- I just have a bit
about watching "Basketball Wives" and loving it.
And my black guy friend says,
"Doesn't that make,
"doesn't that show make black women look terrible?"
And I'm like,
"Nah, it makes those black women look terrible.
I look fantastic, I'm on the couch drinking my drink.
I ain't throw it at anybody.
My homie was like,
"Okay, okay, all right.
"It makes black women look terrible, you cool with it.
"But doesn't it bother you these women are TV
"because they used their bodies to get money from athletes?
"Doesn't that bother you?"
Why would that bother me? (audience laughing)
Men get so mad at women for getting by on their looks
like it's not men letting women get by on their looks.
It's not me doing it.
I've never given a pretty bitch anything.
Not homework help, not a pencil case, not a cake recipe.
Evelyn's on TV 'cause you like titties.
It has nothing to do with me. (audience laughing)
So many rappers, athletes, all this,
they get so mad at gold diggers.
They're so punitive on black women who want to come up.
But they use their money to get women,
it's such a bogus thing.
It's the patriarchy you set up that is making you unhappy.
And I think it's really shitty that
we're projecting all these things
of the responsibility of black presentation to people.
Women who are on TV, on a reality show,
have to be reflective of positive black women?
And what's to say
that their version of blackness isn't good?
And the idea that something shouldn't be on TV
'cause it makes the rest of us look bad
is punishing us for white people's shitty understandings
or views of us.
So now we have to perform blackness
in a way that's responsible
so white people could respect us?
They not gonna respect us anyway.
Put more kinds of black people on TV
so that we don't sort of have
any monolithic poor or good stereotypes,
that you represent the variances.
(chill hip hop beat)
- Well, the politics of comedy as a black woman,
where can I start?
It's a hard, long slug.
- 'Cause people always think I'm nice and shit
'cause I wear bright colors and I have dimples
but like (audience laughing)
I'm a raging bitch on the inside.
'Cause I've been nice for 30 years and I'm tired.
I used to be a skinny white bitch from Maryland.
I just, I'm so tired. (audience laughing)
For me as a black woman,
I want to hear the black female perspective too.
I think we have a lot of examples of black men
from Dave Chappelle to Chris Rock who have their opinions
and people sort of respect their opinion
as this is the black experience.
And there's really no black women
who are really able to have that kind of platform.
I mean, I think it's changing a little bit
and hopefully I'll be one of the people
that can help change that.
- Oh, they don't think women is funny.
Then a lot of times
women get caught up with sleeping with people.
Nobody wanted me.
I wanted to fight all the time and I demanded respect.
I think that's why I put Ms. in the front of my name.
Ms. Pat is my stage name.
They say we're not funny,
all women talk about the same thing.
That's not true.
You don't have any white boys out here do cat jokes?
I hate cat jokes.
- As a woman in this business,
it's hard enough to get bookings
in the headlining spots anyway.
And as a black woman that counts against you even more.
It's the same in Hollywood.
It's the same in every industry though, that's the thing.
It's not just comedy.
I used to be an engineer.
I worked as an engineer
and I came up against the same problems
being a female engineer in a male-dominated industry,
and a black female engineer at that.
- When it comes to being a black woman in comedy,
I have to compete with black men to get their respect.
They push their limits, they talk a lot of shit,
they want to see if you can handle it.
The worst thing you can do being a woman in comedy
is to have a mental breakdown or cry.
If you get upset or take anything personally,
they're like, "Oh, you can't handle this.
"Why are you doing this?"
So it is a lot of verbal abuse,
but you just have to know how to dish it back.
And most of the time when it comes,
it can come from a jealous place
or it can come from a place of being like,
I want to see what you're made of, I want to test you.
- All fucking day and night you can text, text, text.
You know why, ladies?
'Cause men want to communicate with you
but they don't want to fucking talk to you.
(audience laughing)
If a man can get you out your house, across town,
and his bed and never hear your fucking voice,
that is a fucking Christmas present every day
for a fucking man. (audience applauding)
See, look at these motherfuckers.
- Men don't like when women talk,
so trying to navigate a world where men want you to shut up
and girls learn that girls should shut up,
so you've got to find a way to make people
who don't like the tone of your voice
or your pitch to listen.
If you talk about girl shit, it's not funny.
Men talk about their dicks all the time.
But if you talk about your pussy or your period or dating,
or feeling insecure about your body, now it's a girly bit,
and when insecurity is a universal experience
- Yes, that's a lot of moving.
I'm on my period, so I can't be shaking it up and down.
I got a fat pad.
They got fat pads now for fat bitches,
this is what happens.
