“I think comedy is all that’s kept me from becoming a felon,” says Gail Stern. A professional stand-up comedian by night, by day she runs a program for victims of sexual and domestic violence at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After six years on the job, she’s come to understand just how indifferent the system can be to the women she counsels. “At this point, I’m creating a list of people I’d like to go out and shoot.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Stern wanted nothing more than to be a comedian when she started college in Urbana-Champaign in 1987. She did a fair amount of improv and stand-up in school, but by her senior year she decided to be an activist: “I realized I could put all my self-righteousness to work.” Fresh out of college, she took a job as the assistant project coordinator for UIC’s newly created Campus Advocacy Network. “Essentially, that meant I filed stuff,” she says. The program was designed to help students who had been victims of hate crimes on campus, but it soon expanded to address domestic violence, sexual harassment, rape, and stalking. Within six months, everyone else working for the project quit.
At first Stern was reluctant to use her comedy skills in the straight world. Then in 1994 the university got a contract to teach Chicago police sergeants cultural sensitivity. “My boss said, ‘Why don’t you do it? And use your stand-up comedy.’ I thought he was insane.”
“So we tell the judge that this guy has also been seen circling her block repeatedly, driving really slowly right in front of her house. And he says to my client, ‘Did it ever occur to you he’s just trying to see if you’re home?’ It was the perfect setup for a joke. And I’m dying to say, ‘You see, judge, that’s sort of what stalking is about.’
