'It’s just banter' is how it starts - and that’s the problem

Llinos Dafydd

Another day, another excuse. Another public figure makes a sexist joke, another wave of outrage, another round of "It was just banter, lighten up."

But here’s the thing: it’s never just banter.

As a survivor of sexual violence, I know exactly where this kind of "harmless fun" leads. It starts in a room full of people laughing at a woman’s expense. It starts when a joke makes her shift uncomfortably in her seat, but she smiles anyway, because calling it out would make her the problem. It starts with someone saying something inappropriate and everyone brushing it off because, he didn’t mean any harm.

But when does it stop?

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Punchlines

I was a teenager when I was raped. And I can tell you — no one ever calls themselves a rapist. They don’t see themselves as villains.

They grew up in a world where women’s bodies were punchlines, where jokes about sex and consent were shrugged off, where they were never taught that silence isn’t the same as permission.

Because the truth is, this kind of banter doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in a culture where men still feel entitled to comment on women’s bodies, where “lads’ humour” still relies on making women uncomfortable, where women still have to weigh up whether calling it out is worth the backlash.

And I can already hear the defenders: It was just a joke. He didn’t mean it that way. Are we not allowed to say anything anymore?

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Punching down

But here’s the thing — if the joke is only funny when it punches down, when it makes a woman feel small, when it reinforces the idea that her body is something to be discussed, rated, owned, then maybe it was never funny to begin with.

If your defence of a joke matters more than the woman on the receiving end, then you are part of the problem.

Normalising this kind of talk is dangerous. Not because every man who makes a sexist joke is a rapist — but because every rapist once believed that sexist jokes were harmless.

So the next time you hear “it’s just banter,” ask yourself — who’s actually laughing? And at whose expense?

Because if you’re defending it, if you’re shrugging it off, if you’re laughing along — then you’re not just part of the conversation.

You’re part of the culture that keeps women unsafe.

And that’s not funny.