
Wendy Molyneux is a modern American comedian who writes for parody cartoon sitcoms.  She published a response to a well-respected male writer after he wrote an article titled “Why Women Aren’t Funny” and a follow-up “Why Women Still Don’t Get it”.  Her article will be compared to a story written in 1728 by Jonathon Swift in Ireland.  Swift wrote a story during a time of over-population in the poor communities, and he suggests a possible solution.  Both pieces fulfill the simplest criteria of a satire piece, and are surprisingly comparative.  Although both stories are written in completely different contexts, both achieve the requirements needed to be a satire, and in their own way, project important civil rights messages.

In the piece, “I Am Sorry That I Didn’t Write a Comedy Piece”, Wendy Molyneux tries to exemplify the stereotype women have in society through several exaggerated personal experiences she explains on the day she wrote her article.  The first line of the piece begins “The other day while sounding out the words on a Web site…” to address that because she is a woman she is obligated to have less grammatical knowledge and intelligence, requiring her to sound out every word before typing (Molyneux 521).  This is an obvious untrue statement and generalizes only a tiny portion of illiterate women, especially in the modern era.  Molyneux also thought it was necessary to include that before she could even start her comedy piece, she has to “…put down my giant chocolate bar [and] stop crying…” to further illustrate the normality of dramatic measures women must reach to overcome simple daily tasks (521).  She also describes her setting as including pillows that she knitted herself, her phone awaiting a ring from some potential husbands, and her pink John Stamos t-shirt she wore in her eHarmony profile picture.  Clearly, it seems that she is being ridiculously exaggeratory and just joking around but she really isn’t.  She is fighting a very real traditional American social construct that women are still inferior to men, and always will be.  

Her piece is consistent with similar repetitious obscenities that distract her from actually writing her comedic piece until one of the last paragraphs.  In this paragraph, she reveals the true intention of her comedic piece which is to respond to Christopher Hitchens article and follow-up bashing women and explaining as to why they are not, and can never be, funny.  Just as Hitchens used his American freedom of speech in his articles, Molyneux says “I think it’s great that we live in a country where you can say anything you want, like that women aren’t funny or that Christopher Hitchens is a huge douche who runs a successful child pornography business and has an inability to get an erection unless he’s reading Nazi literature,” and the audience finally understands her message this article gets across (523).  Because Hitchens felt proud to publish multiple articles portraying his negative view on women, Molyneux was able to take it a step further than him, and then unleashing her right to speech as a woman in America just as his as a man.  Molyneux felt his article was an indecent attack on women, which should be taken more seriously and be left in the past along with other vicious traditions that were once acceptable in America’s history.

Jonathon Swift’s story, “A Modest Proposal”, provides a satirical view through a different lens.  Swift begins his piece similarly to Molyneux’s by providing the setting around him.  Swift states that “It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars or the female sex…six children, all in rags…forced to employ all their time to beg sustenance for their helpless infants…” to provide a belittling and pitiful image of the poor Irish families and communities (Swift 514).  Swift states that there’s no doubt that there are way too many poor people, and whoever is genius enough to exterminate these pests should be rewarded handsomely.  With this logic, Swift makes the modest proposal that instead of letting the poor parents deal with the financial burden of a child, they can simply just sell them to the public as beneficial and nutritious snack.  As Swift says from an American alibi “…a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food,” but not only that, it also tastes great “stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled,” (515-516).  Swift does this to provide evidence behind his ludicrous logic.  Swift tries to literally dehumanize the financially unfortunate by comparing them to deli meat, but because they are human, it will be even more valuable.  The make a mockery of the lower class, but only because that was the social reality at the time, Swift just presents it in an extensively cruel way.

  Just as Molyneux found a way to drag out gender stereotypes in modern culture, Swift does the same for the barbaric nature of Ireland in the 18th Century.  Both pieces provide perspective about a social issue of their era, the authors just have different motivations.  An article about satire pieces in a literary device forum states that “The role of satire is to ridicule or criticize those vices in the society, which the writer considers a threat to civilization. The writer considers it his obligation to expose these vices for the betterment of humanity. Therefore, the function of satire is not to make others laugh at persons or ideas they make fun of. It intends to warn the public and to change their opinions about the prevailing corruption/conditions in society,” which perfectly presents the parallel incentive that both Molyneux and Swift intended to use in their pieces.  