Why aren’t female comedians funny? You asked Google – here’s the answer

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/01/why-arent-female-comedians-funny-google

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We live in a time of profound change and challenge and even though we think we know it all, there are still some big existential questions that plague mankind. And I do mean man.

Is there a God or has it been a pointless existence? What does Brexit actually mean? How can it not be a toupee and how’d he get so orange? But here’s the big one … are women funny? If I had a pound for every time I heard this tired, stupid question, I’d be a hanging out on a super yacht and Instagramming the shit out of my life in Made in Chelsea, not writing this response in my damp basement flat in Camden Town.

People are funny. These funny people can be men or they can be women or neither. They can be gay or straight or somewhere in between. They can be tall, small, fat, thin, standing up or sitting down, bearded (stop right there with that “hey and that’s just the chicks” line), bald, black, brown, beige, yellow, ginger and of course white. Funny people come in all the glorious shapes, sizes and flavours that human life has to offer.

Comedy is very simple (although not actually, as anyone who has died on stage can tell you). It’s about telling people stuff and making them laugh. As long as you can connect with your audience, you’re laughing, and hopefully they are too.

Having a fanny isn’t a barrier to being funny

I’ve recently returned to comedy after a gap of about 10 years in which I was working for the Labour party. It’s a comeback no one really wanted to be honest – myself included – but I needed a job. And a decade on, there are many more female comics on the circuit or writing, starring in and making TV, radio and film. There are so many brilliant women who are either household names or are killing it on the circuit at every level – too many to mention. Katherine Ryan, Michaela Coel, Zoe Lyons, Kerry Godliman, Shazia Mirza, Susan Murray, Jo Caulfield, and Elaine Malcolmson only scratch the surface.

As in all walks of life, from politics to business, women comics are rising up the ranks – especially thanks to organisations such as Funny Women and Laughing Cows which are brilliant at giving a bit of support, encouragement and stage time to female comics. But this big fat “are wimmin funny” question still hovers round us like a rotting elephant carcass and as a result, a lot of comedy that people see is very male, very pale and a bit stale. We still live in an age where men are thought of as being the masters of humour. Women are allowed to be funny, but in controlled numbers.

TV comedy panel shows seem to have an irrational fear of putting more than one woman on at a time. These shows are about showing off, being loud and butting in with your one-liners or zingers. That’s the deal. And most women I know who do these panel shows more than hold their own in the highly masculine, hyper-aggressive cut and thrust of something like Mock the Week or Have I Got News For You. But it would be great to evolve to a situation where there could be more than just one women per episode. To normalise women being on prime-time comedy slots. To stop the one woman being the living proof point or real time experiment for the “big question”.

Comedy nights at some of the country’s most prestigious venues are often still an all-male lineup. I was at a venue in London the other night which prides itself on being all artsy, liberal and “right on” yet the lineup was all white chaps, who looked quite similar and who all had very similar material. I really felt for the headline act because by the time he came on stage, the crowd (which was men and women) were more than slightly bored. He was perfectly fine but his material seemed repetitive.

We had just had an hour and a half of listening to three white middle-class guys talking about being single. I don’t know why the people in charge don’t think about the dangers of repetition with an all-male lineup – they certainly do worry about it if they ever dare to even dream about booking more than two women comics on a big night. They have a fear that it will all be period gags or, even worse, there will be extreme synchronised menstruating.

Sexist cultural gender norms play in to this. Humour can be very powerful as it shows confidence and great intelligence – and in our culture that is still the male role. Be it the guy holding court in the bar, in the boardroom or on the panel show. The message to women too often is sadly still “be as attractive to men as possible” and being funny – or perish the thought – loud, aggressive, bossy, ambitious or even nasty just doesn’t quite fit that narrative. Women should be pretty. Men should be funny. Most men prefer women to be their appreciative audience, not their competition.

The late Christopher Hitchens, celebrated, respected essayist and social commentator, wrote a piece for Vanity Fair in 2007 pondering this big question and came up with these beauts: “There are more terrible female comedians than there are terrible male comedians, but there are some impressive ladies out there. Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty, or dykey or Jewish or some combo of the three.” He continues: “For men, it is a tragedy that the two things they prize the most – women and humour – should be so antithetical.” His partner even suggested that women got funnier as they got older. “This might be true, but excuse me, isn’t that rather a long time to have to wait?”

Funny is funny. Having a fanny isn’t a barrier to being funny. Full stop. Let’s stop asking this question. It just reinforces the premise in an unhelpful way. We don’t torture ourselves pondering whether men are funny after we watch a slightly exhausting shouty panel show. Talent and humour is everywhere. Opportunity is not.

As with all art or culture, diversity matters in comedy because audiences like variety, and like hearing a range of stories and experiences that are interesting, quirky, different, shocking, rude, challenging but most of all funny. I don’t think comedy should be some right-on education, but it can be a brilliant way of holding up a mirror to what’s going on and allowing us to talk about and laugh at things that are clearly mad, bad and sad. And let’s be honest, we could all do with a bit of that right now.

• Ayesha Hazarika will perform her stand-up show about politics, State of the Nation, at the Soho Theatre in London from 18-22 April and will then go on tour