and loving it, and my black guy friend says,

"Doesn't that make, doesn't that show

"make black women look terrible?"

And I'm like,

"Nah, it makes those black women look terrible.

"I look fantastic up on the couch drinking my drink.

"I ain't throwing it at anybody."

My homie was like, "Okay, okay, all right.

"It makes black women look terrible, you cool with it.

"But doesn't it bother you these women are on TV

"because they use their bodies to get money from athletes?

"Doesn't that bother you?"

Why would that bother me?

Men get so mad at women for getting by on their looks

like it's not men letting women get by on their looks.

It's not me doing it.

I've never given a pretty bitch anything.

Not homework help, not a pencil case, not a cake recipe.

Evelyn's on TV 'cause you like titties.

It has nothing to do with me.

So many rappers, athletes, all this,

they get so mad at gold diggers.

They're so punitive on black women who want to come up,

but they use their money to get women.

It's such a bogus thing.

It's a patriarchy you set up that is making you unhappy.

And I think it's really shitty that we're projecting

all these things of the responsibility

of black presentation to people.

Women who are on TV, on a reality show,

have to be reflective of positive black women,

and what's to say that their version

of blackness isn't good?

And the idea that something shouldn't be on TV

'cause it makes the rest of us look bad

is punishing us for white people's shitty understandings

or views of us.

So now we have to perform blackness in a way

that's responsible, so white people could respect us?

They're not gonna respect us anyway.

Put more kinds of black people on TV,

so that we don't sort of have any

monolithic poor or good stereotypes,

that you represent the variances.

(light music)

- Well, the politics of comedy as a black woman?

Ha!

Where can I start?

It's a hard, long sluck.

- You know, 'cause people always think I'm nice and shit

'cause I wear bright colors and I have dimples,

but I'm a raging bitch on the inside, you have no idea,

'cause I've been nice for 30 years and I'm tired.

I used to be a skinny white bitch from Maryland.

I just, I'm so tired.

For me, as a black woman,

I wanna hear the black female perspective too.

I think we have a lot of examples of black men,

from Dave Chappelle to Chris Rock, who have their opinions

and people sort of respect their opinion as,

"This is the black experience",

and there's really no black women

who are really able to have that kind of platform.

I mean, I think it's changing a little bit

and hopefully I'll be one of the people

that can help change that.

- Oh, they don't think women is funny.

And a lot of times,

women get caught up with sleeping with people.

Nobody wanted me, I wanted to fight all the time

and I demanded respect.

I think that's why I put Ms in the front of my name.

Ms Pat is my stage name.

They say we're not funny.

"All women talk about the same thing", that's not true.

You know how many white boys out here do cat jokes?

I hate cat jokes.

- As a woman in this business,

it's hard enough to get bookings

in the headlining spots anyway,

and as a black woman, that counts against you even more.

It's the same in Hollywood.

It's the same in every industry though, that's the thing.

It's not just comedy.

I used to be an engineer.

I worked as an engineer

and I came up against the same problems

being a female engineer in a male dominated industry,

and a black female engineer at that.

- When it comes to being a black woman in comedy,

I have to compete with black men to get their respect.

They push the limits, they talk a lot of shit,

they wanna see if you can handle it.

The worst thing you can do being a woman in comedy

is to have a mental breakdown or cry.

If you get upset or take anything personally,

they're like, "Oh you can't handle this,

"Why are you doing this?"

So it is a lot of verbal abuse, but you just have to know

how to dish it back, and most of the time, when it comes,

it can come from a jealous place

or it can come from a place of being like,

"I wanna see what you're made of, I wanna test you."

- All fucking day and night, you get text text text.

You know why, ladies?

A man wanna communicate with you,

but they don't wanna fucking talk to you.

(audience laughs)

If a man can get you out your house, across town

and in his bed and never hear your fucking voice,

that is a fucking Christmas present every day

for fucking men.

See?

Look at these motherfuckers.

- Men don't like when women talk,

so trying to navigate a world where men want you to shut up

and girls learn that girls should shut up,

so you've gotta find a way to make people

who don't like the tone of your voice

or your pitch to listen.

If you talk about girl shit, it's not funny.

Men talk about their dicks all the time,

but if you talk about your pussy or your period

or dating or feeling insecure about your body,

now it's a girly bit,

when insecurity is a universal experience.

- Yes, that's a lot of moving.

