A year ago, an article was published about me online and one of the anonymous comments read, “Barbara thinks the reason people don’t like her is because she’s a girl, but really the only reason anyone was ever nice to her was because they thought they could fuck her.” That inspired a slew of comments from my former demons (Who knew they could write? Certainly not their joke notebooks!) who said I got special treatment in comedy because I was a girl. A male comedian said, “You only got that show because you’re a girl. Pretty girls get everything they want.” And I replied, “Then why are you still talking to me?” My least favorite piece of misogyny this week is being accused of getting special treatment for being a girl.
If I have gotten special treatment for being a woman, it’s been like two or three unpaid shows… Oh, and also dozens of lewd comments about my body and sexual history and having colleagues scream at me for not wanting to date them. Help me, my champagne cup runneth over.
Those anonymous internet comments upset me because they said people only pretended to like me to get into the treasure cavern of my undergarments. They accused me of not deserving the stage time, which stings because I put my heart into my comedy. The implication is that all stage time belongs inherently to men, and that if I am getting it I’m taking an innate privilege away from its rightful owner: a Y chromosome.
In her essay “<a href=”
http://ericstoller.com/blog/2006/03/31/the-common-elements-of-oppressions/”>The Common Elements of Oppression” Suzanne Pharr wrote, “It is also important to remember that [an oppressor] has to have institutional power…women do not have the power to institutionalize their prejudices against men, so there is no such thing as ‘reverse sexism.'”
Pharr’s point is that you can’t be oppressed if you’re the oppressing, power controlling group. That’s like someone saying, “Why does she get to have perfectly regulated blood sugar?” but then the dude who said that is a vampire.
Last year when I did the All Jane No Dick comedy festival here in Portland (October 17-20 this year!) a Seattle comic said to me, “It’s not fair that they don’t accept men.” Sure, it is. Comedy festivals should be like pussies: allowed to let in whoever they want to.
Booking a woman on a stand up show is not threatening men’s masculinity. It’s not affirmative action; it’s just action, with or without robo-rhetoric. There is enough power floating in the ether for everyone and we’re allowed to try to share it. If me saying women deserve to feel empowered is somehow taking power away from straight white men… well, that’s just gravy. That’s been my least favorite piece of misogyny this week, tune in next week because maybe I’ll give back all the stage time I unduly yanked from the stone.
Truesay.
I used to date a comedian that would regular announce to me that girls were only getting on the Helium mic because they had to pick one, we had some pretty uncomfortable discussions where I questioned why he was so threatened by others’ success that he wanted to devalue it. Thanks for writing this.
Wait. You’re a comedian!?
I like this column. However, Suzanne Pharr is awful.
Anyone can be an oppressor, if they have money and institutional power on their side. While this has nothing to do with whether or not there should be women in comedy, it does give the lie to the many shit generalizations that Pharr throws out in her essays. My point? Don’t use a terrible writer to make your points.
Maybe you need to get a hook hand, a peg leg, and an eye patch to scare the scalliwags away from your treasure cave.
At least you could roll around in a spooky ghost ship.
Though I cannot speak to these feelings and experiences you feel while on-stage trying to humor people, I would argue that any sort of ‘comedy’ gathering that excludes either men or women — or gays, trans, etc etc…. is just fucking wrong. And in your heart you know it is true too.
Unless you are allowed to discriminate against men and only men somehow in your strange universe.
Fassbinder would have a field day with your stupid-ass reasoning. fuck.
You may as well just title your ‘Blog’ REVENGE! MEN SUCK.
Grow the fuck up.
….I feel like this frankieb guy didn’t really read the column.
There is a limited amount of stage time and every comic wants to get as much as they can to, one day, become successful enough to only have to do a limited amount of stage time. How ironic.