Comments

1
Barbara, your standup seems to be divided about the same as your posts here, i.e. 75% joke-free observations about misogyny. You can obviously do whatever you want to do, but in my (male) opinion, that's a pretty wearying mix for an audience member who wants to stay with you to the funny parts.

Also: "The only reason people try to reduce us to our physical attributes instead of our emotional strength is because they're scared of us, scared that if they allow us to assert our power they will have to compete with us and they will lose." Yeah, that's wrong. You're giving dumb guys WAY too much credit. When a dumb guy objectifies verbally, what's really happening is he's just thoughtlessly revealing what's in his head as the most salient feature about that person.

No one is "trying" to do anything. They are "succeeding" in accidentally revealing that they are idiots whose largest mental concern is sorting the world into fuckability hierarchies (so literally "fuckwits").

I guess it's more fun to think of patriarchy as some crafty villain, but I think the actual evil is infinitely more banal than that.
2
So, sexual harassment is confined to only straight men?
3
@1: Many men who introduce women this way are not complete idiots. President Obama, for example. Clearly there are intelligent men who still think that the best compliment they can give a smart, accomplished woman is that she looks good. Though not everyone may be doing this with a conscious malicious intent, there is still something insidious going on when a man who PERSONALLY KNOWS a woman's background and achievements will still introduce her this way.

Patriarchy is absolutely a crafty villain. That doesn't mean that all men are gathering together in secret to decide how they will oppress women. It means that wherever women go, even when they think they're in a safe place (like when a trusted male colleague is introducing them, for example), shit like this happens to remind them that they are inferior.
4
Idiots are gonna be idiots, sadly, especially when they're male comedians, so a collection of prepared insults might be useful:

"...she makes my nipples hard."

"Thanks, Eric. If something of yours actually managed to get hard, I guess the reports I've heard are wrong."
5
Gonna say it: fear probably isn't the main motivator leading to guys saying this sort of thing. I'd go with "ignorance" way before that.
6
These ... columns (?) are getting real close to the "Women be shoppin'!" in reverse.
7
Let's all just apologize for sexist men, because they don't know any better! Ignorance always makes oppression and objectification okay.

I'm so sick of this crap.
8
Er, no. Ignorance doesn't make it okay, and that's not what I said.
9
Yeah, no one's apologizing for anything.

It's appropriate to tear down the actions of shitty men; it's a waste of time to tear down straw men.
10
Were you gracious enough to thank the wind-up chattering jockstrap for the intro?

Please wait...

and remember to be decent to everyone
all of the time.

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