Liam Mullone reveals what a great feminist he is

Obviously I am a liberal pro-feminist. I say this because I have never hunted women on horseback, or harpooned them for their blubber or ambergris or Gelfling essence. Even though I had the opportunity, and it was very tempting, and all my mates were doing it, and there was going to be a barbecue after, I still didn’t do it because it’s just plain wrong. End of.

People say to me, ‘Yeah but what does it really MEAN to be a feminist?’ And I say, ‘Do you believe that women should be hunted down like dogs to make lamp oil any more than men should?’ And if they say, ‘Hmmm, not necessarily’, I say, ‘Ha! So! You see, you too are a feminist!’

And once the simplicity of this argument hits home they concede the point, and feminism gains another soldier. In this way I have probably recruited hundreds to my personal cause, People for the Ethical Treatment of Women.

But let me set the bar a little higher. It’s not good enough to just not kill women for commercial gain. You have to be committed – really committed – to not killing women for ANY reason, even when they’re being really bloody annoying and standing on a creaky aluminium stepladder next to a swimming pool holding two ends of live electrical wire. Sound tough? There’s more.

You have to not moan when they appear on comedy panel shows, even though it was proven by science back in 1356 or something that humour is stored in the testicles just like love is in the heart and courage in the liver. Because science has also proved that women, like bacteria, are necessary for the survival of our planet.

I may shock you here but I actually believe that comedy panel shows should have more than one woman At. A. Time. Yes: what we would lose in entertainment we would more than make up for in virtue and fairness and decency and Twitter followers and credibility and civilised-ness.

Sometimes I feel like comedy is still in the medieval times or something, and I wonder why I bother trying to educate people with my ‘hilarious’ (Wolverhampton Argus) shows. Not allowing two women onto a stage on the same night in a comedy club is like when they wouldn’t let two women share the same ducking stool, in case they untied each other, or snogged. Let’s move out of the Dark Ages, guys: this has to stop and it has to stop NOW. I’m not saying it to be a hero. I’m saying it because it needs to be said.

What comedy – and the world – needs is for more men to declare themselves as feminists.

We can do this, guys. No one’s asking you to go on a march or scale a barbed-wire fence or stop watching violent pornography. I’m certainly not asking you to turn a gig down just because the venue has rejected a female act who has girl germs.

But you WILL need to mention it somewhere – in your Twitter biog or on Facebook, or maybe in that overlong ‘all about me’ section of your Fringe show. Keep mentioning it in case not everyone saw it the first time. Once you’ve said that you’re a feminist a few dozen times, everyone will know and the world will be one step closer to being the happy place it could be if more people would just get with the programme. If I can be a feminist, you can too.

And don’t hunt women on horseback.

• Liam Mullone has written a book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are In The Kitchens of Mars Making Lovely Martian Dinner, which will not be published ever.

Published: 2 Jun 2014