I never made a conscious decision to date white male standup comics specifically, or later to not date white standup male comics specifically–
going on dates with white male standup comics is a thing I did, and now I don’t. I’m prone to intense and short-lived phases; the couple of months I made my own kombucha from yeast cultures I bought on the Internet; the three to four years I was using a lot of self tanner; the week I was really into Jamie Oliver in a sexual way.
A year prior to all this I’d lost my job, quit my other job at a soul-sucking, windowless call center, couldn’t find another job, and didn’t care. I’d spend whole days in bed alternating between heart-pounding anxiety, sobbing hysterically, and feeling bored out of my mind. This gave way to nights wide awake, locked in an endless circular thought pattern of directionless worry. I couldn’t pay my rent because I didn’t have a job, and I didn’t have a job because I couldn’t get out of bed.
I came out as a lesbian, then decided that label didn’t feel right given my deeply ingrained fantasy to do butt stuff with Daniel Radcliffe. I like people. I eventually made my way back to LA and spent two or three months actively trolling Tinder and OKCupid and trying to meet queer women, specifically, and ended up on what felt like the same coffee date with women who weren’t out, who weren’t impressed by my Instagram following, and weren’t interested in dating a pansexual weirdo with a thing for fart jokes. Which is fair. Looking to expand my dating pool and horny as shit, I switched my online settings to “men and women.”
I had dated straight men before, but never any who I shared any common interests with, really, let alone someone occasionally vying for the same job. Dating white male comics in LA was a phase similar to my passing interest in juice cleanses. A string of bizarre dates and sad blowjobs I just sort of fell into. I fell out of it when I realized how fragile white male masculinity can be, and how exhausting it is to play therapist to someone when all you came for was weed and a solid forty-five seconds of oral.
Every aspiring white male comic thinks he’s Louis C.K., but he’s never Louis C.K. Not that I consider being Louis C.K. aspirational. The self-deprecation, purposeful shlubbiness, the general “I hate myself, but fuck me anyway” vibe. The sense of entitlement. They all seem to tell the same dick jokes, the same gay jokes, the same jerk-off jokes. So many jerk-off jokes, so many countless tales of sadly masturbating in quiet, self-hating white guy shame.
If a white male comic tells a jerk-off joke in the forest and no one hears it, did it really happen? Will no one acknowledge this silent epidemic?
I pointed out this excess of jerk-off jokes to a male comic while we were on a date, and he proceeded to give me his personal take on why exactly jerk-off jokes are “always funny,” and why they make people laugh. He explained that the jerk-off joke offers a moment of delicate vulnerability between a comic and his audience, the disclosure of a precious moment of solitude, meant to win sympathy.
I didn’t tell him his jerk-off habits aren’t as important as he thinks. Because they aren’t important to anyone, at all. And the notion that no one is impressed with their lazy phoned-in vulnerability might be the white male comic’s most profound fear.
I once spent three hours in a bar listening to a male comic monologue about his various neuroses and romantic mishaps with women, why exactly it is jerk off jokes are funny, how he treats his crippling anxiety and debilitating bouts of depression by self-medicating weed and hates his job, hates Los Angeles, and is unhappy with the direction his career has taken. He told me I shouldn’t ever watch him perform if I "didn’t want to get my feelings hurt" because after he performs he gets "so deep" in "the zone” that he’s unable to carry on conversations with other humans, and he’d probably avoid me if I ever came to one of his shows. Then he tried to mansplain the plot of The Catcher in the Rye to me, which I and most adults who’ve passed a high school English class are familiar with—when I pointed this out, he started mansplaining the "supposed meaning" of the term mansplaining, and told me I was being hostile.
I scrolled through Tinder in silence for the rest of our time together. I don’t think he noticed.
Another still, the third and last, like the fucking Ghost of Christmas Future showing me what my life would be like if I continued on this way, got angry with me because I wouldn’t watch him jerk off naked on FaceTime. I hurt his feelings. He stopped speaking to me entirely. It was a low point, being dropped by a shitty fuckbuddy who doesn’t want to fuck you anymore, and I felt vaguely bad for myself for approximately three minutes.
Not wanting to be cast as the punchline of a Louis C.K. “feminists can’t take a joke” bit just wasn’t worth the effort or the energy required to make this person feel comfortable with themselves.
Contrary to what Louis C.K. types might believe, or claim to believe, angry, joyless feminists are far from being the greatest threat to their existence. Reflecting, analyzing, and deconstructing their own gender and race privilege would not only be severely off-brand for the average guy whose “comedy” is based in endless wallowing or self-pity, but it would completely undermine their existence.
If a white male comic acknowledges his privilege as a white male comic, half of his material would become completely irrelevant. It’s difficult to be a sad, lonely, self-hating underdog who can’t get mean women to give him a chance when he acknowledges his own position of privilege.
I don’t hate all white male comics. I just don’t want to date them anymore; I hate the patriarchal structures and systems they represent. That doesn’t mean I don’t want them on my side, because the rest of us need them. I want to be friends. I want to be part of a community. I can take a joke. I fucking love jokes. But it’s hard to be friends with someone who thinks rape, disability, queer/trans identities, and racism are punchlines.
Dating straight white male comics ultimately goes against everything I stand for personally and politically–the seeming surplus of jerk-off jokes, along with the pervasive white maleness of standup comedy (and everything else ever) is one of the primary reasons I can’t, in good conscience, encourage straight white men to try stand up.
Don’t try standup. Don’t listen to your (white, straight, male) buddies who say you should try stand up.
It’s nothing personal.There's just enough of you already.