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?”