Women's march to denounce Donald Trump in Toronto, January 21 2017. Credit: Wikimedia/By booledozer. CC BY-SA 2.0.
There is no fiercer political weapon than laughter. The controversy around Michelle Wolf’s brilliant, uncomfortable, and brutally honest roast at the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner is the latest in a long line of examples that reveal the threatening power of feminist jokes. As the author Margaret Atwood puts it, “Men are afraid women will laugh at them; women are afraid men will kill them.” This is why the Patriarchy has always tried to stereotype feminists as humorless killjoys, the anti-pleasure police, or shrill sticks in the mud.
