Politics & Power Quote by Kate Clinton

Lesbian humor, in Kate Clinton's framing, gets to be messy, niche, and unapologetically specific because it isn't built to move product or smooth over audience discomfort. That first line is a jab at mainstream comedy's invisible contract: be likable, be marketable, be legible to the broadest possible crowd. Clinton implies lesbian comedy can dodge that contract precisely because it's often excluded from it. When you're not being invited to the big table, you can stop performing for the host.

The punch of "it doesn't have to sell out" lands on two frequencies. One is economic: the entertainment industry still rewards queerness when it can be packaged as quirky, palatable, and non-threatening. The other is moral: "sell out" doubles as a critique of self-erasure, the soft compromises performers make to stay booked. Clinton isn't romanticizing marginalization; she's naming the freedom that can emerge when respectability isn't the entry fee.

Then she tightens the screw: coming out onstage remains political. Not because lesbians are inherently "political", but because audiences, venues, bookers, and even comedy's gatekeepers keep treating lesbian visibility as a statement rather than a fact. Her acid test - "if it weren't, more women would do it" - indicts the culture's ongoing penalties: lost gigs, hostile rooms, career ceiling, the exhausting expectation to either educate or defuse. Clinton's intent is both rallying cry and diagnostic: if authenticity feels brave, the environment is still coercive.