Lea DeLaria’s stand up comedy performance was last night in colton chapel. To start off the performance, she asked every woman to first stand up and scream “I am a lesbian!” And then proceeded to ask every man in the chapel to stand up and scream “I am a lesbian!” All formality in the presentation was completely shattered after this happened. Let’s just say I saw about 15 snap chat stories added with various college students screaming “I am a lesbian!!!!!!!!!!!”
Lea explained that she wanted everyone walking on campus to think, “What the hell are those queers all doing in the chapel?” DeLaria is a comic that has embraced her sexuality for many years. She has been an openly gay comic for over 3 decades and was the first openly gay comic to perform on live television. She wanted us all to know that the tone of her presentation, and her general motto in life would be: “NO FUCKS GIVEN.”
Although DeLaria went off on many hilarious tangents, there were also some serious moments in the talk as well. She explained how this year, the year of 2014, she was at Loeman’s and was hit with a gay slur from a German woman. Directly after the woman delivered her jab, the majority of the dressing room proceeded to completely verbally attack her – defending DeLaria. DeLaria claims the woman was essentially chased out of the store, the store’s occupants in a manic rage.
DeLaria juxtaposed this story with something she experienced in the 80’s. Upon bumping into DeLaria on the street, a man said, “Move, you dyke bitch.” She then saw him later on the subway, and he quote “began to beat the shit out of her.” The 25 other people on the subway watched and did absolutely nothing to stop the assault. She commented on how she cannot believe that in the course of 3 decades, she moved from bystanders watching her being nearly beaten to death at a subway… to a group of people in Loeman’s chasing a homophobic woman out of a store for a comment DeLaria claims she was barely even offended by in the first place.
As I continued to listen to DeLaria’s stand-up, however, I began to wonder if maybe her sexual crudeness/openness is easier with the “butch label” she talked about. It was clear from the presentation that DeLaria identified with males equally as much as she identified with females – saying things such as “My dick is hard right now and it’s sitting at home in a box.” I immediately thought of Chelsea Handler, one of my favorite female comedians who is notorious for her sexual blatancy, and is a heterosexual woman. I was wondering if anyone had a comment on whether or not they think this style of comedy is easier or more difficult for someone like Big Boo? Or someone like Chelsea? Does it not matter? Both of them seem to be pretty successful…?