factoring decision in Leslie Jones leaving SNL.
The North remembers.
Is that true? I haven’t been following but damn. What a loss to the show. I only watch selected episodes on YT, but she’s a regular feature in the most viral clips.
Yes. Leslie has spoken on it.
Oh that’s awful. She’s always one of my favorites.
Getting rid of talented people to promote bland/talentless losers: the Lorne Michaels way, apparently.
I’m glad to see that there’s pushback against this. In order for women and men to be equal, misogynistic hate speech has to be taken seriously just like homophobic hate speech is and racist hate speech is. Dehumanizing language can’t only matter when marginalized men and boys are directly affected. This also means women and girls of all races and sexual orientations should be getting just as much support in speaking out against slut-shaming and victim-blaming as people get for speaking out against other forms of hatred, even when they speak out angrily- no backhanded compliments like ‘good thing this woman didn’t respond like a brat to the misogyny’ when it’s rarely ever implied that young men and boys need to ‘not be brats’ about homophobia or racism. Good for Dan Levy for doing the right thing.
Dan Levy is the best but he shouldn’t have to carry the weight for all famous men as our token ally. Stand TF up men.
Gillis was hired as an SNL cast member in 2019 and fired just several days later, after clips surfaced of him making racist and homophobic jokes.
Lorne Michaels reportedly didn’t want to fire him but was pressured into doing so. So Lorne apparently has brought him back to host twice.
Gillis is a gross and misogynistic ahole. To have him host amid the reckoning over Cornell was a choice.
I know Lorne Michaels is older than Moses but his programs have generally leaned punching up not down. What’s happening with his crush on a low talent maga?
Money.
Ohhh, Lorne likes him/doesn’t like to be wrong (or forced into a decision). I’ve never heard of this guy. I can’t believe he’s hosted twice now, that’s absurd.
Wow. I don’t know who this guy is but I watched the sketch they did about bad AC repair experiences (which showcased him) and thought it was really funny and relatable. Sorry to find out he’s an a-hole.
And for pete’s sake, why is he focusing on what women wear at the gym?! They’re workout clothes! I have done hot yoga sitting next to a shirtless man in skimpy gym shorts and I didn’t freaking complain about it. What’s next, he’s going to hit the beach and complain about thong bikinis?
It is so far past time that men start actively calling out and shaming other men for misogynistic behavior.
The whole way we frame the conversation around this contributes to the problems, too. I was just talking with a friend about the language we use to talk about men who are violent with women.
To me this is relevant to today’s post, because this kind of misogynistic “joke” is teaching boys and men to embrace the objectification and dehumanization of women, and that leads directly to actions like those of the 50 men involved in the Cornell case, for just one example.
One of the things I always point to is the phrase “Violence Against Women.” The passive framing of the idea, as if the Violence just sprang out of the closet and leaped on an unsuspecting victim.
It’s not Men Who Hurt Women, Men Who Brutalize Women, Men Who Rape Women and The Men and Women Who Make Excuses For Them … it’s the unattributed Violence, like the old Family Circle cartoon where the parents line up the kids, and the ghost kids, labeled I Don’t Know and Not Me, are running out of the room…
This time it’s The Man Who Called Women Whores For Wearing Workout Clothes because HE THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY, Y’ALL!! CAN’T YOU BITCHES TAKE A JOKE?
Pathetic. Dangerous, and pathetic.
And yet, they say they’re protectors. Protectors of whom? Each other?
They’re protecting good wholesome women. The virgin/whore dynamic justifies violence against women in their minds. Some women are good. Others deserve what they get.
@MightyMolly: So true. It reminds me of a now defunct celebrity gossip site (rhymed with pee-twisted) where people would respond to the accurate observation that the community was misogynistic by saying, “We’re not anti-woman, we are anti- (insert misogynistic slur for any woman who says no to female modesty). ”
Hating, mistrusting, and abusing women who don’t consent to living a sexually modest lifestyle is the same as hating, mistrusting, and abusing women as a group altogether. This mindset harms all women and girls. Part of the definition of femicide includes not just violence done to women because they are women, but also violence done to them because they won’t submit to traditional values such as female modesty.
Purity should be consensual. It should not be the one socially acceptable form of forced/coerced prostitution for women and girls. That’s exactly what the male and religious virginity and modesty fantasies become when we tell girls and women they need to submit to them in order to earn things like basic respect and society’s protection from abuse.
@Mightmolly – “Good wholesome woman” is a relative term, depending how a man feels at the time. There are plenty of victims of DV and unaliving who were good and wholesome until it was decided they weren’t.