They want it to be a war between skinny bitches
and fat bitches over pads.
The fat pad is so different than the skinny pad
'cause the skinny pad for the skinny bitches has integrity.
(audience laughing)
It's in a little purple box
and it's got "always" written in calligraphy.
(audience laughing)
In the commercial, the bitch is like, "Always."
And you like "What, bitch? You got what?"
"Oh, shh. I'm bleeding." (audience laughing)
And then the fat pad is called Forever and-
(audience laughing)
It's in a big black box with chains.
(audience laughing)
And it's three dudes in the commercial beatboxing.
♪ P-P-Pads ♪ (audience laughing)
And the fat bitch comes out through the smoke.
"I'm on my period. (grunts)
"I'm bleeding to death." (audience laughing)
- And then you add blackness on top of it.
You have people,
black people even have told me this,
don't talk about race too much.
You want to alienate the audience?
And it's like,
well, that's I guess 95% of my experience, race.
So you're asking me to not be an authentic human.
So as to please,
so you're basically asking me to do white dude comedy
and I'm not a white dude.
So it's not gonna work.
It took a while,
but I got to the point where I'm gonna talk about race
because I feel like it.
I was talking to this white guy,
and there's this thing that happens with white guys
where they don't know black women are people.
So they say the weirdest things to you.
This dude, he was like,
"Hey, I'm hot, you're hot.
"Let's make beautiful interracial babies together."
I know.
I looked at him and I was like, "Nah."
Not 'cause I'm against interracial dating.
Please, have a marble swirl cake party,
that's good for you.
But he said beautiful interracial babies,
and I'm shallow and I'm petty.
So why would I purposely get with you
to make a person hotter than me?
Why would I do that?
That's ridiculous.
'Cause home's supposed to be a sanctuary.
So how is mommy supposed to love herself
when there's some Lisa Bonet-Halle Berry looking ass kid
sitting on my couch
watching SpongeBob with her pretty green eyes?
No! (audience laughing)
The fuck out of here.
- I'm sure a lot of female comics
have crazy stories of comics hitting on them.
I remember one time I was on the road,
I bombed, I bombed really badly that night.
And the headliner, he called me,
he was just like, "How are you doing?"
I'm was just like "I'm feeling down."
And he was just like,
"Oh, why don't you come over to my room?"
Now, in hindsight, I'm listening to that, I'm just like
"Well, this sounds like some bullshit or setup,"
but I had just bombed.
I bombed for like 20 minutes straight, I'm feeling down,
this guy seemed nice enough and he's just like,
"Oh, come through."
I didn't want to sit there by myself,
So I was like, "All right."
So I came in and dude answered the door naked.
I mean, so it was like, shit like that happens.
You just like "What the fuck is going on here?"
So at that point, I'm just like,
"Well, I guess I'm gonna have to be sad by myself
"in my room,"
'cause he's clearly let me know that he's offered me dick.
I don't think he just accidentally got out of the shower,
didn't have a chance to put clothes on.
- A lot of times you hear black male comics
talk about black women,
'cause that's the first thing that they can touch.
And it's, sometimes it's disparaging.
It's always the,
"And you know my girlfriend, and she,"
and it's like not every,
all you motherfuckers is dating the same hood ass bitch?
And then half the time you see them and it's like,
you're giving this experience of a black woman
but you're not even with a black woman.
So that can be frustrating.
Comedy is important, people take that shit seriously.
And if that's the way you're presenting black women,
that's why we have a lot of the problems we have.
And I can say that for black women as well,
how they represent black men.
It's not every time you talk about black people
we broke, we poor, we ignorant,
we don't know what's going on.
You can go further than that for a joke.
- I tweeted a joke.
The Mayweather/McGregor fight was happening,
and the joke was
being a black woman is hating a shitty black dude
but still having to root for him
because the white dudes who hate him are a little too
"heritage, not hate".
I had all of these people calling me a racist,
sending me pictures of Trump,
sending me pictures of Mayweather and Trump,
pictures of Trump in your phone feel like terrorism.
All I wanted to do
was talk about the complicated identity
of being a black woman loyal to black men who also harm you.
and when that loyalty sort of supersedes
any frustrations you might have with a black man,
because the up front from whiteness is great.
And that's all I wanted to explore,
the complications of black female identity.
When it comes to the comedy world,
when they view black woman,
it seems it's like two main options.
And those two options are (indistinct) hipster,
black girl who's funky and eclectic
and probably dates a white guy
and be like "My white boo is amazing."
That's acceptable because it's not threatening
and it's comforting
because it's something that they can relate to.
