<i>Out-law Stand-up</i> : <i>Testimonial Humor</i> in contemporary women’s stand-up comedy

Abstract This paper explores feminist aesthetics in women’s stand-up comedy, arguing that performances incorporating first-person accounts of injury, trauma, and pain can reimagine the laughscape as a space for resistance, camaraderie, and healing. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, feminist comedians increasingly use, what I call, testimonial humor to disrupt conventional comedic structures, centering personal narratives of injury not merely as comedic devices but as interventions into dominant affective economies in the laughscape. Viewing the aesthetics of injury as counter-aesthetics, I ask: Can stand-up mobilize injury to convey unsettling lived experiences? What are the political implications of embedding testimonial humor within the laughscape ? Through an analysis of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette and performances by Cameron Esposito, Beth Stelling, and others, I propose that feminist comedians engage in “ out-law stand-up ” – a form that challenges traditional comedic norms by refusing resolution and amplifying discomfort. This shift transforms the comedic stage into a site of testimonio , where storytelling becomes an act of witnessing rather than mere entertainment. By unsettling audience expectations, feminist stand-up fosters solidarity, redefines humor’s political stakes, and creates space for collective healing while resisting the entrenched misogyny, racism, and homophobia within both comedy and society at large.