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In 2020, a young Chinese female comedian named Yang Li stayed firmly in the spotlight for her gender jokes.
Her critique performed at a recent New Year’s Eve gala even led to some viewers filing a complaint with the Chinese broadcasting authorities, saying her jokes were full of gender discrimination and that she abused the male audience and incited confrontations between different sexes.
It all started with a Chinese stand-up comedy show “Rock & Toast” in 2019. That year, Yang Li made her first debut on the stage, cracking jokes about gender issues.
At first, she was quite measured in her satire. She addressed the issue of single Chinese women being pressured to get married at an early age.
“I was asked by my little brother, ‘Sis, why haven’t you found a boyfriend after all these years?’ I looked at him and asked, ‘Why haven’t you found a way to get into Tsinghua University? Is it because you don’t like it?” (Tsinghua is the top university in China)
She challenged the stereotype about gender roles at home. “Everything that needs to be done in my parents’ home is my mother’s business. My father has only one thing on his hand—being himself.”
She touched on some women’s fear of commitment. “When the boyfriend becomes sneaky, the woman gets worried. Is he going to propose? Later when she finds out he was having an affair, she feels such a sense of relief.”
As Yang grows more comfortable into her role as a female comic, she began to sharpen her tongue. Once she complained about the superhero powers of the Black Widow.
“Why is she genetically modified only to be resistant to aging? How is she supposed to save the world with this? By outliving all the bad guys? Why is the ideal woman always young, beautiful and slim?”
In a later show she made a comment that became the talk of the whole country. “There is always a question bewildering me. Why are some guys so unremarkable and yet so confident? The guys on this stage come in different shapes and looks. But none of them ever thought about doing something about their looks before going on TV.”
Some male members of the audience took such an offense that they launched a verbal attack on Yang on social media. “We don’t need to be remarkable to be confident in front of you. Yes we may not be remarkably handsome. But you, when you are without your makeup, are ugly in its real sense.”
It’s not only the male’s confidence in their attractiveness that she took an issue with. “Whenever a women shares her troubles with a man, the man would always think, ‘She can’t be just seeking my sympathy. She must be hoping to learn something from me.’ Then comes all the unsolicited advice.”
On women’s body image issues, she quipped, “I find the figures of supermodels very cool. Yes, their breasts are generally small. It’s like, ‘Guys, I know what you like to see in my body. I just don’t want to give you that.’”
The remarks that led to her being reported to the authorities were in fact not deliberate jokes.
Standing on the stage, she reviewed how she had been attacked for challenging the male superiority. “Guys, I made these jokes not to antagonise you, but to please you. It turns out you are such a hard lot to please. If I say you are trash, you will not like it. If I say you are a good guy, you must think I’m insulting you. I say your are an unremarkable guy, that makes you unhappy as well. So what do I do?”
In China as well as many other parts of the world, women are generally considered not funny.
The ability to crack jokes seems to be biologically exclusive to men. Many female comics who achieved some success had to employ self-deprecating strategies, either by being overweight or funny-looking, or by playing into the stereotypes about women being frivolous and emotional. It was only in recent years that we began to see a new brand of female comedians who have the courage to break the traditional patriarchy.
In China, to my knowledge, this only happened in the last two years. Yang’s jokes validate the experience of myself and many other of my female friends.
The fact that her points, although well-known to women, came as striking and unacceptable to men, only shows how deplorable the lack of social consciousness is in our society.
It is said that stand-up comedy is an art of offense. I do hope her somewhat “offensive” jokes can really provoke the audiences to revaluate their learned expectations of patriarchal culture and that more confident, funny women can stand on the stage to critique oppressive ideologies in meaningful ways.
Online Reporter