Is it OK for female comedians to joke about periods?

At the beginning of her memoir Look Back in Hunger Jo Brand describes the time when she was doing a gig at Loughborough University and was subject to a wave of sexist heckling, culminating in “the words "ugly whore", "kill" and "cunt" ” shouted by a single male voice “in a surreal swirl of noise”.

Deciding that her usual lines will have no effect, she chooses to respond with a trusty put-down kept in reserve for just this sort of situation, knowing full well that if it doesn’t work, it’s curtains.

 “If you don’t shut your mouth,” she says, “I’ll sit on your face.” As come-backs go, she herself admits it hardly matches the waspish wit of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table (then again, to be fair to her, neither did the original heckle).

But that’s not the half of it. Having caused a few gasps with the prelude, she moves in for the kill.

 “No, on second thoughts I won’t sit on your face because I haven’t got my period at the moment. Doesn’t seem worth it.”

Unfortunately, this wins her only a temporary break in abuse. The crowd starts up again, prompting her to abandon her set and exit the stage prematurely with “a cheery ‘Bollocks to the lot of you!’” (the use of the word “bollocks”, I like to think, endowing the exchange with useful biological balance).

As put-downs go, many may be shocked just by her mention of periods (I happen to think it’s virtuosic, but then I suppose I would). The fact that she uses them to silence a heckler hints that she too is aware of their shock value. That she says she’ll sit on the heckler’s face, however, compounds the issue. I once had an online debate with someone who was adamant that Jo Brand’s period put-down constituted a threat of sexual violence. But such an interpretation contains presumption, and a lot depends on context. I’d have thought it obvious that sitting on someone’s face need not cause suffocation; there’s a word for it – cunnilingus – and many find it an appealing prospect (even more appealing, perhaps, if Kylie Minogue threatened to do it. I couldn’t help thinking that my fellow debater’s fears of suffocation were informed more by Jo Brand’s appearance than what it was she actually said).

Indeed, if we’re going down that road, neither does sitting on someone’s face while on one’s period – menstrual cunnilingus, if you like – send all men running for the hills in disgust. Germaine Greer was right to say all women should taste their own menstrual blood, but I’ll bet a lot more men know the taste of period than women.

But things didn’t end there. “What if,” my (male) cyber sparring partner continued, “we turned it round? What if a male standup had threatened to put his cock in a woman’s mouth? Doesn’t quite work, does it?”

Ah, this old chestnut. Again, the issue is far more complicated and nuanced than at first appears, and a similar argument applies. Sometimes it's OK for a man to put his cock in a woman's – or a man's – mouth. And as with all put-downs, it depends on what was said beforehand. While some men would indeed rather die than perform cunnilingus, in my opinion what Jo Brand said to her heckler was mild in comparison to being threatened with murder (the fact that she withdrew her threat, too, was lost in the debate). I also find it odd that there are those more comfortable with words like “whore” than “period”. In fact there are a tonne of offensive words and concepts that people appear to object to less than “period”.

Jo Brand illustrates this herself in her book Can’t Stand Up for Sitting Down, in which she discusses a joke of hers that appears to have shocked most people, about the Jennifer Lynch film Boxing Helena. As she explains to her audience, in it a surgeon chops off a woman’s arms and legs and keeps her captive in a box, a premise which the audience receives with no apparent objections. She then goes on to speculate how a woman in such a situation would cope with personal hygiene, and in particular having periods. She asks the audience to imagine what it would be like to be trapped in a cardboard box with no arms and no legs and having a period, how it would get all soggy and repulsive. At which point the audience, as if on cue, would register their abhorrence with audible disgust. “Oh, I see,” says Jo Brand. “You were quite happy with the idea of a woman having her arms and legs chopped off and being put in a box, but you seem to be completely revolted by the idea of her having a period. What’s the matter with you?”

Of course, it’s insulting to men – to anyone – to suggest that they cannot cope with the idea of periods. Many don’t find them shocking at all, while others claim to be bored with them: putting up with a period every month is bad enough without having to endure other people’s. Yet the reactions speak for themselves. Evidence suggests all too strongly that periods retain a high gross factor among audiences. It’s only natural, perhaps, for female comedians to exploit this for comic effect, particularly given how periods can effect some women so much. It’s because we may relate to it that we find it funny.

But is that fair enough? In debates about whether or not female comedians are ever actually funny, periods are always cited, along with childbirth, weight and cakes, as lazy and cheap 'women friendly' material.

As opposed to men’s obsession with scatology, farting, knobs and sex. Billy Connolly, for example, talking about the difference between a fart and a shit, colostomy bags or his prostate examination (essentially an excuse to joke about men putting their fingers up each other's arses, a variation on the old 'pull my finger' joke). Or Ben Elton making jokes about pubic hair getting stuck in the margarine, or on the neck of a tomato ketchup bottle.

All comedians joke about the familiar, be it Michael McIntyre about hoovering or wrapping Christmas presents, Ed Byrne regaling us with tales about his cat, Dylan Moran describing the bed-time routines of his small children, or any old-school comedian joking about his wife. It’s not just Victoria Wood who does observational comedy; male comedians past and present mine the domestic world just as much. Why? Because it happens to them. If men had periods they would joke about those, too.

The idea that male comedians joke about subjects that have nothing to do with their immediate personal lives, that they’re all looking outwards, sounding off punningly about politics, philosophy or – I don’t know – critical theory, or constructing elaborate character-based monologues, is way off the mark. If female comics are criticised for making it all about her, then what is stand-up comedy if it isn’t a plea for attention?  It’s possibly the only artform where the artist gets to be the exclusive focus of immediate feedback from an audience. If part of the objection is to the apparent exclusivity of the menstrual experience, I would argue that any man living with a woman is affected almost as much by periods as she is.

Who doesn't love a good period joke? I know I do. The assumption is that farting, knobs and sex are inherently funny – and they are – and periods are not. But periods can be bloody funny if used well (as can virtually any subject). It can be funny when men joke about them too. When Jo Brand did a charity gig in Torquay about five years ago her support act Andy Robinson did an entire routine on if men had periods – and it was hilarious. If a female comic did a routine on if women had cocks, that could be funny too.

Throughout her career Jo Brand has been criticised for her jokes about men. Only recently Giles Coren got in a huff in The Daily Mail about some comments she’d made (although the fact that he published his article in that grotty misogynistic rag robbed his argument of any credibility – I’d rather look at a used sanitary towel). I wouldn’t presume, but it appears that Jo Brand is responding to millennia of female oppression, and is using her position to undermine the most powerful group in western society – the white male.

Men have had millennia of phallic symbols, and continue to do so. They are never told what they can and can't joke about. But if you say periods are no go, then so are knob gags. Or shit gags. It’s only fair.  I mean, come on (see what I did there?): periods are bad enough without being told I can't find the humour in them. It's no one's place to say what women can or cannot joke about. If  you do, that's a crime far more hateful than than a period.