Something’s snapped. After the 2016 presidential election, women nationwide wanted to make a scene. We flooded streets in protest. We filled out ballots. Whispers gave way to battle cries. We didn’t do it for “attention”; we did it for progress. In “Fired Up,” ELLE.com explores women’s rage—and what comes next.

He had the blue eyes, short blond hair, and square jaw of a CrossFit trainer for the Nazi youth brigade. This walking Axe body wash ran through jokes about cheating on his girlfriend, Middle Eastern women needing to show more skin, and being broken up with via email. Then he locked eyes with me and stopped in his tracks.



“I dated an Asian girl once.”

He was the booked headliner for an open mic night at a third-tier comedy club in Los Angeles. I was the only woman in the audience of newbie comics—a sitting duck. He also happened to look like the twenty-something version of the grade school bully who socked me in the stomach while calling me a “chink.”

“She was great in bed,” he continued. “But it was weird to have sex with her. Asians are so polite. She was even polite in bed. Every time I touched her, she’d giggle.”

He put a hand to his mouth and erupted in high-pitched giggles of his own. The audience of comics, normally distracted by their own notebooks, laughed.

“But what’s even weirder is when I put my fingers inside of her, I pulled out a fortune.”

Then they roared.

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He shot me a look and I felt my cheeks flush hot with anger. My stomach grew heavy. It was the feeling of helplessness I got whenever I was mocked by someone with more power than me. Being the youngest of three siblings and growing up as an out-of-place immigrant, the feeling was familiar.

I had to make a choice. Did I heckle a fellow comedian? Open mic shows are supposed to be a “free speech zone”—an atmosphere where comics can test raw ideas. If I got upset, I risked showing that I didn’t have thick enough skin to “hang.” But I spent my first career as a political organizer standing up for the underdog, a Professional Injustice Confronter™. Was I going to stop now?

It was a split-second decision. I shook my head dramatically and uttered one short “boo.” But no one even registered my dissent. I only mattered as a prop for their amusement.

Unfunny rape jokes and Asians being used as punchlines were par for the course.

This experience seven years ago was just one of the many explicit and subtle ways comedy spaces showed me that I did not belong. Certainly, most open mic nights are uneventful failure caves where nobody is good, so this basic level of suckage just comes with the territory. But when you are not like the many young, straight white dudes populating the comedy scene, the experience can be even more alienating. Unfunny rape jokes and Asians being used as punchlines were par for the course. And when you are starting out, feeling unsure about your own voice and craft, any hostility towards your identity feels threatening. One can only take so many unfunny male reflections on smoking weed and jerking off, and random guys yelling “Show us your titties” before one seriously questions one's place in the comedy world.



Sucking at comedy when you first start is demoralizing enough without all the crap that comes with being an Asian American woman in comedy. I was the least likely candidate for stand-up. When I moved to L.A. from Taiwan at the age of five, my parents explicitly told me that my only job was to learn English, listen to teachers, and get As. But thanks to two much older brothers, I was exposed to adult humor way before my time. During elementary school, I memorized the best of Saturday Night Live with Eddie Murphy and obsessed over Stephen Chow’s kung fu comedy movies. But nothing in my family or American culture signaled to me that a career in comedy was possible. For little Asian immigrant girls, comedy isn't part of the American dream.

Unlike most of my stand-up peers, I wasn’t in my early twenties when I started. I pursued comedy after my first career in politics because I was hungry to express my creativity and tell stories that I never saw in mainstream American media. I'd left everything behind, so I had to make it work. But I quickly realized that to feel like I had a place in comedy, I had to create it.



That’s why I decided to produce my own comedy shows. In 2012, my friends and I started our own comedy tour, Disoriented Comedy. It’s the first mostly female Asian American stand-up comedy tour, and it broke another unspoken rule of comedy: Never book two women back-to-back on a show—much less an entire line-up of Asian American women. The success of this tour inspired a full-scale comedy festival called The Comedy Comedy Festival: A Comedy Festival, where Asian American comedic talent in all formats (stand-up, sketch, improvisation, writing, storytelling, video) could convene and shine.

My open mic incident was just the tip of the iceberg, which the #MeToo movement of 2017 made painfully clear. In a comedy culture dominated by men, there are those who—regardless of their relative status—will always find a way to abuse their power. This pattern is pervasive throughout all levels of the business, from humble open mic nights to the upper echelons of network shows. Abuse of power at all levels affects who enters, stays, and grows in the comedy industry.



It’s time for us to remake a culture that is hostile to women—especially women of color.

Comedy spaces have been toxic for too long; if we want greater racial and gender diversity, it's definitely time for us to remake a culture that is hostile to women—especially women of color. To pursue the arts, you need internal motivation, skill, and resources—there’s no doubt about that. But those traits are extremely difficult to cultivate without a community that supports your growth when you are not yet brilliant and hilarious. Creating comedy spaces for people I could relate to was the only way I could improve. We all need spaces where we can fail and learn; I only tried comedy after years of repeatedly hearing that I was funny like Margaret Cho. How many female and nonbinary comedians have we lost to harassment and violence whom we will never know about?

The tough part for my own development is that I spend more than half of my time producing these new spaces. This is all time I could be spending on doing more shows and writing jokes. I often wonder how much further along in my career I would be if I could just focus on the funny. I’ve become a professional diversity producer—what if I could just be a comedian?

When I think back to that “fortune cookie sex” comic, I laugh. If he tried to pull that joke in front of me now, I would certainly feel less threatened. I'm no longer a newbie; I am grateful I’ve continued to build my career and that I happily make a living as a stand-up. I hope he has since grown in his ideas around women and race, because the future really is female. It is also racially diverse, immigrant, disabled, indigenous, trans, and queer. Comedy has given me endless joy and a platform for my voice; I want it to live a long and prosperous life. But to do that, it’s going to have to adapt—not shut out the very people it needs.

Jenny Yang Jenny Yang Jenny Yang is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based standup comedian, content creator, comedy tour and festival organizer, speaker, and professional opinion-haver best known for her viral comedy videos and satirical pop culture and political commentary.

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