In an effort to explore Boston these past couple of weeks, we visited two free comedy shows: one hosted every Tuesday at Bleacher Bar in Fenway and the other hosted every Monday and Wednesday at Café dello Sport in the North End. It became clear to us within the first few sets that, among stand-up comedians, the punchlines always seem to be at the expense of women.
Among self-deprecation and jokes about childhood memories, the comedians’ gender bias seemed intertwined in their mentions of their sex lives and marriages. Through their comments, comedians pushed stereotypes about domestic labor, seeing their wives and mothers as caretakers.
In the first comedy show we attended, husbands and fiancés took to the stand and sacrificed their partners’ dignity — which directly contradicts the notion that marriage is the purest, most selfless form of love in life — just to make a crowd of 10 laugh. One even suggested that he would rather choose his mother as his emergency contact over his wife, who he stated was emotionally unstable under even the slightest bit of stress. He expected the crowd to relate.
One man did a whole bit about the unusual method his friend employed in an attempt to conceive a son instead of a daughter, begging the question: How undesirable does this man view having a daughter?
Even the only female performer centered her bits around men. She jabbed at her own looks by calling herself fat. She made jokes about sleeping her way to the top of the comedian food chain. As funny as her jokes were, it seems sad that even a woman succumbed to the pressure of an easy punchline (at the expense of women) rather than going a little out of her way to think of jokes that don’t deal with the secretary-sleeps-with-boss stereotype.
Our second comedy show revealed these same patterns of misogyny. At the beginning of the show, the host started off strong, calling his wife a slut and slapping the mic stand, which he was using as a stand-in for her, in response to her jab at his so-called career.
The rest of the night, misogynistic trends emerged in a more subtle way: through language. One comedian complained endlessly about his job, referring to it as a “pussy little white collar job,” and another called himself a “little bitch” for feeling a “little girly.”
The words “bitch,” “pussy” and “slut” were mentioned a total of 15 times, while “dick,” “cock” and “balls” were mentioned a total of six times. Even when the jokes had nothing to do with women, gendered insults ended up being the punchline.
Sticking to the common sex life trope, the penultimate comic talked about the desirability of sexually experienced women in terms of using them for practice for his future wife. He mentioned these women, who have “been around the block,” were not women he would marry. This perpetuates purity culture, or the idea that a woman’s desirability is dependent on how “pure” or untouched she is.
This also shows the double standard that these men have for women; their status is elevated by the women they sleep with, but women’s status is reduced for the same action. In the 21st century, you would think that we would have stepped away from these comments as something “acceptable” to say, but perhaps, under the guise of comedy, we see the comic’s true biases shining brightly.
Our problem is not only with the comedians, but also with the audience that laughs at their misogyny. These kinds of jokes would not be popular if they didn’t earn laughs from the crowd. Though the people attending these shows were actually mostly women, for these comedians to have the audacity to make these jokes goes to show how universal this theme seems to be.
Additionally, when you scrutinize that these comedians chose to be in their relationships in an act of free will, it seems especially odd to center an entire bit around the irresponsibility of your wife, who you supposedly love unconditionally.
Thus, the question arises: Can you hold comedians responsible for all this? If I were to pick out the easiest, most enduring joke, women would usually be the butt of it. The jokes that target the largest audience, and are the least intellectual to conjure, are going to be jokes about the most universally looked down upon group of people. The fault does not completely lie with these comedians, but with comedy and society as a whole.
Comedians are just cogs in the machine — reflections of our society’s inner biases — and by regurgitating these same misogynistic jokes, they are simply taking the path of least resistance.
Many of these jokes rely on the audience to pick up on the stereotypes that are pushed onto women, the spaces in between the lines that spell out how little society values them. Perhaps, with a little mental effort on the comedians’ part, comedy can be transformed to be more than just a reflection of society but as a tool to correct these biases.
Sabrina Lopez is a sociology and international affairs combined major. Sabrina can be reached at lopez.sab@northeastern.edu. Eva Bokhari is an international affairs and economics combined major. Eva can be reached at bokhari.e@northeastern.edu.
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