THE SEXISM CHAPTER
For the first couple of years that I was doing stand-up in L.A., I was doing shows wherever I could get up, hustling for spots via Myspace messages. Since I had no clout—or act, for that matter—the stages I graced ended up being bowling alleys, coffeehouses, dive bars, and youth hostels whose audiences, very appropriately, consisted of hostile youths. I even did a set in the parking lot of a fried chicken place, and if I must say so myself, I managed to get some laughs over the sounds of traffic and helicopters. I never knew, on any given night, what kind of audience I’d be up against, whether they’d respond to my jokes or even speak English for that matter.
Despite the wide array of venues I performed at, one constant up until a couple of years ago was that at every show there was always a guy or group of guys who were not thrilled with a female coming to the stage. As I grabbed the mic, I’d hear everything from a mutter of “Here we go” to a yell of “Take off your shirt!” to the sight of people checking their phones or straight up getting up and leaving. To be fair, I didn’t have a great act back then, but they couldn’t have known that yet.
Nevertheless, whenever people say, “Comedy is such a misogynistic field, right?” even I’m surprised that I’m not quite sure how to answer this question. Believe me, I’ve tried really hard to figure out a way to respond with a definite yes to this question, because clearly someone is saying yes to it and I wanna be liked by whoever that someone is. But no, I don’t think the field is sexist. It feels ignorant to me to anthropomorphize a field, as if an abstract noun like archery has the capacity to be judgmental. I don’t think fields are sexist, I think people are sexist, and in the comedy field it’s just easier to see who they are because they’re drunk and yelling at you. And I must say, that’s actually something I appreciate about being a stand-up. I actually prefer in-your-face sexism to the more insidious institutionalized kind because dealing with the passive-aggressive, subtle sexism and gaslighting that women have to contend with in other professions sounds exhausting. There aren’t that many jobs where you hear sexist insults in the workplace issued so bluntly. I’d much rather someone yell their insults to my face than have my boss DM me corny pickup lines or send dick pics on the sly after work.
• • •
From what I’m aware of, I don’t think sexism has held me back in comedy per se. It may have fueled way more hateful comments on Reddit, but I have to own the fact that when I haven’t been given an opportunity or job I wanted in comedy, it hasn’t been because of sexism. The truth is, annoying as it is to say, I probably just didn’t deserve it yet.
When I hear someone say, “Being a comedian must be so hard for women,” I get annoyed because that’s just going to discourage more girls from pursuing it, and could scare them out of living their dream. And trust me, the last thing we need is more people with the desire to be comedians doing other jobs. Us comedy folk need the outlet of stand-up or we get very grating. The people who should have been comics but didn’t end up pursuing the craft have to hold all that energy in. These people end up becoming that dorky dentist who can’t stop cracking inappropriate jokes or that sarcastic accountant who makes the weird vibe-killing speech at a wedding about how the groom used to bang “soooo many chicks” before he met the bride.
But look, the truth is, maybe I’m not even qualified to chime in on this topic because I’m still trying to figure out what sexism is exactly. These days it’s too pernicious for me to even deconstruct and thanks to modern technology seems to constantly evolve into new incarnations I can hardly keep up with. We used to have more obvious sexism, such as being put on trial as witches and not having the right to vote, but now sexism is showing up in revenge porn, comments sections, and even offensive yet normalized names of shirts, i.e. “wife beaters.” These days I’m even seeing sexism from women, so frankly I’m just trying to catch up with what exactly I need to be outraged about.
In a general sense, I feel like sexism can be broken down into a few different categories, which of course tend to be concentric. There’s the classic blatant sexism, like slapping girls’ asses, abusing women, and the sort of gross behavior that gets you fired or lands you in jail. There’s also a more subtle strain of sexism, a general form of belittling that masquerades as helping. This, sadly, often lands you a girlfriend.
