Standing Up as a Feminist and How I Fell Out of Love with Dylan Moran

I’m at the gym with my headphones on. Yes, I am one of those people, but please read further before you judge me. This article isn’t really about either of those things, gyms or headphones or about the type of people who like to combine the two. It is merely an introduction to a story about feminism, stand-up comedy, and how I nearly fell out of love with Dylan Moran.

Before you point the finger at the people wearing headphones at the gym, have you ever thought about the amount of different things they might be listening to? After some research I discovered most people have their own gym playlists, full of those power songs that kick you in the butt better than any personal trainer could. Often people stick by the songs more resolutely than they stick with their personal trainers, anyway.

I can confirm that  even after all these years ‘Eye of the Tiger’ is still going strong. But what keeps me going is not music at all. It’s The Distraction Pieces Podcast with Scroobius Pip, especially the episodes where he talks to stand-up comedians. There’s something wickedly sinister about the thought of me listening to two people sitting down talking about their work when I’m doing squats like I’m possessed by the spirit of Jane Fonda. I suppose on some deep level it motivates me to hear about people who have made it. It makes me think I could too, or at least to finish this final set of sit-ups.

Today is a special treat as I’m catching up with old episodes and have found one with Dylan Moran produced in March this year. Hearing Dylan Moran’s voice in my head at the gym is surprisingly soothing. Somehow that slightly frustrated, grumpy and unintentionally zen voice makes me want to become the best version of myself.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t. I mean I do a lot of it, but don’t know what it is I’m doing.’

‘I can relate to that’ I think as the treadmill demands my heart rate rise whilst suddenly speeding up for no reason and I feel my calves burning. I have a great weakness for Irish comedians, the likes of Moran and Ed Byrne; the masters of the highest form of twattery. In my experience, the Irish are like positive Finns , taking great pride of being a nation of functioning alcoholics. Like us they’re seen as rude, outspoken forest people living next door to someone who thinks they are a bit better than everyone else just because they used to have an empire and gave the world the gift of pop music (The Beatles and ABBA forever in our hearts). But above all, many Irish comedians, Moran amongst them, have simply mastered the art of making it look like they truly care whilst not giving a shit, and vice versa. With that in mind, I get off the treadmill. They’re for pussies anyway.

‘I stop thinking about it and then I just do it.’

I’m punching the bag like a maniac, just doing it like Dylan and Nike are telling me to. If I work hard enough now, one day I will sell out Hammersmith Apollo. Punch. Punch line. Punch. Punch line. Believe in your dreams, never give up. Time for planks and Russian twists. I can taste iron in my mouth.

‘It’s part of the joy, the juice, the fun, the madness of it, because it is mad it’s probably in some ways an unhealthy thing to do, you’re flooding yourself with adrenalin and scaring the shit out of yourself.’

Five rounds of push-ups. My heart is pumping so much blood I loose vision from my left eye. I think I can smell toast.

‘Flip side of it, sometimes it’s completely liberating it’s like falling backwards expecting to land safely… And you do.’

My face hits the mat. The adrenaline flows, sweat drops are crawling out of my skin like a battalion of huge wet ants. I’m hurting all over, bathing in my own endorphins congratulating myself on a good session. I force myself away from the comfort of the smelly exercise mat and stand up. It’s time to hit the shower.

‘It’s all stuff you know, it’s all stuff you’re making. All you can say is: ‘I got this, it’s hot. Who wants some? Do you want it in a cup or a cone?’

There’s no one else in the changing room. I’m checking myself out from the mirror. It’s hot. Who wants some? I laugh out loud. This has been a good day. I decide to leave the podcast on whilst showering and let the melancholy voice of Moran wash over me reminding me you can still survive in the world even if you hate everyone else.

‘I enjoy people who make interesting choices, who try and push it a bit.’

I push the shower curtain aside and step in. The water is hot and there’s a lot of it. ‘I’m a comedian who makes interesting choices’ I think to myself. In the past I’ve pushed it so far I’ve lost the sight of myself and the thing I was doing. Dylan would enjoy my comedy. I’m smiling to myself, letting my muscles to relax after the workout by the hot water and the thought of touring with Dylan as his support act drinking wine backstage and hating everyone apart from each other. Then he says it:

‘There’s a lot more funny women around that I’ve noticed. Women have moved on themselves in that they don’t come on talking about being a woman, which is really interesting I think. It means you can look past all that. And you don’t even think about that because they’re not thinking about it, I think that’s a real step forward.’

