The Indian stand-up comedy scene has ways been a boys club capitalising on our nation’s ingrained sexism. One would have hoped that the Me Too movement when several giants in the industry were rightfully critiqued for their outward displays of misogyny camouflaged as jokes, would make some changes to this behaviour. But after a brief adjustment period, it would appear we have fallen back to the good old days. Sure, you could no longer say “Your mom is a bleep” and pass it off as stand-up. 

But if you were Samay Raina, you could dial back time in very creative ways. 

Ah, stereotypical jokes about women being controlling and wanting autonomy over their own bodies, is so progressive…ly American. Fucking A!

I know all the ‘meninists’ are going assemble now and claim the refuge of dark humour but where’s the bloody humour?! For real. where’s the joke? 

Iss joke mein utna humour hain jitna Samrat Prithviraj mein plot.

Naturally, people on the internet called him out. But as is the ritual with these things, Raina doubled down with a few retorts of his own, which again, the internet did not find funny. TBH, humour is subjective to one’s interpretation. That said…

…Raina actually took the time machine to 2012 to dig out some jokes from the grave of Bill Maher’s stand up career!

So, here’s the thing…

People have been calling him out on social media! TBH, they are just asking the location of the joke. 

To be clear, no one thinks Raina’s joke is anti-abortion. It’s just tasteless and unfunny… is what people think. I have been told to keep my personal feelings aside!