The problem with belittling is that it’s often mislabeled as chivalry, which has a noble undertone. Chivalry is complicated because sometimes it makes me a hypocrite. If I’m dating a guy, chivalry is sexy, but if I’m not, it’s insulting. Trust me, I’m very ashamed that I find it sexy when guys pay for dinner. Maybe it’s my nasty lizard brain hardwiring that’s always on the lookout for safety, the same primal monkey brain that makes me too insecure to date a guy who’s shorter than me, that makes me think ice cream is delicious and kale disgusting, that makes me think nice and honest guys are “boring.”
Chivalry is a tricky thing because as romantic as it may seem sometimes, it’s actually obsolete. It originated in a time when city streets were covered in puddles of garbage and horse feces, back in the 1500s when a lady actually did need help from a man to do mundane tasks. She needed help getting out of a tiny carriage because she couldn’t see over her giant hoopskirt. Stepping into sewage-y sludge could mean hepatitis, parasites, a septic infection, or a rat-bitten foot, which was probably already a club foot before the rat got to it. A man who didn’t want his future wife to catch the bubonic plague had to hold the door for her because she literally couldn’t do it herself. It took every ounce of her energy just to focus on breathing through a three-sizes-too-small corset made of knives. Holding the door was the least a guy could do to protect his lady from getting impaled by her outfit, even though death by undergarment might have been the least harrowing way to die back then.
It seems like it’s only within the last thirty or so years that women’s delicates evolved to be, well, delicate. The situation is finally at a place where we can hold our arms out or open a door without getting stabbed by some kind of rusty-ass wire that was designed to morph our body into the shape of a French braid. Women can move way more easily now that we have wireless bras and get to wear sneakers, so chivalry seems a little, well, unnecessary now that we can walk up a flight of stairs without the constant risk of toppling to our deaths.
The “chivalrous” act of paying for women’s stuff wasn’t much of a choice either until pretty recently. Before the 1950s, the majority of women couldn’t pay for things themselves because it was rare that they could even get their own jobs. If women did have money, it was likely from working a dangerous factory job, so even if a gal could work, she probably had to use her money to treat the injuries she got from, well, working.
I’m still kept up at night thinking about a situation where a man thought he was being chivalrous but ended up deeply offending me. I was performing with a bunch of great comedians on a midnight show at a comedy festival in Chicago. Doing midnight shows is basically like offering to drive someone to the airport: it sounds like a good idea when you say yes, but then the day before you start dreading it and thinking of ways to get out of it. Also, the audience at a midnight show can be rough because anyone attending is either on drugs or should be on drugs.
A couple of other comics were ahead of me, so I didn’t end up going on until about twelve-thirty. The crowd was rowdy, but that never scares me. Children who grew up in hectic homes often end up feeling comfortable in crisis as adults, so rowdy shows to me feel like a cocoon of safety. Conversely, a calm, serene vibe makes me anxious, because I get paranoid, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Five hundred screaming drunk people yelling? Cozy as a bug in a rug. One-on-one eye contact over a daytime coffee date? Absolute panic that a metaphorical or literal shoe is going to fall on my head.
I got onstage and remember everything starting out well. I used to open with a joke where I would say, “My last name is Cummings, but don’t worry, it’s
just a stage name. My real last name is Cumshot.” Stupid as it seems now, I remember it getting a laugh, but after that, a group of guys in the crowd would not stop yelling “Cumshot!” at me.
It didn’t bother me because when you grow up with this last name, there’s literally nothing you haven’t been taunted with. Cumface, Cummings-lingus, Cumwad. These are just a few of the litany of nicknames I had in high school. The yelling escalated to more vulgar stuff, but I truly don’t mind hecklers. I worry saying this might encourage it, but interaction with the audience always keeps shows fresh; it keeps me awake and on my toes. I won’t allow hecklers to ruin the show for those who have paid their hard-earned money for tickets, but I think a little back-and-forth here and there makes a stand-up show feel special. It gives the audience the opportunity to see a performance that nobody else has seen—a unique experience. So that’s what I thought was happening.