I’m standing in the shower, stunned by what I just heard, and the water is suddenly feeling a lot cooler. In a passing glimpse of hope, I wait for Pip to say something, to call him up on that comment, to question it. Pip who just recently asked his listeners for suggestions on more women to appear on his podcast. And, he added then, not just any women for the sake of them being women, but people with something interesting to say. All he says now is ‘Yeah, totally‘. They carry on talking about taking a show to Edinburgh but I’m standing in the shower watching my good mood and my unconditional love for Moran washing through the drain alongside with soapy water and some pubic hair that’s definitely not mine.

This is awful, I don’t want to fall out of love with Dylan! He’s one of my long-time favourites and I know he means well. I want to think his comment is coming from a good, supportive place. Unfortunately, as it so often happens, that’s also a place of ignorance fuelled by the luxury of being included in the well-recognised stand-up comedy norm: the old white boys club, white as the wallpaper in the most recent Ikea catalogue, a wall you can hang anything on. Clean slate, tabula rasa, a heap of white fresh snow. I can try and be a heap of snow too, but if I failed to recognise all the past and present walking over me leaving their muddy footsteps all over the place, I would be kidding myself.

What puzzles me more is such a comment coming from a comedian like Moran, who has created the lion’s share of his witty observational material based on the ongoing battle of the sexes and the wonders of the differences between men and women. Who could forget such gems like ‘Women have no feelings’.

Even in the same interview with Pip talking about possible future collaborations and what makes him laugh he says:

‘Man and woman just kind of pulling each other, stretching each other, mess with each other a bit. Think that’s really funny. Wouldn’t mind co-writing something like that with somebody.’

Part of a comedian’s job is standing on the outside and looking in. Making fun of something you’re not or can’t quite understand is the oldest trick in the book. But that then raises a question: is the behaviour traditionally defined as ‘feminine’ only funny (or at least funnier) if a man like Moran points it out? If a man says something about women it’s an observation but if a woman observes herself on stage it’s somehow regarded as lazy, or moany, or just not that interesting. Is Moran saying that a female comedian talking about general election is automatically a better comedian than one talking about her period? American comedian Kristen Schaal talks to her colleague Kurt Braunholer on his K-Hole podcast about her writer’s block and struggling to enjoy stand-up. She cites how she recently saw Aziz Ansari doing a segment about women being victimised in the American society and how blown away he was to find out how common that still is. She says she finds Ansari as one of the leading stand-up voices and his take on the subject enjoyable, almost too enjoyable:

‘It was a great set but it was one of those things were I was like ‘God damn it’, you know? Like this is somehow hitting home harder to people because it was from a male perspective. Women have been saying that guys are ruining their lives on stage forever but because it’s a male voice saying it I felt like it just went farther and farther, like ‘Well that’s a great piece that’s probably going on Special’, but whenever I hear a woman tell a joke like that I feel like people get queasy.’

She goes on, more or less agreeing with Braunholer about his view on ‘our inherent trust of the male authority over the female-authority’ and that the thing that probably made Ansari’s set particularly funny was the fact that he flipped the concept of victimisation of women on its head and applied it to himself, which made the audience to see the whole thing from a different perspective, which then created the laughter. But then Schaal replies:

‘But it’s like why? Why did it…? Some part of me is like ‘That’s our story!’

Stealing another comedian’s joke and using it as your own is traditionally regarded as the greatest crime of the stand-up circuit. If you get caught doing it, you will be heckled like there’s no tomorrow. But what is Ansari’s crime here, if any? Surely female comedians can’t own the copyright to all things feminine but I understand Schaal’s frustration, especially when these types of jokes seem to travel further when delivered by a man.