And the other side of it
is super heavy set sassy black woman who goes up on stage
and eats a chicken wing in front of everybody,
like she's amazing!
So I'm neither one of those.
Natalie Portman should not be the next female Thor.
She's 5'3", 118 pounds. (audience laughing)
I poop Natalie Portman out on a green smoothie day.
(audience applauding)
You know how frustrating it is?
I'm a strong black woman but I can't be a hero?
Like come on, in a real-world scenario,
if any of you were trapped by a villain and they was like
"You got two people that can come save you.
"Natalie Peewee Portman," (audience laughing)
"or Chloe Thunder Thighs Hilliard,"
you be like- (audience cheering)
- Well, I can only speak for myself.
I think that I'm intelligent enough,
I do have a bachelor's art degree in English.
People don't always know that,
but I'm quick to let them know
in a different type of setting.
I think that
I can stand toe-to-toe with any white woman
doing sexually explicit comedy.
You can take cuss words
and put them in a black woman's mouth
and they would somehow sound more vulgar
than they are when they come out of white woman's mouth.
That's just because of the power of our blackness,
the power of our strength.
But you know that you can get catfished with a dick, ladies?
'Cause how come dick come up in your phone
is a beautiful, hard, veiny cock?
How come, everybody just texting,
everybody's texting dicks got a beautiful dick.
They dick is just beautiful.
Everybody, really? No. (audience laughing)
No, it's not like that.
Then, I'm not saying that I fuck motherfuckers off Facebook,
but what had happened was this one time-
(audience laughing)
When Facebook first came out,
I met this little shawty, you know what I'm saying,
and we met at a mutual spot.
And motherfucker got naked and shit
and we got in the bed and I was looking at his dick,
and I was looking at the phone, I was like,
"Hey..." (audience laughing)
"Where's the dick in this phone?"
(audience laughing)
"No, where's the mole? There's a mole right there."
- When men get up on stage,
the assumption is that they're gonna be funny
until they prove that they're not.
When a woman gets up on stage,
there's an assumption that she's not gonna be funny
until she proves she is.
And that's the main difference.
And the politics that I'm talking about here is,
so you got that, you got to prove that you're funny,
but you've also got to be
reasonably attractive, unfortunately.
A lot of women comics are,
they're worried about what they look like
or whether men are gonna be attracted to them
even when they're doing their comedy.
As me, as a woman who's gay, I don't give a fuck.
I get up on stage and I'm like, "I'm just gonna be funny.
"I don't care whether you want to fuck me or not.
"I don't give a shit."
If I need to make myself ugly for a joke,
I will 'cause I don't care.
- The thing I think about being a woman, and a black woman,
you're told here's a beauty standard
you need to meet, right.
And then when you meet it because society tells you to,
they're like, "Oh, okay, so you want to be white now?
"Oh, so you want to be this, you want to be that?
"I want a girl that looks naturally beautiful.
"I want a girl with stretch marks."
"Okay, well this girl has stretch marks and she's-"
"Oh no, she's ugly."
It's like, so what do we do?
If you're ugly, you're losing.
If you are pretty, you're also trying too hard.
Y'all told us this straight hair is pretty,
but then if you have straight hair,
oh, you're trying to be a white girl?
Oh, you got blue contacts?
Who told you blue eyes were pretty?
You're trying to be white.
- And as a woman, it's even worse for us.
At least ugly guys can still get on.
Ugly dudes can do comedy
and it's so real, it's so gritty, it's so,
how many ugly women,
or women who are not considered conventionally attractive,
are blowing up right now?
Exactly.
Politics as a female comedian. (chuckles)
This is what we're up against.
And a black woman at that, Jesus.
- Oh yeah, February and March, man, I'm super tired.
I'm super tired.
February and March are the best months
for a black lady comedian,
'cause that's Black History Month
and then follow right up by Women's History Month.
This is when we stack our bread, right,
before we go back to being invisible.
(audience laughing)
Not a joke. All right. (audience laughing)
- Well, I mean, you look at a comedy calendar,
it's mostly filled with men.
It's 52 weeks in a year
and you might have six women out of the whole year
that come through that comedy club.
As a woman, I have to ask myself
"Why, I know more than funny six fucking females."
So to me, that's just unfair.
Why are you booking all of these guys and only six women?
I'm a black woman and I play mainstream clubs.
I literally only see me.
If Lonnie Love is not on the roll or Monique or Sommore,
then that's it.
I'm like, right now, I'm like they token black woman.
So it's not right that you give 40 some weeks to men
and only eight, maybe eight weeks to women.
- We're always a token.
Whenever you look at a comedy show,
there's always, maybe one woman, maybe two.
