“What’s it like to be a broad in comedy?” a male comic drunkenly asks me. He’s being sincere. He thinks his use of “broad” is charming. Yet he is asking because he knows the answer: bad. He wants to hear the gore of it all and pat himself on the back for not being as terrible as those other male comics. He thinks his mere asking the question proves he’s an ally — that he’s one of the good ones.
This is the number-one question I get asked about doing comedy. It’s not how long I’ve been doing it (five years) or where I do it (I run three shows in three different SF venues) or even where I started (Reno, Nevada, at one of their two open-mic nights). I want to tell guys like this that their questions make it sound like I have a disability. It sounds like they’re asking, “What’s it like to have such a major handicap in comedy? How do you deal with the obvious aversion to your kind? How many comics have you slept with? Would you sleep with another one?” — all in one question. But they don’t realize that. And I don’t tell them.
Instead I say, “No one ever stops talking about it.” The drunken comic nods his head sympathetically. “Must be so hard.” He changes the subject because that answer didn’t scratch the itch of anything he actually wanted to know. I don’t go back to the subject because I am new to the scene, and most show producers are male. I want to get booked, and statistically speaking, most of my chances of achieving that are going to be by impressing male comics in some way or another. I bite my tongue and down my drink.
I’ve been told I’m too pretty to do comedy, as if women cannot be outspoken, funny or have opinions that weren’t better voiced by a man. A male comic has publicly shamed me for “sleeping my way to the top” rather than accept the offensive idea that I might be a better comic than him. This dismissive behavior brings up what “the top” of amateur stand-up comedy is. For those of you who haven’t used the penises of male comics as a stepladder to the top of the Bay Area comedy scene, let me tell you what the view is like from up here: comedy in a bookstore at 11:00 p.m. for seven people. Pay $1 for Tecate. You will not get paid.
One man…groped me while I was onstage, as if I were a presentation of goods for sale.
When I do get paid, I am treated to the same unequal pay scale as that of most industries. For one of the shows I run, I split the work with my male cohost evenly. We collaborate on every part of the show and host as a duo. At a recent show, we had a big crowd but hadn’t discussed payment with the male booker. While I was out of the green room, the booker gave my cohost a check made out just to him. The booker never told me we made any money. It was like a waiter dropping off a check at the end of a date to the breadwinner while his eye candy was in the bathroom. Though I don’t believe the booker did this out of malice or because he didn’t think I worked hard, the subtle statement to my cohost was “This is for you. You handle her money or decide if she gets paid at all.”
Regarding the content of my comedy — which comes after my appearance and monetary worth — men have told me to talk about sex more or less depending on whether I’m the Madonna or the whore in their fantasies. Because I talk about sex onstage, men in the audience occasionally see that as an invitation to ask me to have sex with them. One man skipped asking me and groped me while I was onstage, as if I were a presentation of goods for sale. The worst part of being groped onstage? I didn’t remember until another female comic brought it up to me recently. I had filed it away under “routine horrendous bullshit” and blocked it out. This file opens itself in my brain once a year like a horrific Christmas present, sometimes giving me a panic attack in the middle of a show. I leave before my name is called. I go home and go to sleep. The next day, the file is back in the depths for another year. This has happened for the past five years. It’s the exchange my mind has made so I can continue to do stand-up without a nightly reel of all the times I’ve felt devalued for being a woman who dared to talk in front of people.
I endure all this because performing is also the antidote. I have yet to find a better feeling than unearthing the worst parts of myself and slowly molding them into jokes that elicit laughter from strangers.
To be a broad in comedy is to work twice as hard for half as much. My experiences among female comics are unique to me only in specificity. There is no shortage of stories — many are worse than mine. I often wonder what it’s all for, especially when I look at the women at the real top of the stand-up scene. They are still torn down for their weight, clothes or sex lives before anyone has heard them speak. They fear outing a man’s sexual harassment because it might end their careers. Even if I were the best comic in the world, I am still a woman. And I would still be asked what it’s like to have to overcome my femininity and succeed. I would still have to sift through the honest and good men and the men pretending to be feminists just to get into my pants.
I endure all this because performing is also the antidote. I have yet to find a better feeling than unearthing the worst parts of myself and slowly molding them into jokes that elicit laughter from strangers. It’s my favorite thing in the world, and it’s something I do solely for me. I have been sexualized and oppressed by so many men for an art form that was never made solely for their consumption. I’m not here as an object or as the delicate balance to a male presence.My comedy is notforyou.Comedy has been there to give me a voice when so many strived to shut me up. To stay quiet after all this would be to surrender, and I refuse.
