My Experience Before and After MeToo as a Female Comedian
By: Stephanie Weber
Tags: Metoo, Personal Essay, Rape, Comedy

Trigger warning: sexual assault and harassment.

Louis CK’s return to comedy is upsetting. Not because he dared return — we all knew he would — but because it was so soon and he seemed rather blasé about it. He made no mention of what he did. He just told inane jokes as usual, as if nothing had ever happened, as if he wasn’t making his coworkers unsafe and silencing them for years. To see people I respect like Michael Ian Black tweet asking if he’s done his time was so hurtful. Did he know the victims’ names? Did he know about their careers? What about the time stolen from them out of fear of repercussion?

Many women who were sexually assaulted and raped by comedians quit or they struggled to continue with their career, being met constantly with this looming shadow of their power that could squish them at any time if they dared speak up. They switched careers, they bowed out of the game entirely. He gets to go on with just ten months away from the stage? It’s absurd.

But I get it.

A lot of readers know that I’m comic, but I started my comedy career in sketch and improv comedy before trying standup. I did sketch and improv from the ages of 19–24 and I had a lot of promise, but things got derailed for me. There was a rape. There was a man stalking me. Flirty and unwanted messages from a teacher. A controlling relationship that ended in me quitting almost everything I was in. At the end of all of that, I didn’t know what to do — especially because no one believed me. I was actually called crazy and people referred to me as a “heartbreaker” behind my back rather than someone who wanted to get the fuck away from the men who were trying to crush me. It was a pre-MeToo era and even though it was about 7 or 8 years ago, it feels like twenty.

Last December I was sick in bed when a comic I know wrote a satirical article about how improv sucks. It was a part of our local paper’s end-of-the-year segment of essays called “worst of Chicago”, celebrating the Chicago tradition of complaining. It was meant to be funny. There was one on the south side of Chicago that I found much more scathing.

I knew the writer, so I re-posted it. I tried going to sleep as I had a fever, but was kept awake by the angry responses I was getting. Within minutes, I had reactions and comments from former improv peers whom I had not spoken to or seen in 5+ years demanding to know why I would dare post such a thing. Why was I being so mean? Did I not respect them? How dare I? Maybe I was bitter because I didn’t make an improv team. Maybe I was just a bitter standup who couldn’t cut it as an improviser.

And then it started to get posted, the thing I could have anticipated: well, standups have rapists that they protect and we don’t do that.

I had to immediately take the post down and I privately messaged the people who wrote those things. Maybe they forgot that my entire experience in improv was colored by the fact that I was sexually abused and silenced. Perhaps everyone forgot that they themselves had called me crazy, pushed me out, and welcomed a man who raped me in. He was promoted while I floundered with PTSD and a lack of community support. Maybe I was a bitter standup, but it wasn’t for lack of success. It was because of this bullshit.

And maybe they all forgot how I dealt with it. I moved out. I was tired of this reputation I had. I had tried to speak out and protect other women and was shunned for it. I reported a man who stalked me at one of the theaters I had interned at. He sent me threatening e-mails about my lack of response to his affection and would show up during my box office shift and hound me until the theater got too busy and he had a show to perform. When I reported him, I was told there was nothing that could be done about that guy. Women reported him constantly and it was to no avail. This past spring, I saw my first show at that theater in years and there he was. Still working, still keeping his career.

As for me? I found any opportunity that would allow me to move to New York and I did it. While there I couldn’t afford improv classes which was what my community of friends was built upon in Chicago. Without the classes, I felt I couldn’t meet other comedians to work with. I was really lonely from a lack of community, so I started going to open mics.

Secretly, I had wanted to start standup comedy for a while because I felt that after all that sexual harassment and assault that I had dealt with, after all the rumors and nasty things I heard said about me for trying to speak out about those men, I wanted my own voice. I wanted to have my personality back. Standup allowed me to do that. It took several years, but I like who I am now, I like doing standup comedy, I like my comedy and writing career and I am grateful I have platforms to speak out and help others.

I changed my focus. I essentially had to rebuild my career and it was really difficult. None of the men who abused or harassed me had to do that. None of them. I’ve since seen a few of them on TV. They’re doing fine.

As I have gotten older, I have formed a softer stance on rehabilitation and change. I definitely believe in it and I have forgiveness in my heart for all of these men. But none of them has ever apologized. None of them.

This essay isn’t an indictment on improv or people in my past. I knew back in December that none of my former peers were thinking of my perspective when defending the thing they loved on my Facebook post, but it definitely reminded me of people defending the abusers they love. We’ve all done it. Hell, I’ve done it before. We all ignore the victim, ignore their point of view completely. The audience didn’t think of the women who would never set foot on the Comedy Cellar stage because their careers were derailed by Louis. Not at all. They were happy to see the comic they once loved. They gave him a standing ovation.