witstream:

A) I used the examples of menstruation (men don’t do it), kids (men don’t make ‘em), and trepidation over finances (ok, that’s all of us, but only relatively recently) to illustrate things that women (Sometimes! Not always!) experience that are *different* and therefore somehow threatening to…

While I agree with much of this, I again take issue with the suggestion that what it means for men to work with women—in comedy or otherwise—is for them to have to reconcile themselves to the potential parsing of periods.  Women are not the sum of their biological processes, as misogynist traditions have insisted.  My period isn’t exactly central to my self-concept, and I find myself fully able to participate in a professional environment without introducing the subject.  If men find this avenue of conversation unproductive or off-putting, I have to say that I don’t especially blame them.  I find it rather tedious myself, and it’s hard to imagine that there remains anything interesting or original to be said about it.  If men are laboring under the misconception that this is what it means to work with women, we can certainly mitigate this by demonstrating otherwise, rather than by insisting that they need to make room for our biological processes.  In turn, we thereby earn the right to ask that they likewise check their itchy balls and ailing prostates at the door.