iszi lawrence

Hello chaps

I’ve been woe-ing and grumbling about my gig getting cancelled in Bradford on Avon this Saturday. I like Bradford on Avon, it is a beautiful town, the most beautiful in all England, and I’ve been to quite a number.

A bugger to park in though.

Anyway, my mood was further aggravated by a charming and lovely post by a friend of a friend in the skeptic community. The post is here, it is well written and thoughtful and entirely brilliant. I would have written something like this myself maybe as recently as last year.

What is clear is Mallorie Nasrallah hasn’t experienced any of the massive amount of shit that some women, including myself, have gotten recently for defending a position against violence and the threat of violence. This vitriol is largely written by the male sex, threatens rape and murder and seems to be targeted solely at the female blogsphere. It is proper nasty and I’ve only had a taster (one death threat and six or seven emails telling me to shut up with reference to my genitals, my boobs with details of what holes they would stick it in first).

If you just go along to a skeptic or atheist event you might look around and think it is a bit weird that everyone is mostly male and nearly all white, but you forget about it because everyone is so charming and sweet so it doesn’t seem to matter. My experience has been the exact same as Mallorie Nasrallah, at the meetings there is no problem and the idea that I would be tiptoed round just because no one wants to offend me, it well… it offends me!

There have been incidents however, not wishing to bring up elevator-gate again, where women have been made to feel uncomfortable after they specifically have stated their wish not to be made to feel so. I have not experienced this at skeptic meetings in anyway at all, but just because it doesn’t fall into my direct experience personally doesn’t mean it should be shut down as a conversation point.

It also is a massive distraction from the real question. Christ on a cracker, it isn’t unreasonable to point at a crowd of skeptics and ask yourself why the majority of them are white men! You have to admit, something is wrong. This is a movement that embraces science and critical thinking over stereotyping and generalisation. What the hell is going on?

Labelling all men as misogynist is as untruthful as it is unhelpful. But it continues to surprise me that talking about this subject is seen as ‘trying to change men’ and trying to ‘fuck up the skeptic movement’, rather than a topic that the majority of us can agree on. The lack of women in the skeptic and atheist movements is a problem. Rebecca Watson is trying to tackle that and should be applauded, not hounded.

The rape threats female bloggers get might have nothing to do with the lack of women at meetings. But the people who have the nerve to suggest that we are the ones spoiling everything deeply unfair. No one leapt to the defence of the Christians threatening Hitchens and Dawkins. They were applauded as brave. We stand up for our concerns and get told to put up and shut up in as graphically violent a way as possible… in a way a man never would be, or could be.

And if that wasn’t girly enough for you then, I’ve decided I’m going to train douglas to attack the internet trolls.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever be able to do that daily blog Richard Herring magnificently manages to do every single day. I often can’t bear to relive my life through writing it down, it is quite enough going through it in the first place. Also, one is tempted either to be coyly modest or deludingly self aggrandising when it comes to performing/podcasting or general being.

There is a typical lack of gigs the first two weeks of January. Which makes this time of year hard for any comedian who still has to earn a buck performing over the festive periods. The christmas gigs haunt you, and make you nervous that perhaps all audiences will be like the drunken office dos and all comedy fans have died or shuttered themselves in and only listen to podcasts now.

For those who aren’t performers, there is a truth to Christmas crowds and office parties. No audience is worse than one who is there against their will, has no interest in comedy, likely never seen a comedy show and is too pissed to care about humiliating themselves. Christmas gigs are about crowd control, which means you can get a lot of laughs implying that different groups of people have had/would like to/are about to have sex with each other. But try a solid bit of material or just doing your set and you can feel the energy drop faster than pine needles on wrapping paper. If it aint about them, they don’t tend to give a dying duck at a fonut.

Needless to say my final five gigs of 2011 were like this. Either fun but all about crowd work, or they were a struggle. My ego was well and truly squashed before yuletide, especially from newbie crowds who had never seen live comedy or a woman comedian who wasn’t on a panel show. Then, unlike last year where I slipped and slid to gigs in the winter snow, regaining my confidence with the extra stage time, this year I didn’t have any gigs between xmas and new year.

So what did I do in my week off? I know I sound glum, well there is a reason. As you know, I am a skeptic but this really freaked me out. Have a look.

(SQUEEEEE! Pass it on)

x

It doesn’t mean nothing has been going on.

I’ve been gigging a lot. Including my first 10mins at the Comedy Store, supposedly a very significant step in a comedian’s career.

I’ve also been doing some more art:

and some more silly films:

and more podcasts which you can also find on itunes

I’m slowly dawning on the fact that I need to get more active when it comes to communicating with you chaps, I do reply to your emails and suggestions as well as those nice little ‘hey. saw you at a show’ emails which perk my day up no end. So, probably best to update my website properly and invest my time more wisely.

Then again, staring off into the distance and doodling is cool.

Thinks….

until next time xx