It’s a potent moment for women in comedy right now. The meteoric rise of Amy Schumer, a new season of Broad City, the prospect of an all-female Ghostbusters, the continued awesomeness of Tig Notaro, Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling and many others; these are all signs that the culture has shifted toward equity, making Christopher Hitchens’s 2007 “Why Women Aren’t Funny” essay look as moldering and dead as its author.

The struggle for inclusion doesn’t just play out in production deals with marquee names; it also happens on the street level of a subculture that has an ingrained misogyny somewhere around the level of video gaming or hip-hop. Here in Seattle we’ve now got female-focused “safe space” open mics like The Comedy Nest and all-women shows like Wine Shots. Portland has an all-female-identifying festival. Additionally, women are more comfortable calling out sexist behavior and warning their colleagues about creeps in their midst. Every female comic I know can tell harrowing stories about the many ways they’ve been demeaned and discounted in comedy. I once solicited a women-only Facebook group to share their experiences being “creeped on” by male comics and the stories I received were so awful—and implicated so many locals—that I scrapped the idea because it was just too depressing, not to mention the legal liability that’d come into play.

Last month LA comedian Beth Stelling posted an Instagram photo of her bruised arms and legs and detailed her experiences in an abusive relationship with a male comic. Reaction was swift and vengeful and it spurred many other women to come forward with stories of abuse, some by the same perpetrators. A well-researched Buzzfeed article outlined how a women-only Facebook group laid the groundwork for kicking harassers out of their comedy community. We’re in this strange transition period between the customary casual acceptance of misogyny and the mobilization of a full-on torches-and-pitchforks brigade. It’s ugly and contentious, but at the same time there’s cause for great optimism.

I first came across Boise comedian Emma Arnold from a blog post she wrote last summer describing a sexual assault by an out-of-town male comic. She wrote candidly and hilariously about the sexist behavior she’s experienced as a woman in comedy (“you could FOR REALS be a bolo-tie-wearing youth pastor with sweaty meat hands and still be less creepy than 75% of male comics”) and the post seemed to get results; the offending comic was banned, at least temporarily, from rooms in his hometown scene and elsewhere. Eyes were opened. Naturally, the post also stirred up torrents of anger from the Troll Brigade, and Arnold made memes of the most awful comments she received. Her point was simple: “I shouldn’t have to be a walking callous to do my job.”

More recently, I came across Arnold’s Facebook post about the Houston Whatever Fest, which included only three females out of 50 booked comics. The thread received hundreds of comments and got written up on Vice and other outlets, spurring a response from the festival’s booker. I followed the ensuing discussion with interest because it’s a good snapshot of where we’re at right now.

Arnold has been opening for Geoff Tate on tour since September and last weekend they were at the Comedy Underground. Onstage she’s funny and extremely likeable—the real deal. She has three sons, one of whom is autistic, and she jokes about the demands of motherhood with disarming honesty. When we talk about the move to inclusion, Arnold’s is precisely the type of unique voice deserving of broader exposure. I caught up with her in the Underground’s green room to discuss comedy, feminism, trolls and what she calls “the Houston kerfuffle.”

When you look at a show lineup do you always see if there’s a woman?

No, and actually I just reposted something I’d seen several dudes bring up. I was just kinda offhand annoyed by it. Comics who are much bigger than me posted it and got like ten comments, then I posted it and at last count it was up to 1400 comments. It kind of exploded.

Did you get that much more of a response because you’re a woman?

I think so. I think that sometimes there’s a feeling that it’s worse to be called sexist than it is to actually be sexist. The people in Houston took it really seriously: “How dare you say our city is sexist?” A lot of the responses were, “Fuck you, bitch, we’re not sexist!” They proved any point I was trying to make.

“The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”

Yeah. I got threats, a weird rape joke. Mostly a lot of “Women aren’t funny.” Some of it was from guys I work with and respect, and even if they’re joking, it’s not helpful. It was a bummer.

The people who are the most vitriolic are usually new dudes who are unsure of their place in comedy, and here you are a woman asserting your place-

If it’s someone just starting out, they have no idea what it’s like to be a woman in comedy. It’s always the most heartbreaking when someone you respect and think is funny is sexist.

But also I got a lot of support for it and I got contacted by other people who book festivals and they said, “You were totally right, that is not enough women.” They said they went through the comments to see who was shitty and are not booking those people. I think that’s the tone those guys don’t realize has changed—you can’t say that shit and still get booked as much.

With all the crazy responses, did you institute any policies for yourself?

Back in June I wrote a thing about being sexually assaulted and there was a huge amount of crazy that came out of that, so I was like, “I’m not engaging this shit anymore.”

I used to try to be very Buddhist about trolls, even people who were really awful to me. I’d try to reach out and say, “You seem like you have a lot of pain. What’s going on with you?” I don’t have the energy to spend on these people anymore. I just block and move on now.

I think that’s where everyone eventually ends up.

Yeah. I have a lot of empathy for how the patriarchy hurts men because I have sons and also because I’m an actual feminist. I have a lot of empathy for how we fuck up men. So when men are angry I tend to turn around and say, “What do you need from this? Why are you so angry? What are you not getting?”

What do they need?

I feel weird “womansplaining” because maybe a man should be answering this, but I think men are afraid they don’t have a place, that they aren’t heard. The most anger I see coming from men is a feeling that they don’t matter and they aren’t worthwhile. And people I’ve engaged with—obvious trolls—eventually have said, “Yeah, I guess I’m just really mad because I don’t know what society wants from me and I don’t know how to be a man and it’s really hard.”

