Humor & Life Quote by Bill Hicks

A single line, a whole worldview: Hicks pretends to cheer progress, then yanks the rug out from under it. The first “Great, great” is pure setup, the kind of polite applause you give an idea that’s been pre-approved by liberal consensus. Then comes the pivot: the punchline isn’t anti-woman, it’s anti-priest, and more specifically anti-institution. By the time he lands on “I don’t listen to,” equality has been recast as a cosmetic upgrade to an authority structure he considers fundamentally unserious or coercive.

The intent is to mock how easily “representation” can be treated as a moral endpoint. If you widen the doorway to the clergy but keep the same theology, hierarchy, and cultural power, what have you actually changed? Hicks’ joke treats gender inclusion as a brand refresh for a product he already rejects. It’s a critique of symbolic reform: the kind that produces good press, not new ethics.

Context matters. Hicks was working late-80s/early-90s America, when second-wave gains were colliding with religious conservatism and the culture wars were heating up. Debates over women’s ordination (especially in mainline Protestant churches and the Church of England) became lightning rods for “modernizing” tradition. Hicks’ cynicism reads as a refusal to be pacified by that storyline. He’s not arguing against women in power; he’s arguing that this particular power is unworthy of anyone.