What is feminism? In this exclusive extract from A Book For Her, the standup comedian tells you everything you need to know about the movement that is the sole cause of the recession, global warming, terrorism, pandemics, cancelled flights, volcanos, delayed trains and pedantic health and safety regulations

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bridget Christie: ‘I even hate Ban Ki-moon.’ Photograph: David Levene/Guardian

I am a feminist. All this means is that I am extremely hairy and hate all men, both as individuals and collectively, with no exceptions. Nope. Not even Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen/Paul Hollywood/Ronnie Corbett/Trevor McDonald/David Attenborough or John Nettles circa Bergerac are good enough for me.

I even hate Ban Ki-moon. It’s one thing to try to eradicate female genital mutilation and forced marriage, but Mrs Ban Ki-moon told me she can’t remember the last time her husband put the Hoover round. Or sprayed his own soiled pants with pre-wash Vanish. Feminism begins at home, Mr Ban, not at the UN. Huh! Ban Ki-hypocrite, more like.

Feminists don’t like humour, except slapstick. Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy and Bottom are all very popular at feminist comedy nights. Anything that involves men being physically harmed always goes down very well with feminists. They also enjoy watching Tom and Jerry, Road Runner cartoons and war documentaries.

Feminists never have sex and hate men opening doors for them, even into other dimensions.

Christmas is banned in the “feminist community”, along with birthdays, wallpaper, nuance, giving people the benefit of the doubt and all music. Feminists only ever listen to one song, on a loop: kd lang’s Constant Craving.

All feminists are lesbians. There is not a single heterosexual woman in the world who believes that women should have equal rights. Not one. If a feminist says she is heterosexual or bisexual or asexual, she is lying. They are all lesbians.

Feminism is the sole cause of the recession, global warming, terrorism, pandemics, cancelled flights, volcanos, delayed trains and overly pedantic health and safety regulations. You can’t have hot drinks at work now because of feminism, or climb up small stepladders in libraries. You can’t eat a lobster without safety goggles now because of feminists. You can’t even open a door now because of all the feminists. You have to hurl yourself through plate-glass windows to get in and out of buildings now because of the feminists. All doors have been bricked up now because of feminists. It’s like the window tax of 1696 all over again, but with doors.



All feminists do all day is burn bras. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without eating, sleeping or taking toilet breaks. A feminist would rather wet herself than leave a bra unburned. If you read the CV of a feminist, under “Occupation” it would say: “Bra-burner.” And under “Skills” it would say: “Very good at burning bras.” And under “Hobbies and interests” it would say: “Finding bras and burning them.”

And under “My five-year plan” it would say: “To have burned loads of bras.” And under “My 10-year plan” it would say: “To have eliminated all the bras, by burning.”

Feminists steal bras from wherever they can. From lingerie departments, barns and hay bales, the wardrobe department for The Benny Hill Show, the stage floor at a Tom Jones concert, milkmen’s pockets, James Bond’s glove compartment and Carry on Camping star Kenneth Williams’s face.

Then they burn the brassieres in braziers, singing their politically correct nursery rhyme, which goes:

Bra, bra, black sheep, Have you any bras? Yes, sir, yes, sir, Three bras full. One for the master, And one for the dame, And a tiny double-A one for the little girl who lives down the lane, who doesn’t need one yet, and won’t do for years to come, but who wants one because she saw an American Apparel advert, before it was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, for using gratuitous sexual imagery, involving underage-looking models on its website.

That’s the end of the bra-burning bit now. Oh, did I mention? Feminists never actually burned bras “as a means of protest”. In 1968 and 1969, protesters demonstrated at the annual Miss America Beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The New York Radical Women were one of the earliest women’s lib groups in the country. They threw items they viewed as oppressive to women (high heels, girdles, women’s magazines, tweezers, bras, etc) into a “freedom trash can”. They applied for but didn’t get a permit from the police allowing them to burn the items (the protest was held on a wooden boardwalk), so they just binned everything instead.

Nothing was ever burned. But the media said they burned everything and have been saying it ever since, and now twats and anti-feminists use the term “bra burners” as a way of trivialising the movement. Just thought I’d clear that one up.