They have a female host,
then they'll have five comics on the show
and maybe one other woman will be on the show.
Very rarely will you go to a comedy show anywhere
unless it's a specialty show
or produced by a woman who's making a point,
will there be four women and one man on the lineup.
Unheard of.
They're not gonna book two black women on the same show.
They'll book a white woman and a black woman, but not two.
- And then once you start accomplishing things,
you've got the people who say,
oh, you're only here 'cause you're a woman,
you're only here 'cause you're black,
you're only here because you're a black woman.
Because, I don't know, any time a black person has anything
we clearly couldn't have earned it.
We couldn't have gotten it on merit.
It had to be affirmative action.
But then the lie of white supremacy
doesn't follow the logical end, right.
If somebody is successful and black,
they'll say "Why don't you be like him?
"You can do it. He did it, you can do it."
And then you try to do it,
and then when you get something,
they diminish your accomplishments
by saying it's an affirmative action or tokenism,
and which is it?
So that's a major frustration I've had.
Trying to remember that everything you have you deserve.
- I think Kwanzaa was invented for black people
because there was no way black parents
wanted to let a white guy in a red suit
take the credit for all their hard work.
My mom's a African woman, there was no fucking chance.
She was not having a white guy taking the credit.
All our presents had her name on it.
"I bought it, I bought it, I bought it,
"I bought it, I bought it." (audience laughing)
I've been out here hustling for years.
And you see people and you just go,
it's hard not to look at people and go
"Have a (indistinct)."
You just got to keep looking forward
and just keep, stay positive in this industry
and make your own way.
And that's always the thing that I've done.
I've gone "You know what,
"I'm not waiting for you guys to give me anything.
"I make my own stuff."
I've had three standup specials.
One on Showtime, one on (indistinct), another one on Sirius.
I made them all myself.
I was like, "Okay.
"Netflix, Comedy Central,
"no, nobody's gonna give me a special?
"All right, whatever.
"I'm gonna invest in my own comedy."
So I got my money, I rented a theater,
I sold that theater out,
I rented my film crew and I shot my own damn specials.
And then I sold them to Showtime and (indistinct)
at a vast profit.
So, as a comedian,
as a black comedian especially in this business,
and a woman comedian, you have to make your own way.
- Especially when it comes to
people of color in white spaces,
they're like, "Just be happy you're here."
Just sit in the corner, take this free drink,
and fucking chill.
And I'm like, "Nah, I'm not doing that."
'Cause you're not respecting me.
Now you're just using me as an opportunity to say,
"See, we have diversity."
And it's like, nah, I've been there.
I've been the diversity chair for a newspaper organization.
I know what the fuck is up, I know the quota, okay.
I've been there, I've done that.
I'm not playing that game.
And so I think people don't realize
that when they meet me that I had a whole life before this.
So I'm not going for the okie-doke.
- Black comedy in America.
I mean, it is important,
but it's it's only important if it's being done correctly.
It's only important if you're telling the real deal.
And I'm not even saying I'm doing it right.
I'm just saying I'm trying to do it right.
But you know, some of this material has to stop.
This whole, my boyfriend's white,
I'm dating this white girl.
white people have some way made my life better.
Like they the Guardians of the Galaxy and shit.
I didn't know this until I met her.
And I'm like the opposite.
I'm like, I had dinner with a friend of mine in Connecticut
and I met her mother for the first time.
And at the end of it, she says,
"Oh my God, you speak so well.
"You're so well behaved."
I was like, "Bitch,"
and I said to here "What do you mean well behaved?
"What do you think, I'm a monkey out of the damn zoo?
"What was I supposed to be doing?"
This is how people are legit talking.
I think a lot of times we get insecure about being black.
You already got the world
treating you like a second class citizen,
and then you step into that role.
So a lot of times people go,
well, who's this black bitch with all this confidence
and why she think so highly of herself?
Why is she not looking down?
'Cause I wasn't raised to look down.
- The first obligation is to be honest and true to yourself.
And then the next is to do no harm.
It's really important to me
that I am not a black person who performs for white people
things that harm other black people.
I watched a set a couple of years ago.
It was a legendary comedian mocking a black woman
in front of white people.
I don't think it was his intention to do that,
but it really hurt my feelings.
I won't say that I felt sold out,
but I felt tossed aside in pursuit of white laughter,
and I never want to make someone with my comedy
feel how I felt.
So I don't know necessarily
that there's a role for the black comedian.
I just hope that my role
is to not hurt the feelings of a little black girl
or a little black boy in pursuit of white laughter.
That's very important to me.
(chill hip hop beat)