Sense and humour

Female comedians are rare - feminist ones even rarer. But all that changed with the US election, says Jessica Valenti, when a wave of funny, political women broke through

Are you annoyed with the assumption that all single women are desperate to get married? That women have a romantic attachment to cleaning products? That we like nothing better than sitting around with our friends, obsessively eating yoghurt? Then you need to watch Sarah Haskins' series, Target Women, on the website Current TV. Over the past year, Haskins has been picking apart the cultural stereotypes that crop up in advert after advert on US television, with a combination of sharp one-liners and lightly raised eyebrows. Commenting on an advert that suggests that Botox is liberating, for instance, she echoes its slogan "Express yourself!", before the acerbic pay-off: "by paralysing small muscles in those problem areas".

"For years I've thought that advertising's depiction of women and what our lives are like is ridiculous," says Haskins. "I grew up in a house where my parents were separated and my mom worked and what I saw on TV struck me as some sort of elaborate fantasy designed to make us all feel bad for not folding our laundry right away and sitting down to perfect home-cooked meals in a spotless house." Her appearances have become so popular that there's now an online movement devoted to getting her hired by the popular US TV programme, The Daily Show (which is shown on More4 in the UK).

Haskins is just one of many US comedians to have emerged in the past few years who share a defining trait. They're feminists. And this is particularly interesting when you consider that feminists are generally characterised as humourless, given to dusting off our protest signs while ominously discussing the patriarchy. This stereotype is ridiculous, of course, but it has been around since at least 1911 - when the New York Times ran a headline attesting to "A suffragist's lack of humor". And while women have regularly used wit to communicate political messages in the meantime, feminist comedians have never before been so visible.

The reason for this visibility is partly because the women breaking through are so talented, and partly that one of the biggest news stories in the US for decades - the recent election - proved so ripe to be skewered.

After the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Republicans' vice-presidential candidate, Haskins put together a brilliant skit saying that this marked the start of a female movement of PANTHERs: "Proud Americans Needing Token Hillary Estrogen Replacement". And Palin was also a target for the biggest comedy star of the election season, self-proclaimed feminist Tina Fey. She famously impersonated Palin on Saturday Night Live (SNL), and managed to take her apart not by making sexist attacks - as many other comedians did - but simply by crafting lines that were incredibly close to what the candidate had actually said (including the unforgettable: "I can see Russia from my house!").

Then there's Amy Poehler, who appeared with Fey on SNL, impersonating Hillary Clinton. Asked by a reporter recently if she was a feminist, Poehler responded "Absolutely I am", and this week she underlined this with the launch of her web series, The Smart Girls at the Party, which features her interviewing and celebrating talented young girls with her trademark wry humour. There's Samantha Bee of The Daily Show, who pulled no punches during the election season - especially when John McCain put derisive air quotes around the words "women's health" in response to a debate question about late-term abortion legislation. "Let's face it, women love abortions and we'll do anything to get one. The later the better," Bee said sarcastically, before continuing with a flurry of air quotes of her own. "'Haemorrhages', severe 'uterine infections'. 'dying', blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And while we're at it, enough with the whining about 'rape', 'incest', and 'incest rape.' We're on to you, ladies. Those aren't a golden ticket to the abortion factory, OK?"

What's particularly radical about this humour isn't just that feminists aren't expected to be funny, but that women in general are so often accused of being humourless. Christopher Hitchens' 2007 Vanity Fair article, "Why Women Aren't Funny," caused a storm of both approval and opprobrium, and was just the latest in a long line of male swipes at women's comedic ability - there are dozens of websites dedicated to just how unfunny women supposedly are.

And these attitudes can naturally be a big problem for women entering the industry.

Comedian Kathy Griffin, star of the reality show My Life on the D-List, has said that, "the level of profound sexism in stand-up is so extreme and so high; not only is [the male to female ratio] not 50/50 in the comedy world ... it's like 90/10."

At the root of this culture seems to be the fact that, as Joan Rivers once noted, "men find funny women threatening" - any woman who wields her wit is refusing to be put in her place. Simply by being a female comedian, then, a woman is challenging existing power structures; by adding feminism into the mix, they are confronting the culture on a whole new level. In Bee's joke about McCain's comment, she exposes the lunacy in the notion that women are queueing up for late-term abortions for so-called social reasons. Fey's jokes about Palin show the emptiness and apparent cynicism behind the Republicans' choice of vice-presidential candidate. And Haskins' jokes about the way products are marketed, uncovers just how much our culture patronises women.

Thank God too for comedians such as Wanda Sykes, a stand-up perhaps best known to UK audiences for her appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sykes brings a biting comedy to the most controversial topics, throwing new light on issues that are all too easily written off as age-old and intractable: rape, for example. In her 2006 HBO comedy special Sick & Tired, Sykes joked with the women in the audience, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if our pussies were detachable? Just think about it. You get home from work, it's getting a little dark outside, and you're like, 'I'd like to go for a jog ... but it's getting too dark, oh! I'll just leave it at home!' ... [There's] just so much freedom - you could do anything. You could go visit a professional ball player's hotel room at two in the morning. Sex? My pussy's not even in the building!"

Whatever the stereotype says, most feminists develop a strong sense of humour - they have to. How else would we survive the daily sexism, a political climate that's hostile to our rights, and the general discrimination that comes with being a woman? If we couldn't laugh until we cried, we would probably spend all of our time sobbing.

Humour allows us to satirise politicians who would limit our rights and get on with the day with a smile on our face.

For the feminist comedian Margaret Cho, best-known for her sharp comments on race and body image in Hollywood, the recent influx of women is a welcome change.

"Everything I do is about feminism!" she says."There are a few more women out there now, so that is exciting." Haskins echoes the sentiment; when asked if she is a feminist she says that she would "be sort of insane if I wasn't - I'm a woman who works, and works in a really male-dominated field and wants to be paid equally, treated equally, and participate equally."

Eventually, Cho suggests, feminist comedians "are gonna rule the world". With women such as these at the forefront, she might just be right.