OK so it seems like every year around Comedy Festival time, someone brings up the subject of whether women are funny, because if there's one thing that unites all human beings no matter what their sex, it is a total inability to have an original thought.
So I saw this brought up YET AGAIN, in TWO THOUSAND AND TWELVE, and unfortunately I was driven to think about it.
The usual response for those of on the side of "yes (sigh), women are funny, next question, please", is to roll out a list of women who we think are funny to demonstrate the fact that those who claim women aren't funny actually seem to be alleging some kind of worldwide conspiracy in which the millions of people paying money to see women comedians, and watching TV and movie comedy featuring women, are engaged in a particularly deranged form of affirmative action.
But I'm not going to do that, because it's been done a million times and everyone's heard it before and everyone knows all the names that would be on that list. We are not unaware of these women's existence.
No, what I want to do is just ask a question of those who claim women aren't funny:
What do you mean?
Like, what stops women from being funny? What is the mechanism that prevents funniness in women? What quirk of biology has kept humour from developing in the female human? What genetic defect blocks the emission of comedy from a woman?
I mean, if you're going to claim "women aren't funny", there must be a reason, right?
Is it that women are allergic to jokes? Do breasts repel humour, causing funny things to reflect off the boobs and back into a woman's face so they never make to the wider world? Does oestrogen prevent the activation of the comedy gene? Is funniness secreted from a small gland which men have but women lack? Do vaginas just suck the fun out of everything?
I'm just asking, because on the face of it, given that I'm fairly sure it's been well-established for some time now that women are human beings, "women aren't funny" seems to be a patently ludicrous assertion, akin to saying "Finnish people can't brush their hair" or "redheads don't own singlets". As things stand, claiming women aren't funny appears to be not so much a talking point as a meaningless string of words randomly patched together by a gibbering ape. So I'd love it to be clarified that I may understand.
So please, if you could supply some kind of hypothesis, or research, or blood test, that might explain the "women aren't funny" phenomenon, that'd be great. I ask only for information.
17 comments:
Like I can't even hear you over the drone of my vagina sucking the fun out of everything.
I don't get it.
Must be broken, there's definitely some humour leaking out.
I was going to leave a funny comment.
Public Announcement :
"It is the considered opinion of the Victorian Association of Girls Institutions of the New Age (VAGINA) that women are definitely not funny at all, and that any persons pretending to be comedians and female at the same time are in fact female impersonators (eg Barry Humphries, Gerry Connolly) or were formerly males only appearing in public after extensive 'treatment'.
VAGINA has commissioned research into why this is so, and will publish its findings in 2020.
Gosh, if anything vaginas ADD to the level of fun not suck it away. *Shakes head in disappointment*
One hypothesis would be that the socialisation of girls heavily conditions them against taking the role of witty joke-cracker (which would entail valuing women's mental dexterity), and heavily conditions them into an ornamental role primarily geared toward ingratiating themselves with men - including laughing at all their jokes and making them feel clever and funny (cf. Japanese 'hostess parties'). The female gender role also steeps them in fairly limiting domestic situations/interests, which means a paucity of inspiration/material for jokes could reasonably result; a lot of the free labour tagged as 'women's work' is mind numbing and repetitive.
People trotting out this awful stereotype probably don't have the above in mind, though.
Another factor is simply the confidence to speak in front of people, which we already know is less present in women than men, particularly in mixed company.
In short, the stereotype of women being (on average) less funny than men may well be a reasonable conclusion from observation, but the explanation that it's something innate instead of conditioned behaviour prescribed by patriarchy is where these dullards miss the mark.
In case you were wondering . . .
I always find Tracy Ulmann excellent; then there is Catherine Tate – how very dare you!
Judith Lucy is good value.
Jo Brand has her moments, and what of the AbFab – Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley?
Dawn French is excellent,
and Kath and Kim – Jane Turner and Gina Riley?
and Magda Szubanski . . .
I'm a fucking laugh-riot.
@ Sarz: When are you going to replace the muffler on that thing?
@ Doug: Typical VAGINA: always dragging its feet.
@ Bilby: I know right?
@ Sybaris: Yeah, the problem really is one pervasive across all fields of endeavour: if one man is not good at something, it's "He's not good at that"; if one woman is not good at something, it's "women aren't good at that".
@ Doug And the list goes on right? So many that it really seems insane these days to even ask the question.
@Ben - Sure. While this is certainly a problem, you have to also accept that, by the same token, the existence of some funny women doesn't mean that all women are funny, either.
The point I'm making is that the stereotype may have roots in reality, and there are more widespread issues that need to be tackled in order to change that reality. And this is harder than simply saying "women are too funny".
"The other day while sounding out the words on a Web site called The Rumpus, I saw this article asking for women to submit more comedy pieces. So I put down my giant chocolate bar, stopped crying, and thought, yes, that is what I will do."
http://therumpus.net/2009/09/funny-women-1-the-new-rumpus-humor-column-i-am-sorry-that-i-didnt-write-a-comedy-piece/
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