Women and humor
After Christopher Hitchens’ death I went back and re-read a couple of his old essays, including this one on women and humor (or their lack thereof). It’s written in his trademark style: witty, self-assured, and breezy; the musings of a gifted and vastly entertaining raconteur.
Hitchens loved to tweak and provoke his readers, and he got quite a bit of flak for this essay (mostly from humorless women?), especially for asking “Why are women…not funny?” Hitchens was well aware that there are a number of female humorists who are very funny indeed, but he correctly observed that, in general, it’s men who are more inclined to create humor than women are. Hitchens’ explanation was that it’s mainly because men are trying to appeal to women through humor, and women have no need to appeal to men that way because they’re already plenty appealing in other ways.
Now, it turns out that the subject of women and humor is one I’ve done a lot of thinking about (how humorless of me). Long before I ever read Hitchens on the subject I’d come to similar conclusions, although I’ve got something to add to his theory.
Hitchens is absolutely correct that the way to the heart of very many women (including, I must say, mine) is directly through the funny bone. But the same is not as true of men. But wait a minute, you say, that’s not true; my girlfriend/fiancée/wife has a great sense of humor and I love her for it. And though sometimes that’s certainly the case, I’ve got two questions for you: does she have a great receptive sense of humor or expressive sense of humor? And if the latter, is it as great as yours?
I’ve often noticed that when man praises a woman for her sense of humor, he’s likely to be talking about her receptive humor, the ability to appreciate the joke or well-turned witty phrase. That ability—to appreciate his humor—is something men like very much indeed. After all, who wouldn’t? But what one might call expressive humor—that is, the ability to make the quip—is often somewhat suspect when coming from a woman, at least for many or even the majority of men.
Expressive humor, so often a potent aphrodisiac for a woman when she perceives it in a man (a fact that Hitchens exploited to his great lifelong pleasure, because he was a very witty man), doesn’t tend to enhance her love life if she possesses the trait, unless she happens upon the uncommon man who finds it a turn-on (and there are such men), or unless she uses her gift sparingly. I’ve pondered why that might be so, and I’ve decided that humor is a decidedly aggressive act, even though it’s often a somewhat masked and de-fanged sort of aggression. It can be gentle or more barbed, but all humor has something of an edge, and as such is perceived in the gut as somewhat masculine.
It takes a strong man to love a funny lady. Fortunately, there are still enough strong men to go around, although it might take some extra looking to find one.
I’ve decided that humor is a decidedly aggressive act, even though it’s often a somewhat masked and de-fanged sort of aggression. It can be gentle or more barbed, but all humor has something of an edge
Hence court jesters, and virtually all banter between men.
Taint funny Ms. McGee.
Paula Poundstone.
The exception proves the rule.
A number of years ago, I was sitting around a large round table, with about 10 or 11 men and women. The woman next to me told me a joke, and it was pretty good, so I laughed audibly. The fellow next to me heard me laughing, and asked what was so funny, so I, in turn, told him the joke. Except, I “fixed” the parts that she hadn’t done very well. He laughed out loud.
Now, the woman who had told me the joke, also heard me tell it. When I finished, she said, “You changed my joke!” I thought she was going to be upset, but then she went on to say, “And you made it better! How did you know how to make it better?”
This was a really interesting question. I didn’t know then how I knew a better way to tell the joke, I just knew that the way she told it wasn’t as funny as it could have been, and I could make it funnier.
Is it instinct, in some strange way, to know how to tell a joke? A learned skill on the part of men? I have no idea, I just know that most women can’t tell a joke decently, and most men can.
I have made this comment in mixed groups a few times, and usually some woman will contradict me. So, I always challenge her to tell a joke. In every case, she either declined to try, or the joke fell flat. It is almost painful to watch some times.
This is not uniformly true, I have one good female friend who is riotously funny. But it is so common that I am surprised not to have seen it commented on.
A learned skill on the part of men?
A learnable skill, by anyone, I suspect. Anyone who ruthlessly excises any verbiage that is not absolutely indispensable to the joke, and who places the punchline/word at the very end of the last sentence, is probably going to come off pretty well.
Uncle Bill: Telling a joke and coming up with a witty rejoinder are two different and separate skills. Men are better at both of them. But many women who can’t do the former very well can do the latter pretty well.
I’ve come up with quite a few quips in my day. But telling a set joke? I’m fairly bad at that, although I’ve practiced a bit and now have a small—very small—repertoire of them. I wrote about the phenomenon here.
I think that the gender differences are partly a reflection of what men and women do when they’re among themselves. Groups of men often swap set jokes. Women almost never do; they discuss stuff in their lives, and often they’re quite witty and funny when they do so, but they have very little practice in telling the set joke. In mixed company they often get flustered when they try because it’s not a skill they’ve practiced.
I’m thinking as I write this that women may be wittier and funnier when they’re together in all-woman groups. My book group, for example, is very funny; we laugh and laugh and laugh. But when those same women are in mixed company I wonder if they’re as funny; maybe they leave it to the men? I think I may be onto something here. Maybe it takes a pretty assertive woman to be witty in front of men.