Having watched my own sons go through a lot of that—my youngest son is in ballet and he’s gotten so much shit, so much more than you’d think in 2016.

For being a “wussy”?

For being a puss! For doing girly shit. Ballet is for sissies! I think that must be really damaging for men, to not be able to just be people. I probably have more empathy than I should. But I have had to start saying, “Sorry dude, I’m not midwifing that for you anymore.”

Just the fact you’d even try is above and beyond the call of duty.

Well, I’m an enabler. [Laughs] “Oh my gosh, are you terrible? Let me fix you!”

After that Houston kerfuffle I went down there and did a show, and the pressure was so on then because it’s like, “You spoke up for this, you better be fucking hilarious.” And I went and had a really good show.

Beforehand I kinda mapped out my goals. What do I want this to be? I wanted to be really funny and I wanted to sit down with the guys—the ones who were not actually abusive but just angry—and say, “Here’s my side of things and here’s what it feels like.”

We were able to sit and have a conversation about what the scene is like. But it was also a little frustrating because I felt we were able to do that because Geoff [Tate] was with me. Geoff was like, “Fucking listen to her,” and then they would. They needed a white dude to tell them.

There was a situation here where this female comic was coming offstage and this drunk open miker went up and kissed her on the mouth-

Ugh.

-so she posted something about it online and one of the comments I saw was a guy asking another guy who had been there, “Did this really happen?”

Yes.

Like they needed male confirmation.

That happens over and over and it’s part of why I’ve started to disengage. I got lots of emails and even a handwritten card from female comics in Houston who were like, “Thank you so much for sticking up. This town is so hostile to women, it’s so hard to be a female comic here.” But when I told the guys, “This is what the women in your scene told me,” they were like, “Nah, that’s not true.”

I said, “I’m telling you what women have told me.” But nobody listened until Geoff got involved and said, “Yeah, actually these things are happening, you need to listen.”

So where do we make any progress?

You have to reach a point where it’s not cool to be sexist. That’s the only time anything ever changes in society is when it’s not cool.

Geoff is one of the most respected comics. Everywhere we go people are like, “Oh my god, he’s my favorite!” When guys like Geoff start to say, “Don’t do that, it’s gross,” people listen. You have to make it not cool. Because if it’s just not okay then: “Fuck you, we do what we want! We’re oppressed! We’re the marginalized ones! I can’t get work because of my opinions!” But if you make it passé to be a sexist piece of shit-

Corny.

Yes. I think if you can present stuff as corny, people will grow out of it eventually, hopefully.

My current theory is that audiences are actually ahead of comedy now. Because there is so much sensitivity around language, even rednecks are like “I don’t think we’re supposed to say ‘retard.’” Five years ago they’d love it but now they’re like, “I don’t know if that’s cool.”

Even my super feminist joke where I say, “Men, shut the fuck up,” rednecks love that joke. I think even in the most conservative audiences, those women are starting to pressure their men to not act like that. When I started comedy, you’d do a joke like that to crickets.

We’re half the population; there needs to be more of us in everything. That has stopped being an unpopular opinion. It was kinda radical even five years ago; that’s shifted.

That thing I wrote about being sexually assaulted, I’ve been talking about that for a while and nobody gave a shit. Then all of a sudden something in the zeitgeist shifted: “Oh, this matters. How we treat women matters.”

Comedy is a progressive art form that’s always evolving, so there is that fear of being a hack or having hack attitudes.

I think women have also recently realized our buying power. Women are less willing to sit through five comics who are all white men bitching about how worthless women are. It used to be if you wanted to see comedy you were probably gonna see at least one guy who was very sexist, and just have to sit through it because you didn’t wanna be the uncool girl who said, “This is bullshit, I don’t like this.”

Now women feel more comfortable saying, “Nah, I don’t like that guy. He’s gross, he’s corny, he’s hacky.”

I was fascinated by the Houston thing because even the guy who booked it felt the need to respond. It wasn’t something that could be brushed off.

Initially, some of the guys who commented thought it was how things used to be: “Women aren’t funny, three [female comics] is plenty.” When it started to pile on comments, a lot of those guys were very surprised that there had been a shift. And those guys are gonna continue to be fucking floored and be really mad about it. It’s a scary thing to lose the world.

People were like, “It’s too bad you deleted all those comments.” I didn’t delete shit. The booker of the festival told those guys to go through and delete some of the worst stuff. I wish I had screenshot it all. I’m a big believer in letting people dig their own holes. That’s what you think? You wanna be public about it?

Lindy West has folders of that stuff.

I respect and love her so much and I’m continually amazed by her stamina, that she just continues to fight. Because that shit is so tiring and it really hurts your soul and your heart. I have so much respect. Back in the summer she tweeted about my sexual assault piece and I got just a minor wave of what she must deal with. It’s insane.

I do feel the tide is turning. Maybe I’m just being an optimist.

I don’t think so. I think you’re right. It’s not like it was. I belong to a Facebook group that’s all women and they’ll say “This guy was totally gross to me at the mic and grabbed my ass.” We never had that before. Now you have a group of women who can say, “This guy’s a dangerous predator, stay away from him.” That should scare those men a lot. Women have figured out, “Why don’t we fuckin’ network?”

Onstage photo by Paul Budge, garbage can photo by William von Tagen.