@Eurydice – That’s the point exactly, though, isn’t it? The term is relative and can change at any moment. Protection can always be withdrawn. Despite what the bleach blondes on Faux News think, there’s no winning the “good girl” contest.
True story: My freshman year of college, early 90s, huge state university with all kinds of people. Went to a party with the girls from my dorm, and soon enough some frat types were chatting us up. I’m sure we looked like “wholesome” freshman. One frat boy was boasting about his high school conquests, and said to us – This is absolutely true, even though I still don’t believe it myself – “you can try to have sex with a girl, but if she lets you, she’s trash and you can do whatever you want.” I think he genuinely thought he was educating some “good girls.” You know “protecting” us. Teaching us how to behave. Sex is only for when you’re chosen as a girlfriend. So, right in that moment, I also knew there’s a third kinda girl: the feminist bitch. I kept my mouth shut because last thing I wanted was to be on this dude’s revenge list. But I never forgot a frat dude bragging to me about being a rapist.
Lorne needs to go. This was the THIRD time he had this hack hosting and every time he’s sucked. Flubbing the monologue and sucking in the sketches. He’s so amateur he even let an F bomb fly. And he sucks as a human being.
Tina should take over now.
Tina should have taken over 20 years ago.
It’s giving middle-aged incel.
I am done with SNL. Been putting up with Micheal Che’s unfunny crap for years and this is the last straw. It’s his third time hosting! Substitute anyone else in his jokes for women- people of colour, disabled, children etc… yet it’s ok for women to get bashed on live network TV. I’m done. Never again. Especially just after Cornell! I will judge harshly anyone who hosts this show from now on. F*ck SNL
Who approved this? I mean, how many people heard the monologue before it went live, and yet nobody said a word? So disappointing
Comedians need to learn that being crude and offensive is not the same as edgy.
What a pitiful loser. You know you aren’t funny when calling women w#$_&s for what they wear to the gym is all you can come up with. A sad sack. SNL has been moving in that direction for awhile, getting an actor from Stranger Things to make fun of gay people coming out and then trying to play it off they were making fun of the length of the scene in Stranger Things. They’ve been steadily dipping their toes in and out of the water of project 2025 and thought they’d take a deeper step into the water on Saturday by allowing this monologue. Next will be the “we offend everyone” bull shit. I appreciate Bowen Yang saying you don’t get to just use it’s comedy as a way to avoid accountability. If you unintentionally offended someone and missed the mark you have to do better or something to that effect. Shortly thereafter he left the show. Shane Gilis is a sad unfunny loser, but SNL is becoming dangerous! Going to focus on actual funny comedy like literally anything Dan Levy touches! Kudos to him!
SNL has always skewed (or been full tilt) misogynistic. While it’s gotten better, what is deemed funny and makes it to air is generally infantile male gaze comedy. Lorne has never been an ally, it definitely comes from the top.
I saw Michael Che live twice, albeit accidentally. He was on tour with groups of other comedians I liked and I was excited to hear his set. Both times his shows were all misogyny and punching down on strippers and hookers. The only funny bits were racial observations and punching up at white culture but even those were lazy. I was actually disgusted both times (at a comedy tour!) and this was well into his weekend update tenure. He’s got to be one of the longer current writers at this point. Can’t imagine being a female writer with ideas being gatekept by Lorne, Che and the like. Ooph. Just look at the last 4 years of lazy, repetitive, reductive cold openings. With everything happening they’ve made no social commentary through comedy. Just play exaggerated versions of villains who are already caricatures of themselves.
It’s always been misogynistic. ‘Jane, you ignorant slut’. Ha ha. Jane, Gilda, and Lorraine put up with a lot.
Tuned in for the cold open (Colin Jost as Pete Kegsbreath never disappoints) but wow, was gobsmacked by how awful this guy is. And this is his third time? First the wh*re “joke” and then he name checks both Joe Rogan and Theo Vonn? Absolutely NOT.
This guy may be one of the most unfunny “comedians” I’ve ever barely heard of….but SNL has ALWAYS oozed with a White male misogyny that took a breather during the Tina Fey years, when it was legitimately funny, and no one was safe from being skewered.
Sooooo bored with Lorne and his trolling for ratings, my god.
Let’s keep inviting back the guy that we ourselves fired 4 days after hiring him as a cast member because he was too racist. What ever could possibly go wrong?
I hate that he was paired up with the awesome Rosalia. They should have saved Morgan Wallen’s turn as musical guest for this guy.
Oh the irony – I see men at my gym shirtless and barefoot all the time and no one has anything to say about that.