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I stood onstage at the Glasgow comedy club, the first of the Christmas comedy nights for me and there were 98% of men in the room. This is fine for me, before comedy I owned a bar in the roughest part of Glasgow, so heaps of men don’t bother me. Men pointing guns in my face was scary, men holding a knife at my throat was frightening but just men waiting for comedy wasn’t bothersome at all.
As soon as I stepped onstage I noticed that all the men were varying ages and looked like a ‘works party’. Turns out they all worked for British Rail. One young guy screamed at the top of his lungs before I could speak
“I would fuck you, doll” he shouted and then sat and cheered in his seat, the older workmen slapped him on the back and some of them banged the table with their fists in delight. He then added “I would rape you”
The audience who weren’t with the railway men stared at me agog!
“You would fuck me? Rape me?” I spoke in a soft voice. “I sat with my dad today, who is recovering from a stroke, he held my hand and told me he doesn’t mind me leaving him to go to work as he loves that I make people laugh and that I am a comedian, he doesn’t know that when I come to work, men shout ‘I would fuck you’ my daughter gave me a hug leaving the house and said ‘mum have a good night’ she doesn’t know that when I walk onstage someone’s badly brought up son is going to sexually harass me, when young girls start work in the railways, they worry that some dirty horrible member of the public, some drunken man will grab at her and shout filthy words at her as she does her job, she doesn’t know that her workmate is the man who sexually harasses me in my job ....does she?”
The whole room went quiet. “Who is the boss who booked the night?” I asked politely. They all pointed to an older man sitting at the corner. “So, you are the leader of these guys? You have a wife? A daughter? Imagine she went to work and faced him, the guy you have nurtured at work and his first words were sexual?”
At this point the whole room was staring at the railway mob, which was now incredibly uncomfortable, the guy shut up and then after a few minutes they started shouting and getting unruly again. I managed to keep their heckles at bay by being smart mouthed and funny, but underneath I kept thinking, what other job is it ok to assume you can sexually harass me? The crowd outside the railway party were responding to everything I said and laughed at them, the acts did a sterling job of maintaining the attention as these dobbers annoyed everyone.
It just made me think why is it in 2010 when a woman walks onstage SOME men think its ok to shout filthy sexual references at her? I know that as a female comic I say sexual stuff to an audience and I know the heckler was shouting stuff he would never do, but not once did they shout filthy stuff at the men. Obviously they wouldn’t shout “I would rape you” to a male comic but they didn’t make any sexual references to them like “Mate, women wouldn’t fuck you” as the male comic spoke about sex, they just interrupted the male comics...or tried to finish their punch lines.
Maybe I am getting sensitive in my old age? Maybe I just don’t expect blokes to still be the way they were in the late 70s, either way it ended up a cracking night and after the show, the shouty men tried to get me to them hug them and chat “No, don’t touch me, I am going out to see if my husband is ready to pick me up, he will be interested to hear about the baldy man who wants to ‘rape’ his wife, now fuck off” I said calmly as I walked out of the room. The nice thing is, other men and the few women who were near the back said “You were awesome and so funny when you brought that sexist bastard down, good on you Janey”....see not all people are cunts!
