Here's a dilemma: if you're a feminist comedian delivering a blisteringly funny broadside against rape jokes and the culture of casual misogyny, does it enhance or detract from your message if most of your audience are staring at your vulva? Adrienne Truscott, winner of the Panel prize at last year's Edinburgh comedy awards, plays a clever game by performing naked from the waist down. Not only is she placing herself in a tradition of activists such as Femen, who use the naked female body to protest against assaults on the female body, she's also questioning the notion of women dressing in a way that "asks for it". (She's also ensuring that a good part of her audience are men who've come to look at her bits, rather than just earnest nodding women.)
Truscott offers the audience a rape whistle – "if you don't like what I'm doing, you can blow this and hopefully I'll come to my senses and stop" – and projects clips of male rappers and comics doing rape-based material on to her pudenda. She has only recently moved from cabaret to standup, and her performance is an endearing blend of slapstick and non-threatening audience engagement that disguises a fierce attack on those male comics who joke about rape "ironically". The best way for a woman to fight back against that culture, it turns out, is to be funnier than them – with or without your pants on.