I’m having a blast on stage, the hecklers and I actually have pretty good chemistry, which mostly means we agree on the insults they’re yelling at me, and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. Then out of nowhere, I started bombing. It got silent and awkward and I got very confused. Did I suddenly lose the crowd? Was my fly open? Did my tit fall out of my hoodie?
I saw in the front row that people were no longer looking at me; they were looking to my right. I instinctively snapped my head in that direction and saw that the host of the show, a male comic, was onstage next to me silently shushing the group that was heckling.
Now, we tend to break people down as fight, flight, or freeze. I promise you I’m usually fight. At the dog park, when dogs start fighting, I’m the first one in the melee while everyone else watches in shock. If a dog won’t let go of another dog, I’ve even been known to stick my finger in their butthole because that’s often the only way to get them to stop. I think that easily puts me in the fight category, even if it means “fighting a finger infection.”
I’m not sure why I’m “fight,” but I tend to snap into action before I even know what’s happening. One time I saw a skinhead dangerously and seemingly drunkenly weaving through traffic and my brain kidnapped my body, and I ended up following him a mile. He crossed two lanes, pulled into a parking lot, parked his car in front of other people’s cars, then got out and ran into a tobacco store. I pulled my car in and parked the front of mine against his bumper so he couldn’t drive off. I calmly called the police. When he came out and noticed what was going on, he screamed in my face and threatened to kill me for a good seven minutes until the police arrived and arrested him for drunk driving. I don’t fancy myself a hero or anything, but I just tend to err on the side of adrenaline rush. However, onstage when I realized this dude was standing next to me, taking it upon himself to scold the hecklers, my hecklers, I didn’t default to my usual fight response.
I don’t remember what I did or said, but knowing me, I defaulted to a codependent state of thanking someone for doing something totally dickish and making a joke, pretending like I was fine, even though I was fantasizing about all the ways I could end his life without going to jail.
As soon as I got offstage, I was filled with an inferno of rage. And not the Lewis Black kind of hilarious rage. It was a scary kind of rage that I thought my brain reserved for pedophiles and people who abuse animals. I looked around for the host, but another comedian immediately intercepted me, rushing me to the exit the way Kevin Costner enveloped Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. He said that he saw in my face that I was about to do something crazy and that we should leave ASAP before I try to start a physical fight with a grown man.
Many of you may be thinking to yourselves: “That host sounds super nice! He was protecting you from those assholes! What a catch!” Honey, no.
Maybe in some jobs it’s super cool if someone swoops in and helps you out; maybe they even alleviate your workload. But in stand-up, it’s deeply insulting to have someone assume you need to be rescued from a situation you’ve been in a million times and then completely undermine you in front of your audience. And the dark part is he never would have done that if I were a guy. I pretended to be fine, but it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. If the audience was threatening my physical safety, maybe it would have made some sense, but under no circumstances is it ever cool to intervene during another comic’s set.
The good news is, I realized in that moment that the fantasy of the knight in shining armor did as much harm to boys as it did to girls. It took me ages to reverse the damage of the stories that wired me to think I was so helpless that I needed a man on a horse to save me, but now I see that men have the pressure of being told they have to be that man on said horse. They’ve been taught to view women as damsels in distress who need rescuing. I was neither a damsel nor in distress, and this dude certainly was no knight in shining armor. He was a guy from New Jersey in a shitty blazer. In that moment, the whole fantasy crumbled. I didn’t want a man to save me. Turns out, I wanted him to get the fuck out of my way.
I think something men and maybe women need to understand about women’s being equal is that we should also be equal to suffer our own consequences and be exposed to pain. We don’t need guys to protect us from circumstances and consequences that make us stronger. It means we have to fall down every now and then and get up on our own without anyone’s help. Look, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that it’s okay to ask for help, but we shouldn’t have help forced on us that we don’t want or need. And sometimes even if we want help, we may not actually need it. Basically, there’s nothing wrong with our asking for help and being helped, but wait for us to ask.