It’s been said that humor is just this side of anger and insanity. Just look at Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams for proof. Both are crazy. But their humor is fast and quick witted.
Thank you. That finally makes sense. I have always just said ‘women often don’t have MY sense of humor’, while truly believing women mostly lack something. After some number of ‘relationships’ with women, I just finally came to that realization. My last lady friend hated laughing at my material, but couldn’t help herself… “How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb”, in unison we both said, “That’s not funny (me in a pseudo feminist voice)”. She absolutely died laughing, if it took a while for the laughter to escape her hard cold feminist lips.
I just didn’t want to think about it. Yeah, maybe not all that funny, or to you particularly. But I love to make a woman laugh, even or more, when she doesn’t want to. Thanks for thinking that out.
Neo Neocon,
When your book group is laughing, are they laughing out of humor/funny or out of group empathy and bonding?
Are they laughing because it was funny or because they are having fun?
Oh, and also don’t forget to include laughing out of embarrassment or discomfort.
Doom: I have come to accept that I cannot be in love with a man who doesn’t send me into gales of laughter on a very regular basis (with him, not at him). Why this is so I don’t really know, but it has been the case since the very first crush I ever had. It hasn’t always led to the easiest love life in the world—but I can’t help it, I’m just drawn that way (as Jessica Rabbit would say).
In college, a friend should told me I should come to watch him in Zoo Story. At the end, when Peter stabbed Jerry, the audience laughed uproariously. It was a tension release laugh. Nothing at all funny.
One way to make a joke is to change the subject/empasis. The master asks the butler acidly, “Why is my butler drinking my port?” The Lordship’s taste in sherry is not up to standards.” Oscar Wilde, and Wodehouse used it in their dialogue and it usually gets a grin.
Best thing is to accumulate, usually through age, a bunch of stories on yourself.
The hardest I’ve ever laughed for an extended period of time is listening to southern guys telling long, involved stories on themselves, straightfaced.
And I believe Hitchens’ piece had some dark things. A cough turns into croup into a small coffin. Try to get a laugh out of that. I paraphrase broadly, but the point is that women’s lives might have less opportunity for humor.
I wish I’d read this 15 years ago when I squelched my humor to please my boyfriend. He didn’t like it when we went to parties and people laughed so much at my jokes. That’s the way the women in my family are, and the men. I hadn’t thought of it as a type of “manly” thing.
It occurs to me that while I have known a substantial number of women who were naturally witty without being sharp or cutting, in their cases it might have been a “cultural thing”.
I can think of only one woman I knew intimately who actually told jokes to me.
She was conspicuously Irish, and though not publicly bawdy, a bit of a live wire: the red hair, the flashing eyes, the grin, the whole stereotypical bit done so well at times by actress Judy Davis.
The others were an honorable and respectable upper south type obviously also known to some commenting here.
Yankee city women with a lively sense of humor? Sure … it’s possible.
But as Borat says, “Maybe not so much …”
Five seconds, and I already regret posting that, Neo.
Feel free to delete it at your earliest convenience.
DNW
I can’t tell jokes, but occasionally I come up with a funny one-line response to something idiotic. I don’t like having my intelligence insulted, so I fight back.
BTW, Jim Geraghty had a great head for his Morning Jolt email today: Kim Jong Il? No, Kim Jong Dead
On the San Francisco sectional (a low-level chart for air navigation), just west of Lake Tahoe, as a legend giving the name of a mountain range. As I taught chart reading I discovered I could point at the letter “I” (in some sans-serif font) and ask students what it depicted. The results were predictable but surprising: women usually figured it out in a few seconds: “oh, that’s the “I” in SIERRA” they would say, while the men would ask if it was an airstrip or just give up and ask me what it was.
This was one of the most revealing gender differences I ever encountered teaching men and women how to fly. I can’t explain it, although I suspect it demonstrates that man the hunter sees with better acuity but less context while woman the nurturer sees the big picture but perhaps not as well.
And I have a friend who was born male but had a sex change operation in his/her thirties. While she has the physical characteristics of a woman she has many of the personality quirks of a man.
In any case, although I pretend to accept the word of liberated womyn that we are all the same, I recognize many small differences. I know the ability to tell jokes, like the inability to see the word “Sierra”, and like certain things my friend still does in a male manner, really is different between men and women. vive la diference, dit-on en France. We all lose when we pretend there really is no difference. F
F….that’s really interesting. Any other gender differences you’ve particularly noticed while instructing?
I’ve seen aircraft accident analysis somewhere suggesting that female pilots are more likely to incur accidents reflecting a failure of skill (running of a runway in a crosswind, for example), while male pilots are more likely to incur accidents reflecting a failure of judgment (such as VFR into IFR), with the second type being more likely to be fatal.
Neo,
I can’t stand a woman who can’t laugh, either. I haven’t found many who I can’t make laugh.
MissJean,
That is sad. I would love to find a woman who could crack me up, and back and forth. Most women don’t have that talent, or often the interest or… something. If I had met you back when, we could still be laughing our way through life together. To be honest, I look for a lot more in a woman than her body, that part while good is vastly overrated. I want the whole enchilada. Humor, talents, even faults.
