Queer vs. Straight Comedy
At the risk of sounding heterophobic, which I am – but only slightly, I have this idea that non-queer comics don’t have to work as hard, or as hard in the same ways, in writing jokes and performing. Don’t get me wrong, I know excellent non-queer comics who work hard and write great jokes – jokes that make people laugh, including me. I would even say I’m a fan. But straight comedians simply don’t have the same hurdles as we do with regard to writing or having to win an audience over from the start.
I think it’s interesting too how straight audiences kind of demand this from queer comedians, to come out on stage. I think it’s sometimes driven by curiosity, but more often due to of lack of education and presents as homophobia and heterosexual privilege. If you’re heterosexual or straight, it’s given that you don’t have to explain shit to anyone about who you fuck or how you might present your gender. Identifying as straight is powerful. You can be a man, identify as straight, fuck other men and still call yourself straight.Republican Senators do it all the time. That’s how powerful the straight I.D. is. We queers may not think so, but that’s just one of the perks of being straight. And I think it’s homophobic because it’s a way of quietly manipulating you to discuss something intimate about yourself in front of a group of people you don’t know that might make you feel less than. Coming out on stage can be a difficult experience.
It’s so weird and wrong that a queer comic might have to come out to a non-queer audience in order to tell a joke, later on in their set, about meatloaf. It is completely irrelevant to the meatloaf joke that they are queer. But they are the elephant in the living room and it becomes a kind of ‘carrot dangling’: “We’ll laugh at your jokes, but first you clarify this one thing for us.” That’s just fucked up.
Equally as difficult is when a queer comic decides that it is relevant to come out on stage, there is instant and enormous pressure to find a balance between being ‘too gay’ or ‘not gay enough’. Depending on which you decide you’re going to be. Will you be the palatable and sensible character, Will from Will & Grace or are you going to be the on-fire and lively homo, Jack? Either way, it’s a choice you shouldn’t have to make. You should just be able to be you and not have to consider which one will be better liked for the sake of getting laughs.
Queer comics are at a greater risk of an audiences turning on them because of their queerness. Have you ever heard of this with a non-queer comic? No! Straight comics don’t walk to a stage concerned with whether or not an audience is going to turn on them because they’re straight; that thought will never even enter their heads. Unless of course they are performing at a pride or diversity celebration event, in which case it is about diversity and even then, they are included. It’s just one less thing non-queer comics have to take into consideration when writing material and walking to the stage to perform.
I think that non-queers in general, don’t have to process their intimate lives in public as much as queers do. They’re not socially required to come out as straight to their families, at work or on stage. Many of them are straight by default and have never fully considered or explored their sexuality and how they fit into the world. Most will tell you it’s just how they are and they’ve ‘never really had to think about it’. As a result, they’ve simply done less processing about life. It’s not to say that straight folk don’t process life, they do, they just do it less and I think it’s reflected in comedy writing and performing.
Because of my outward appearance and gender expression, I too felt pressure to come out on stage. However, I continue to come to come out to all audiences because it is relevant to the material I produce and I have a personal mission to educate people through laughter. One of the best kinds of comedy is subversive. I love thinking that an audience doesn’t realize what has happened to them; they’ve learned something. Maybe, just maybe, the next someone says something derogatory in front of them, they might step up and say “Hey, that’s not alright, I know someone who is [insert I.D. here] and they’re not like that.”