Oh, That’s Kinda Funny

I was 19 the first time someone told me that women aren’t funny. He wasn’t just talking about me specifically although, I have heard that said quite a bit and have also said it to myself more than once in the deep dark of the night. Which I happen to believe is the best time to question your self-worth and life choices because it’s way easier to feel the full effects of despair when you’re cloaked in pitch blackness. But this “matter of fact” statement was made about my entire gender. All of us. Every woman on the planet.

Sorry girls, but as it turns out, not-a-one of you whores are funny.

The year was 1988, which was a simpler time, before social media when if a person wanted to say something mean or disrespectful they actually had to say it to your face, and not from behind a computer screen in the comfort of their childhood bedroom or minimum wage job.

But, thanks to the internet, things are much easier for folks now. For example, once a stranger named Marianne was able to Google me and then email to let me know she was watching my Comedy Central special and that I really suck. (Not just “kinda” suck, mind you, but “really.”) That could never have happened in the olden days, and sadly, Miss Marianne would’ve had to carry around that disdain for me and my act until her dying day.

As a stand-up comic, who happens to be female, I’ve become very familiar over the years with this boring “women aren’t funny” stereotype, and it doesn’t bother me at all because it isn’t true. And, the people who believe that usually aren’t funny or very bright and probably didn’t get laid in high school, which is somehow our fault, and so who cares.

However, as a 19-year-old kid, it bothered me a lot. Which was the intent of the angry hack comic who said it.

Touché, bitter dude.

There is power and sexiness when you can control a room and make people laugh. It’s threatening to some, and so there’s a “How dare you?” or “Who do you think you are?” attached to women who can do it. Which I know because people have said to me “How dare you?” and “Who do you think you are?” (Some people talk like that in real life, it’s not just on soap operas.)

I took it personally at first, spending many a year trying to change minds and prove people wrong. Until one day, I just didn’t want to anymore because that isn’t my job. Just like it’s not my job to convince someone that we walked on the moon in 1969 or that you should eat leafy greens every day.

You’re grown, darling. Figure that shit out.

If for some reason a funny woman bothers or feels threatening to a person, I’m not going to try and change their mind or figure out why because honestly, I don’t care. That seems like a conversation they probably need to have with their demons in the deep dark of the night like a normal person.