I was most honoured to be asked by Time Out's enormously respected Comedy Editor Tim Arthur to write a piece about the final two performances of The Bad Boy Of Feminism. The piece generated a lot of interest and lots of like-minded feminists who hadn't heard of me before came to see the show off the back of the article.
Understandably, Time Out's lawyers insisted on some moments of ranting to be removed so please find below the full, uncut, unexpurgated version that I submitted:
Why the stand up circuit needs feminism more than ever by James MullingerMisogyny has been making something of a comeback of late, both on the stand up circuit and in society in general. It seems you can say what you like about all women being slags and they are all just supposed to take the joke. Even the most mainstream of comedians are making rape jokes but we’ve all got to laugh along because it’s all just a bit of fun, right. Wrong.
Obviously the wealth of superb female stand ups on the circuit right now are redressing that balance, but it is often shocking how much misogyny you hear in clubs up and down the country every weekend. Things aren’t as bad as they used to be in the 1970s when Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning were on primetime but with Neanderthal scum like Danny Dyer telling readers of weekly rapist training manual Zoo magazine to slash their ex’s faces and Comedy Central’s marketing department cashing in on Charlie Sheen beating his wife to a pulp on Christmas Day by distributing adverts for the new series of Two And A Half Men with the tagline: “Charlie’s no angel!” we still have a long way to go.
It is staggering to me that even in 2010 violent crime against women is still treated as a bit of a laugh by a supposed comedy channel. At least there was uproar over Dyer’s comments and he was promptly fired. Sheen meanwhile was whooped and cheered by the studio audience of said lame-com in his first post-arrest appearance.
So third-wave feminism should in theory be flourishing at a time like this but instead it seems more people than ever are afraid to call themselves feminists. People assume that a feminist has to look like Jeremy Clarkson’s uglier sister. Part of the problem is perhaps the word ‘feminist’ itself. The ‘ist’ at the end of too harsh - after all, no-one wants to be a racist, rapist with a cist do they?
Another reason is the stupid people that think only women can be feminists. After a gig at the Leicester Comedy Festival, a woman came up to me and accused me of being a misogynist for using the ‘c’ word in my act. I tried to explain that I was using the term in the English way as a term of endearment, not the misogynistic North American sense. When she continued to shout I shamefully resorted to proudly revealing that I had a degree in Women’s Studies as if that gave me carte blanche to say what I like. Her response? “You can’t be a feminist, you’re a man.”
So I hit her. Which was fair enough. After all, she was asking for it.
Just a joke! Right?
For all of these reasons I decided what the circuit needed was a proud feminist male comedian. I’m the first to admit that a stand up show about feminism sounds about as funny as being fingered by John Leslie. But everything about ’James Mullinger Is The Bad Boy Of Feminism’ is intended to defy expectations and I have worked hard to make it as funny as it is preachy.
The title is a swipe at the way that the media call these wife beating scumbags ‘bad boys’ when really they should be called homicidal thugs. But the title is deliberately ambiguous so as a result, I have attracted audiences from both sides of the political spectrum. The first time I performed it at the Camden Fringe last year, half a dozen men from a men’s rights group bought tickets, assuming they were in for an hour of feminist bashing. I haven’t seen so many frowning cavemen since the BNP lost the Barking seat in May.
I decided to reclaim my feminist roots in 2008 after four years on the circuit, having been branded something of a laddish comic, some reviewers even going as far as accusing me of misogyny. I had also appeared on a TV panel show called Street Cred Sudoku and found myself accused of misogyny. The subject of Jordan came up and what I wanted to convey was that that I don’t buy into the idea that she is a successful businesswomen, I think she is an appalling example to young women prostituting her life, as proven by the horrifying fact that 95% of visitors to her website are women. Unfortunately, in the cut and thrust of a laugh a minute panel show, what came out of my mouth was the more succinct and less righteous: “I think she’s a slag”. Robin Ince and Sue Perkins rightly turned on me for using such a word. Ince even pointing out that he and I had been discussing the work of Andrea Dworkin in his dressing room prior to filming and that I was clearly some kind of charlatan.
As well as comedy punters and some misogynists, the show has also attracted some hardcore feminists, some of whom are big heroes of mine. Performing the show for them filled me with nerves because as well as being a filth filled gag fest, I wanted it to hold up as a feminist argument. Once well known feminist writer came to the show and I sheepishly asked her afterwards which bit she liked best expecting her to invoke the segment on bell hooks (sic) and the origins of Black Feminism or the insight into the way radical feminism evolved in the latter part of the twentieth century, but instead she thought about it for a moment, looked me in the eye and in all seriousness said: “The corpse fucking joke.”
Which proves I have maintained my feminist ideals after all because that’s my favourite bit too. My wish is that more comedians will shy away from using women as their comedian punch bags and instead target those deserving of our wrath such as Danny Dyer and Charlie Sheen.
James Mullinger will be performing ‘James Mullinger Is The Bad Boy Of Feminism’ for the very last time at the Soho Theatre on 25th and 26th June
www.sohotheatre.com
ENDS
