Two Sides of Me

“How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?”

“That’s not funny.”

I first came across this joke in an old issue of Reader’s Digest magazine when I was ten years old.  My grandfather had purchased a subscription for me as a present, no doubt hoping that my highly literate self would devour the articles like a starving peasant at a banquet.  But, being ten, I found the inspirational stories rather boring, and always skipped to the humor sections, where readers submitted favorite jokes or personal anecdotes.  I read the feminist/light bulb joke, laughed out loud, and then went to my mother and asked, “What’s a feminist?”

“A feminist is a person who believes in equal rights for men and women,” she explained.

“Oh.”  And then I became confused.  People who believed in equal rights for men and women didn’t like jokes?

But as I grew older, I quickly discovered that my mother’s definition of “feminist” was not the world’s definition of “feminist.”   In fact, there were many different, contradictory definitions of “feminist,” definitions that ran the gamut of “a person who strives for political, economic, and social justice for both sexes” to “a hairy humorless bitch who wants to cut guys’ balls off with a razor blade.”

“Feminazi” was a word I quickly picked up on in conversations with friends and relatives.  I understood immediately that “feminazi” was a term used for that kind of feminist.  And while I never backed down from my true beliefs – that men and women deserved to be treated equally and women’s rights were important – I waffled on how I would present those beliefs to the rest of the world.

“I’m a feminist,” I would say, but quickly add, “but not that kind.  I’m not a feminazi or anything.  I like men.”  I even went so far as to say, “I’m not a feminist, I’m a humanist, because I believe in equal rights.”  (When I later learned about Renaissance humanism in my European History class, I felt pretty embarrassed for having co-opted the term to justify my dithering).

At some point during my college years, I got over my waffling and decided, “Fuck it, I’m a feminist.”  No “but not that kind” caveats.  No excuses.  If, upon hearing that I was a feminist, a person immediately assumed that I was a ball-busting Nazi who wants all men to stay in the home and never have sex again, that was not a person I wanted to associate with, anyway.

It was liberating.  But I still felt conflicted, because my feminist sensibilities were constantly clashing with my other side – the side that loves comedy.  Making people laugh is one of my favorite things to do and satire is a soothing balm to my soul.  My favorite kind of comedy is ridiculous, over-the-top, satirical, and takes no prisoners.  I believe everything and everyone should be mocked and no subject should be off-limits.

Thus is my dilemma.  The feminist in me thinks the world would be a better place if everyone took a little more time to be sensitive to others’ beliefs and thought about the implications of words before speaking.  The comedian in me thinks the world would be a better place if people stopped taking themselves seriously all the damn time and laughed a little more.

Sometimes these views can, surprisingly, go very well together.  But I often find that they clash, like two screaming Twilight fangirls fighting over a Robert Pattinson poster.

The feminist in me is frowning at that last sentence and wondering why I didn’t use fanboys as an example to prove my point, and if I’m trying to imply that there’s something inherently silly and shallow about teenage girls.  The comedian in me wants the feminist in me to lighten up because mocking Twilight is funny.  (And the self-preservation part of me is worried that my very first post will be trolled by insane Taylor Lautner/Jacob fans, but that’s beside the point).  You see the problem here?

That’s what this blog is about: exploring the two sides of me – the feminist and the comedian – and trying to find harmony between the two.