It’s 2012 in Savannah, GA and the bouncer at King’s Inn had a problem. Staring down the female college students before him, brandishing under-21 ID’s, the strip club doorman shook his head and began to deny entry. Cherith Fuller, 19, felt immediate relief. Only a few months into her comedy career, Cherith had excitedly traveled the four hours from Athens, GA alongside fellow comedian Samm Severin, to compete in the contest for a cash prize. Severin had neglected to inform her, however, that the stand-up comedy would take place in a dilapidated strip club on the rougher side of town.

Severin didn’t want to leave so easily. We’re preforming tonight, she told the bouncer. He eyed them skeptically. We’re comedians, she clarified. The bouncer waved his hand and they nervously shuffled into the nearly empty club for what Cherith now calls a “nightmare gig”. In between rounds of poll dances, they preformed to an apathetic crowd and angry strippers who heckled them for stealing stage time.

Four years later, Cherith Fuller’s career has come a long way from the strip club circuit. A mass media arts graduate from UGA, she now works as a production assistant and junior writer/producer at Cartoon Network. She preforms multiple times a month at shows around Atlanta and held the resident comedian position at Laughing Skull Lounge in Atlanta last year, preforming at all the weekend shows. She’s preformed throughout the Southeast’s stand-up comedy scenes, and has traveled to NY and LA on multiple occasions for shows.

According to Number Crunch, of the 157 stand-up comedy specials on Netflix in early 2016, only 14% were exclusively female performers. This is actually a very slight increase in female comedian on the major streaming platform since 2014. While female stand-up comedians like Amy Schumer have been massively successful in recent years, many still point to a disparity in the number of women entering, and succeeding professionally, in comedy on various levels.

“Sometimes there definitely can be a boys club. But it’s not a malicious boys club,” says Fuller.

Particularly in professional club venues, Fuller believes it’s just a little harder for women, whether it’s getting booked for shows with male headliners or being seen as more than just a female comedian.

“ I think most of the time the headliners who come through are men, mostly straight white men. So there’s this belief that if you have a male headliner, you want men who are hosting it, featuring in it. So it’s harder for women to get forward in that regard sometimes.”

Fellow female comedians echoed Fuller’s sentiment on sexism and the “boys club” in many stand-up comedy circles. Samm Severin believes better known female comics in Atlanta, like Cherith and herself, may be shielded from the worst incidences of sexism. The rare predatory behavior she has witnessed has been “calculated” towards newer female comedians, some of whom she believes feel “pushed out” of the scene after inappropriate comments or incidences. Like Fuller, she believes that for the most part male stand-up comedians aren’t purposefully antagonistic towards female comedians.

Ruthie Lichtenstein, a stand-up comedian who previously lived in Atlanta, cites recent scandals involving date rape druggings at shows in Chicago’s stand-up comedy scene, and the attitudes of male and female comics in the aftermath reluctant to acknowledge issues of assault, as illustrative that problems actually run far deeper than just a mere boys club mentality in stand-up comedy today.

One thing is certain, Cherith Fuller has gain respect from male and female comedians alike for her fearless performance style. Fellow comics describe her as something of a rarity in stand-up today, someone who has both a strong stage persona and sharp writing skills, while most comics tend towards one trait or the other. She’s unafraid to do “crowd work”, or frequently involve the audience in her performances, something that can make even seasoned comics nervous.

“Cherith definitely had phases – and if you asked her, I think she’d tell you the same thing – where you could hear her doing somebody else’s voice in the beginning. Because that’s what everyone does,” said Walker Smith, a former Athens/Atlanta comedian now based in Chicago, who preformed alongside Cherith at shows for years. Smith said two or three years into Fuller’s career, her comedy completely changed. He credits her rigorous amount of preforming and increased success in Atlanta to her evolution. “Particularly in Atlanta because she just had more stage time, you could hear her really decide what her show was about. That’s the really cool thing, [getting] to see people find what they’re actually good at. Because it takes so long.” Smith says even though he’s living in Chicago now, he frequently sees videos of Fuller’s comedy making the rounds on social media and the internet.

Cherith hopes to ultimately segway her work in stand-up comedy and work at Cartoon Network into a successful career as a television comedy writer. Even if she lands her dream job, she plans to continue doing stand-up comedy indefinitely. Lately, she’s been hearing the siren song of New York and Los Angeles, the two destinations any comic seems destined to call home if they’re serious about their craft.