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Ashley Gavin isn’t a lesbian comedian. Yes, she’s a lesbian, and a comedian (a very funny one), but that’s not what she wants to be called. “While I am insanely proud of who I am, it’s limiting and pejorative,” Gavin says, relaxed on a stool at Cubbyhole. In fact, if you took the sum of Gavin’s jokes over the past nine years of her career (she’s a teacher and an engineer, stay with us for the math), feminism would be the theme that binds her work together. “People are just calling me what they see me as, and it’s fine, I love being out, I’m proud, but my work isn’t just for lesbians. I talk about so many things.”
Gavin wanted to be a comedian from a young age. Not that she knew what that career looked like, but trauma leads to laughter, and Gavin found herself on a path where making jokes became a form of healing. “I don’t recommend it to anybody,” Gavin laughs. “And also, now it’s the best thing ever.”
Following a stint as a software engineer, Gavin decided to put her happiness first and return to aspirations of stand-up, despite plenty of rejection and challenge. “I’m very open about what a fucking shithole this industry is,” she says. “There were so many days where I thought this was never going to happen.”
I love being out, I’m proud, but my work isn’t just for lesbians.
A freelance consulting job offered Gavin the flexibility to perform at night, bopping between open mics, independent shows, and basement venues. “I didn’t really have a home club, which I lamented for a really long time,” Gavin says. “Now it’s just sort of like, oh, I’m a gay woman in comedy without a home club, like shocking. I don’t lament it anymore. They all made a huge mistake.”
In 2019, Gavin booked a steady gig with Carnival Cruise Lines, its first out-gay comedian on board (and the first gay person many passengers had ever met). Working on a ship as cramped and chaotic as Manhattan felt natural to Gavin, who played her last on-board show in February 2020. And the freedom she felt from social media and the internet when cruising the open ocean completely flipped.
“I obviously had nothing going on. I’m super type A, so I never stop working. I decided to use the time as a crash course in social media,” Gavin says. Years of recorded shows gave Gavin, who had no interest in TikTok or Instagram pre-pandemic, plenty of material to post, and quickly the clips started amassing tens of thousands of views. As the pandemic continued, Gavin’s social following and viewership grew, the lesbian and queer community especially finding solidarity in her comedy and in the comment section of her viral videos.
“If it weren’t for the queer community, I wouldn’t be where I am,” Gavin says. “I had been in front of every industry person on the planet. Everybody knew who I was, everyone knew what my work was. I’m not significantly funnier now than I was back then. No one was giving me a shot. The queer community saw me and they were like ‘this girl’s really funny.’ That was the biggest gift that I could have ever received.”
Gavin grew up in an era when queer people, particularly lesbians, were the butt of many comedians’ jokes. Now, she’s found comedy to be more inclusive, and progressive, and if she’s telling a gay joke, it’s from a gay person’s perspective: It can be raunchy, provocative or just silly, it’s not abusing the community, she says. Her stage is a safe space, with plenty of room for her beloved antagonistic crowd work with audiences obsessed with call-out culture.
The queer community saw me and they were like ‘this girl’s really funny.’
Now, in addition to her weekly show, “Sunday Sqool“ at Sour Mouse on the Lower East Side, Gavin is on a nationwide theater tour, filling rooms with over 1,000 people. “It’s quite difficult sometimes to perform for perhaps the most thoughtful audience on the planet. You know, they get all the smart stuff, they get all the nuanced stuff,” Gavin says. “At my shows, no one is protesting, it’s not a Pride event. It’s just a bunch of similar people in a room experiencing joy without an agenda. It is queer joy.”
When she’s home in New York, Gavin loves walking around waterways and cheering on the New York Liberty as a season ticket holder. She will not be at the Woods on Wednesdays, but recommends the weekly party to meet cute girls. “I’m a native New Yorker. This is more core to my personality than any other thing about me,” Gavin says. “I think New Yorkers get a rap for being mean, but New Yorkers are the most open-minded people on the planet. We’ve been exposed to, quite literally, everything. Yeah, we’re in a hurry, and we’re blunt, but you’re getting authenticity and realness.”
Ashley Gavin: Live in Chicago is viewable on YouTube and her podcast “We’re Having Gay Sex” is available on Apple Podcasts. Tickets to Sunday Sqool start at $15 via Eventbrite.