I'm on my period, so.

(audience laughs)

I can't be shaking it up and down.

I got a fat pad.

You know, they got fat pads now for fat bitches.

This is what happens, they want it to be a war

between skinny bitches and fat bitches over pads.

The fat pad is so different than the skinny pad

'cause the skinny pad for the skinny bitches has integrity.

(audience laughs)

It's in a little purple box

and it's got Always written in calligraphy.

In the commercial, the bitch is like, "Always".

And you're like, "What, bitch?

"You got what?"

"Always.

"Shh, I'm bleeding."

(audience laughs)

And then the fat pad is called Forever, and...

(audience laughs)

It's in a big black box with chains.

(audience laughs)

And there's three dudes in the commercial beatboxing,

"P-p-pads!"

And the fat bitch comes out through the smoke,

"Hey, I'm on my period, ah!

"I'm bleeding to death!"

- And then you add blackness on top of it.

You have people, black people even have told me this,

"Don't talk about race too much.

"You don't wanna alienate the audience."

And it's like, well that's, I guess, 95% of my experience,

race, so you're asking me to not be an authentic human,

so as to please.

So you're basically asking me to do white dude comedy

and I'm not a white dude, so it's not gonna work.

It took a while, but I got to the point

where I'm gonna talk about race because I feel like it.

I was talking to this white guy,

and there's this thing that happens with white guys

where they don't know black women are people,

so they say the weirdest things to you.

Like this dude, he was like, "Hey, I'm hot, you're hot.

"Let's make beautiful interracial babies together."

I know.

I looked at him and I was like, "Nah."

Not 'cause I'm against interracial dating,

please, have a marble swirl cake party.

That's good for you.

But he said beautiful interracial babies, and I'm shallow,

and I'm petty, so why would I purposely get with you

to make a person hotter than me?

Why would I do that?

That's ridiculous.

'Cause home's supposed to be a sanctuary,

so how is Mommy supposed to love herself

when there's some Lisa Bonet, Halle Berry looking ass kid

sitting on my couch, watching SpongeBob

with her pretty green eyes.

No!

Fuck out of here.

- I'm sure a lot of female comics have crazy stories

of comics hitting on them.

I remember one time I was on the road.

I bombed, I bombed really badly that night,

and the headliner, he called me.

He was just like, "How are you doing?"

And I was just like, "Ah, I'm feeling down."

And he was just like,

"Oh, why don't you come over to my room?"

Now in hindsight, I'm listening to that, I'm just like,

"Well this sounds like some bullshit or a setup",

but I had just bombed.

I bombed for 20 minutes straight, I'm feeling down.

This guy seemed nice enough and he's just like,

"Oh, come through."

I didn't wanna sit there by myself,

so I was like, "All right."

So I came in and dude answered the door naked.

I mean, so it's like, shit like that happens

and you're just like, "What the fuck is going on here?"

So at that point, I'm just like,

"Well I guess I'm gonna have to be sad by myself in my room

"'cause he's clearly letting me know

"that he's offered me dick.

"I don't think he just accidentally got out the shower

"and didn't have a chance to put clothes on."

- A lot of times, you hear black male comics

talk about black women, 'cause that's the first thing

that they can touch, and it's, sometimes it's disparaging.

It's always the, "And you know, my girlfriend, and she,"

and it's like, not every,

all you motherfuckers is dating the same hood ass bitch?

And then half the time, you see them and it's like,

you're not, you're giving this experience of a black woman

but you're not even with a black woman,

so that can be frustrating.

Comedy is important.

People take that shit seriously,

and if that's the way you're presenting black women,

that's why we're having a lot of problems we have,

and I could say that for black women as well,

how they represent black men.

It's not every time you talk about black people,

we broke, we poor, we ignorant,

we don't know what's going on.

You can go further than that for a joke.

- I tweeted a joke.

The Mayweather McGregor fight was happening,

and the joke was,

"Being a black woman is hating a shitty black dude

"but still having to root for him

"because the white dudes who hate him

"are a little too 'heritage, not hate'."

I had all of these people calling me a racist,

sending me pictures of Trump,

sending me pictures of Mayweather and Trump.

Pictures of Trump in your phone feel like terrorism.

All I wanted to do was talk about the complicated identity

of being a black woman loyal to black men who also harm you,

and when that loyalty sort of supersedes any frustrations