Comedy by definition can have multiple connotations – some referring to the textual comedy of literature & theatre, while others refer to the relatively modern art form of stand-up where people use the spotlight to create experiences of laughter – At our feminist leisure space, ExtraOdinari, our voices unfurled into spontaneous discussions that went from the serious business of comedy to the funny business of oppressive systems on 25th May 2025.
Given women’s relation to art – one where they are constantly used or evoked as muses – it is surprising to see them mostly unacknowledged in comedy. This is despite their representation in other forms of artistic cultural practices such as dance, music, singing, acting & modelling. So while women as citizens find the public sphere inaccessible, we find them in the spotlight relatively more often through the public consumption of artistic performances.
While thinking of women’s relation to the public sphere, we all dwelled on the needless pressure to perform virtue for the ‘public’s’ moral imagination – whether it’s smiling a certain way, walking in a certain fashion, acting feminine according to the societal notions of gender – the need to perform our gender is never ending. Many participants shared their exasperation of working in environments where they are expected to smile or laugh even when they dont want to; in the face of such absurd demands, their approach has been to proudly hold their glares & resist performing gender roles expected of them.
Some of us threaded back this pressure of gender performance to the comedic arena & wanted to address the misogyny in humour in mainstream spaces, including standup. Whether it’s insanely cliche husband-wife WhatsApp forward jokes on social media, the one family uncle making fun of women’s habits or school kids passing comments on women’s bodies – what people tend to find funny is often constructed by cultural contexts.
And in these cultural contexts, women are always presented as overtly emotional, shallow, materialistic, nagging & lacking intelligence, etc. We also rooted all of this to the moral casteist landscapes that shape such comedy – where colorism & racism play a distinctive role in defining beauty; thereby offering casteist constructs of what kinds of bodies are considered worthy of ridicule within the Indian society.
When we reflected on such offensive humour collectively at our feminist leisure space, multiple conversations opened up; it was an unburdening of painful memories, casual dismissals & the daily oppression we have all learnt to live with. Some women reminded us of how much more regimented & surveilled women’s lives are in rural contexts as opposed to the liberty urban women might experience. Despite this, women seem to practice empathy & compassion in their lives & work with far more curiosity than their male counterparts.
Young girls from the city felt the border between control & liberty to be far more blurred than we can think. Living in cities has not empowered us to live more freely & perhaps has only invisibilised the many ways in which we are oppressed – from what women wear, to what makeup we use, to the many ways we are undermined in our work environment & made fun of for our physical appearances – cityscapes offer their own brand of offensive humour & everyday oppression.
Before we could get to laughter, we ended up moving through the maze of pent-up emotions we have been holding around our bodies, around the larger socio-political body of silence & shame in our culture & what would freedom mean along these terms.
As we immersed ourselves in these rich conversations, I kept dwelling on what it means to hold curiosity. What feminist practices build critical thinking?
And once again, I felt the answer lies with humour as much as asking questions directly.
Here, one may interject & say that humour, just like art, is subjective & comedy by its very nature always toes the line between offence, subversion & dissent. But that is looking at half the picture. Like art, in humour we are entering an intersubjective ground – a concept that is created in a shared sense with multiple layers of cultural, historical, socio-political & evolutionary codes – and therefore while we cannot firmly say we can find a single idea that is universally funny to everyone on the planet, we can form educated opinions on what themes can form the crux of humour for people around us – there’s objective features to comedy like timing, punchlines, irony, sarcasm, exaggeration, mimicry etc & subjective responses to the styles that accompany them – there is a lot of humour that can be found in the suffering of human beings such as disability but who is making these jokes & with which kind of sensitivity & wit in place is important. We are not suggesting defanging humour of its power to make fun of the absurd & unjust. We are thinking if it’s possible to use the power of laughter to dismantle dangerous power structures that deserve to be erased & remade.
We are hoping to explore how humour brings alive a sense of justice in us all – towards what’s unfair, towards what’s outrageous, towards what deserves to change for us all.
Within this reflection, I am reminded of a childhood memory which was probably one of the first instances when, I came alive to the possibilities of using humour as a tool of subversion. Bullied by my brother for my weight, I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine!
Knowing my body is the butt of all his jokes, I began deflecting his taunts with my own funny commentary on his actions – the cringe way he talked to girls, the predictable guitar-boy aesthetic he used to impress large crowds & how secretly he enjoyed watching romantic teenage drama like Twilight but pretended otherwise in front of everyone else.
Needless to say, my jokes were relentless & unsparing but never cruel. They also seemed to be more entertaining for whoever was listening on! For the first time, I felt people pay attention to what I was going to say. They waited with bated breath to laugh. They wanted to be around me talking about funny family stories. They didn’t seem to care about the cruel jokes around my body as much as the stream of consciousness humour I was doing.
That is the first time I realised humour is also how I reclaim my own space. It brings a certain lightness to my heart & builds an inner resilience for me in times of suffering.
Since then, I understand humour as the expression of the human spirit that transcends its circumstances. In an increasingly authoritarian society with widespread suffering, it’s not just a way to resist & dissent; it’s a tool to reclaim subjectivity & elevate the heaviness of daily life. For many people, humour is how they reject social norms, reclaim their space & imagine alternate possibilities of life – to be funny is a powerful way to dismantle power structures as much as it can be a way to reinforce hierarchies.
Which is why we should see comedy as a tool within the feminist practice to dismantle social hierarchies. When we use our wit to highlight the projection of patriarchal attitudes on women, we create spaces of dialogue for more women to speak up & claim their space. This, of course, means more than just telling jokes – though that is the start!
Every step of comedic storytelling needs to come into dialogue with intersectional feminist principles. When we open up about our stories, no matter how unsure we are of ourselves, the practice of speaking up opens us up to new possibilities of what we can do & the kind of storytellers we can be.
A question worth dwelling on – When we consider the role of humour in societies, how can we use humour to redraw power structures? Who/What deserves to be the critical sites of comedy?
Humour is also how we diffuse suffering & offer hope; I think its brilliance comes alive when we realise it’s one of the most powerful forms of storytelling available to us, & its appeal is almost universal when it comes from a place of rage, criticism, despair, sorrow & authenticity.
When women talk about their own lived experiences – with their bodies, their relations, the absurdity of expectations placed on them, the ableism pervading our current world, the bigotry of people threatened by women & queer people’s liberation, etc – there is a lot of laughter to be found!