I am a feminist. This means I think that all men are rapists, without exception. Even paralysed men, who can only move one eyeball. All rapists. Even my seven-year-old son is a rapist, and that is how I introduce him to people. “Have you met my son? He’s seven. Rapist.” That’s what I think, because I am a feminist.

Even dead men are rapists. A bit of soil and science doesn’t stop them. Mud and physics is just more bureaucratic nonsense for them to negotiate their way around, like CCTV cameras and sentencing.

Even half the French language are rapists, all those masculine words, raping all the feminine ones. That’s what I think, because I am a feminist.

Feminists never laugh at anything. They didn’t even laugh at that YouTube clip of babies in car seats going through tunnels that went viral. Or at that clip where someone called St Sanders has made Mick Jagger make funny noises. Even when Germaine Greer told her now legendary joke on feminist practice and post-structuralist theory, to a lecture hall filled with feminists, not a single feminist laughed. She even distorted her voice with helium and wore a funny Marx Brothers mask to encourage the feminists, but she got nothing at all.

Mind you, she did mess up the punchline by forgetting it. And she got her Marxes mixed up. They were all probably trying to work out why Germaine Greer was doing a Joe Pasquale impression and was wearing a mask of a German revolutionary socialist.

If a feminist is made to pull a cracker at Christmas, she quickly eats the joke so that she doesn’t have to tell it.

Feminists only ever eat paper. Paper. And carpets.

If a feminist is found to love her husband, enjoy cooking, having a facial or interacting with her own children, she is publicly flogged and thrown out of feminism by Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill, who go out undercover, posing as eyebrow-threaders, sugar daddies and John Nettles to try to trick us.

So that’s feminism. I hope I’ve cleared that up for you.

What is a Tory feminist?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tory feminist Theresa May. Photograph: Aenne Chene/Fawcett Society

I’m not entirely sure about women wearing a “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt. Or men, for that matter. It’s overstating the case a bit, isn’t it? It’s like wearing a T-shirt with “I am not a racist” on it. It makes me suspicious. I assume that most people’s default setting is feminist, until they do or say something that makes me think otherwise. If I went bowling with a friend, for example, and they took their coat off to reveal an “I am not a racist” T-shirt underneath, I don’t think I’d feel relieved at all. On the contrary, it would make me very on edge. I’d spend the whole night worried I was bowling with an ironic racist.

A few years ago, because Tory feminists were in the papers all the time, talking about Tory feminism, it made me think about what Tory feminism was, which fed into the standup in my show War Donkey in Edinburgh in the summer of 2012. This is how it went:

“I’ve been trying to work out what a Tory feminist is, because I keep seeing photographs of female Tory MPs in the newspapers, wearing T-shirts with ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ on them. What, like a T-shirt? How can a T-shirt look like a feminist? A T-shirt looks like a T-shirt, doesn’t it? It should say, ‘This is what a T-shirt with “This is what a feminist looks like” written on it looks like.’ That’s what it says on the front, anyway, of the Tory feminists’ T-shirts that they’re all wearing now. And on the back it says, ‘Not really, I’m a Tory, you gullible dick.’ Then underneath that it says, ‘I axed the health in pregnancy grant. I closed Sure Start centres.’ That one’s got a smiley face next to it. ‘I cut child benefit and slashed tax credits. I shut down shelters for battered wives and children. I cut rape counselling and legal aid.’ Winking face. ‘I cut funding for CCTV cameras and street lighting, making women much more vulnerable. I closed down all 23 specialist domestic violence courts. I cut benefits for disabled children.’ Sad face with sunglasses on. ‘I tried to amend the abortion act so that women receive one-to-one abortion counselling from the pope before they go ahead with it.’ Winking face with tongue out. The back is much longer than the front, by the way. It’s a tailcoat, basically. They’re wearing tailcoats.”

• Extracted from A Book For Her by Bridget Christie (Century, £14.99, out on 2 July). To order a copy for £11.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call the Guardian Bookshop on 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. Copyright © Bridget Christie 2015.