The old joke “How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?” has no punchline. Instead, the joke teller waits for the other person to offer a response, then jumps in angrily to say, “That’s not funny!”

Of all the stereotypes that Gloria Steinem destroyed, my favorite was that feminists don’t have a sense of humor. Gloria was funny. How funny was she? She was funny enough that she received an Emmy nomination for being on the writing staff of the 1965 satirical news show, That Was the Week That Was, where her fellow writers included Buck Henry (Get Smart, The Graduate), Herb Sargent (SNL Weekend Update), and Thomas Meehan (book for the musical The Producers).

She remained a fan of comedy all her life and spoke often about how laughter is “the one free emotion.” No one can compel another person to laugh, she argued, so if someone laughed, it was because they wanted to. The person laughing was in total control.

When Gloria and I first met in 2011, I’d been a comedy writer for three decades and had recently outed myself as a loudmouthed feminist by writing an article that criticized David Letterman and two other late-night talk shows for having zero women on their writing staffs. I’d been the second woman to ever write for........

© The Daily Beast