During the last decade we have slowly been moving past everyone’s favourite ‘can women actually be funny?’ conversation, but that doesn’t mean the ignorance has vanished. It has only shifted and changed, and gone more underground. It’s bubbling under the surface like a nasty burn, rising every now and then to remind us that we haven’t gone as far as we thought we have. Even nowadays when for most people the question ‘Can women be funny?’ is a simple yes/no-question with only one right answer, if you dare to dig any deeper, the nuances will get extremely complicated. Let me paint you a scene as an example:

Two years back I arrived at a new venue where I was meant to perform. The other comedians, all men, were huddled around the MC, also a man no more than five years older than me, who was signing the performers in. Most of the guys had a pint in their hand and were treating their nerves by laughing, play-fighting and shouting their new one-liners at each other. There were no other women in sight, not that I was expecting any. It wasn’t my first rodeo. What struck me was what happened next. ‘Hi!’ I said as I walked up to them. With that, these men dropped their conversation and turned to look at me, confused and puzzled, like I had just crashed into their tree house uninvited in the middle of a dick measuring competition (which, if you like, you’re free to use as a metaphor for almost any open mic night). An awkward split second silence occurred until the MC said ‘Sorry, who’s girlfriend are you?’

I wouldn’t have cared if it had been intentional, a piece of slightly distasteful banter between two colleagues. ‘Who’s girlfriend are you?’ ‘Not your’s thank God! Have you seen yourself lately? You look like Charles Bukowski’s slipper!’ But it wasn’t that. He was genuinely asking, thinking I was lost and looking for my hubby. My response ‘I’m no one’s girlfriend, I’m here to perform.’ wasn’t witty or empowering by any measure but my voice was so cold I could feel my teeth turning into icicles as I spoke. I think the poor guy felt it too as he flushed red and start apologising to me, which carried on for the rest of the night. He knew as well as I did that no matter what he did, he couldn’t take back voicing the genuine confusion I created by turning up. I did my set and killed. Would I have slayed if I hadn’t had to worry about breaking my uterus or my boobs blocking the view? Or having to think how many people in the audience saw me in the MC’s eyes. As just someone’s girlfriend.

In comedy, like in the world, we are victims of normalisation. Gay couples want to get married, everyone in the developing world wants to buy a car, we all want a mortgage, two and and a half children and a dog and female comedians should shave their armpits but not talk about it, instead trying to sound more like their hairy-or-not male counterparts, if they want to be taken seriously. Why? Because we have been told time and time again that the white middle class male norm is the one to strive for. Who wouldn’t like to be on the top of the food chain?

Treating female comedians not talking about being a woman solely as a good thing creates the risk of a double standard. Like Rupi Kaur’s pictures of menstrual blood getting deleted from Instagram whilst the companies can still attach a faceless female torso next to their products and ask if we’re ‘beach body ready’. This gives the impression that whilst women are an excellent source for certain things, there’s still something slightly shameful and less valuable about being a woman, and though it is totally okay being a woman, you really shouldn’t talk about it if you want to be taken seriously. How many interviews have you read about actresses, comedians, and women in the public eye claiming they were ‘such tomboys’ when they were growing up? I might be a beautiful woman but I’m one of the lads at heart really.

It’s like when people compliment me for my British accent. On the surface it’s a great compliment that I still take to the bank every single time, but the more I hear it the more it starts to sound patronising. I know most of them mean well but what they are also saying between the lines is: well done for fitting in. Well done for sounding more like us. So am I a better immigrant than someone with a strong native accent? If I would slept with a male comedian (a mistake I have made fair few times in the past) and we both ended up talking about it on stage, would I become yet another woman talking about her sex life whilst he would be just observing life as it happens? I know I’m playing a devil’s advocate here, but everyone knows the devil wears Prada. And I love Prada.

There shouldn’t be anything shameful or less valuable in talking about being a woman. The Always’ ‘Like a girl’ campaign hits the nail on the head. They could’ve added ‘Jokes like a girl’ to the list, especially when talking about observational comedy. Isn’t the whole idea to recognise the circumstances you’re in? How do you, as a woman, take the female subject out of that equation, out of your own experience? That should be as respected as any other view point and only be judged based on whether or not it’s actually funny. I want to think that this is what Dylan Moran was trying to say.

Comedy strives for truth. The truth is that I’m a woman and I talk about myself on stage. That can be fucking hilarious. Just because some people aren’t yet ready to hear about it doesn’t make it less so. It’s time to turn off the shower and dry my fabulous female body. You will hear more about it later.