After I got back to the hotel, I started to think maybe I was crazy. Was I overreacting? Most guys I had dated up until that point told me that’s what I did, so could that be what was going on? Was I “PMSing,” like men always shamed me with whenever I had feelings? Did I need to “calm down,” like my parents and every man after them always told me to do? Maybe I needed to “chill out” or “relax” or “stop being dramatic”?
I needed some perspective. I asked eight male comics what it would take for them to get onstage while another comic was performing. Seven said a version of “An audience member would have to be charging the stage or have already physically injured the comedian,” and the eighth said, “I’d have to see someone with a gun.” So it turns out I wasn’t crazy. But that’s the thing about crazy people; they make you feel like you’re the crazy one.
The most interesting part of this story for me is that I didn’t think the guys heckling obscenities at me were the ones that were out of line. Maybe I should have thought they were the sexist jerks, but I truly wasn’t offended by them. Maybe I’ve gone completely numb to what’s appropriate, but I feel like when guys heckle me, they’re treating me as an equal. It’s different than catcalling because I don’t feel vulnerable or unsafe onstage; I have a microphone and security if something truly goes awry. When men heckle me, on some level I’m relieved, because I assume they’d do the same thing to men, and I appreciate that they’re treating me just as shittily as they’d treat a male comic.
I entered into this field knowing that being yelled at and insulted by strangers was part of the deal, so I’m usually not blindsided or upset by it. Perhaps it’s partly what attracted me to this job: the unpredictability and socially acceptable public sparring with strangers. I’m not saying it’s healthy, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
What I didn’t sign up for was the patronizing assumption that I couldn’t handle myself. And let’s say I couldn’t handle myself and was in totally over my head that night; I should have been left to tread water and struggle so I could be given the dignity of having my own consequences. Protecting people from the aftermath of their choices isn’t thoughtful or benevolent; it just takes away their ability to grow. The nicest thing that guy could have done was to let me suffer so I could become a stronger comic.
It’s not just men who succumb to
the old-fashioned, subtly sexist, outdated social constructs. I happen to think that our biology errs on the side of sexist dickhead, whether you have a dick or not. In fact, the kind of sexism that confuses me the most is the kind that comes from other women. It almost cuts deeper because I’m sure at some point they’ve been victims of it too, yet they aren’t conscious that they’re perpetuating it. Maybe some women have denial or have internalized it. Who knows, but my neck stiffens when a girl yells out to me: “Hey, hooker!” or “What’s up, whore?”
I’m sorry?
If you’re going to call me a name that relates to the prostitution industry, at least call me pimp. I mean, if you’re going to call me a pejorative term for someone who sells sex for money, at least let me be the boss of the operation.
When I’m put in situations where sexism is directed at me, I’m ashamed to say a lot of the time I’m too stunned to react fast enough to do much about it, and because I’m codependent, often what comes out of my mouth when someone else does something wrong is “Sorry.”
Once when I was ordering coffee at a café I never go to, I was taking a little extra time reading the menu. Trust me, I know there is nothing more annoying than someone reading a coffee menu at a coffee shop at eight in the morning and asking questions like “What’s in the mocha, exactly? Is it like a powder?” but I was very confused by all the witty pun-themed drinks. If something is called a “thanks-a-latte,” I’m going to have to ask what’s in it because I have no idea what thanks tastes like.
As I was asking about the “capuccin-ho-ho-ho!” (it was Christmastime), two burly men behind me began to loudly order over me. They projected their voices over my head on a cloud of garlic-and-cigarette breath. While I was still talking.
While. I. Was. Still. Talking.
And look, I’m the first to admit that most of the time I talk way more than I need to and don’t blame anyone who interrupts me when I’m getting redundant or boring. But this was not me bloviating in a conversation, this was me saying one pretty concise sentence to a stranger. They spoke right over me, as if I were the display case of scones between them and the barista. They took their money out, reached around me, and threw it on the counter before telling the barista to keep the change.
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