There is a large area of humor that is gross, dirty, concerned with body parts and their functions and noises and weird sex. Men appreciate this. Women usually don’t.
Women don’t have the humor men have because women are more civilized. Women made their biggest mistake thousands of years ago when they let us sleep in the house instead of outside with the dogs.
They have been paying it ever since. “Hey, ever hear the one about the Polish farmer’s daughter who was a double amputee and farted alot? Well, it seems this traveling salesman….”
Feminism denies that the concept of woman even exists!
Most funny women (not actreses) are bisexual or homosexual
We are now so messed up and our social reaearch is such pol trash that what should be easy to answer cant even be thought!
Women top from the bottom
Meaning their strength comes from being weak
And socially internally mens weakness is from their strength
Social science was invented by marx to prove the unfalsifiable and contradictory to propagate bad advice
See recent spengler article confirming our slow genocidal demise
From the crap work of communists from marx to moscow to boas meade and kinsey we live authoratative cancerous lies which has led to our now impending demise
Evolutionary pshycology the new kid with real understanding of us for knowledge explains why this is so and mekes the seeming incomprehensible easy to understand
Something now hard if you think human indiscrminate mating by random selection by accibent like animals makes invisable due to PC political mentality
Men are funny because like a peacocks tail it reveals what cant be seen or tested easily
Normally women marry older men because that allows them to see how the gme turns out before they choose a mate
Today women do not value themselves much nor their genetic contribution to the future
Being funny is how u can see mental ability and focus
When we became highly selective by MERIT our forms deviated from a simple average mean as in a herd
Looks were no longer parallel with performance and outcome but smarts and more complicated combinations started to dominate
Women too smart for thier mates lead to sinking ships and familial destruction ergo men want good looking COMPATIBLE mates making women as a whole more monolithic and similar (making them an easy vain target for politics and control of everyone if talked into joining! Ergo obama now revealing his campaign will bribe women and exploit their vanity)
Humor can reveal a lot in normal circumstances (stage is different)
It reveals speed of thinking, focus like rorscharsh (cant spell from mem sorry), ability to understand a situation and grasp it, shows good theory of mind of others, whether they are good or bad natured, ability to diffuse and turn things around, memory, recall, and probably more
This is why when honestly measured men outperform women
Women used to select them (or their fanilies who protected them and valued them) for ability and merit
Natural evolution would show as studies confirm that if one side selects thata what they get
Feminism and communism would prfer a underclass of homogeneous stallions not vibrant differences
Ergo diversiy gmes leading to homogeneous victim slave class for the elite to have their utopia (so womenthrough exploiting ther nature while denying its existence will enslave their children)
Less bright for mens selections they are easy to expoit
Less risk and ability they are easier to control
Less inventive they are less able to get out of the cage or room of their own
Failure to accept their own nature dooms us all
As they are the drivers and men transport them to where and what they want in exchange for defferenc love and better complimentary driven success in life
Ergo matriarchies (socialism) always fails
What works in a iner contrived reality for women does not work globally
Humor only matters when they value themselves otherwise rutting takes the place and trickery as its short term surface fakery that. Wins
For those who want to read more
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep04347366.pdf
I have not vetted it so tread as u may
A lot in evo psych is not liked by the left and those with false conscienciousness masquerading as superior knowing modernity
We are what we are and over a billion years made us that way and we survived
Marx and less than 200 years in no way had any idea of how interlocked we are with our reality and how our mentalitty came way after that
As their ideas come from self loathing masqurading as the future
Today we are finding that so many of our customs and things were not oppression but an interface between our biology and behaviors leading to positive outomes
Which is why redecorating our lives from an ignorant self loathing fashionable aesthetic that serves a few who are not subject to it is inane and counter to life
…as Bill Bennett noted, at the end of the 20th century, America had:
* The highest percentage of single-parent families in the industrialized world
* The highest abortion rate in the industrialized world
* The highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases in the industrialized world (by a wide margin)
* The highest teenage birth rate in the industrialized world (also by a wide margin)
* The highest rate of teenage drug use in the industrialized world
don’t seem like funny or merit is much part of things for the younger and liberated
Artfldgr,
“A lot in evo psych is not liked by the left…”
They pick and choose among Darwinian messages, sifting for the ones that fit their agenda. I happen to agree with them in rejecting whichever parts of evolutionary psychology they happen to reject, but unlike them, there are no parts I accept–I reject Darwinian teachings regarding the human soul (not the body–physical reality is fair game for natural scientists) lock, stock and barrel.
“We are what we are and over a billion years made us that way”
We are as we are hardwired by the Chief Technical Architect and Executive (yes, I’m talking about the same Person). We possess as many degrees of freedom as our design permits, not more as the believers in infinite human malleability have it, nor less as the deniers of free will argue.
No deep musings on soiciobiology, but Hitchens’ premise was wrong. I am old enough to recall Joan Davis, Lucille Ball, and Gracie Allen. Perhaps the most important of the three for present purposes is Gracie Allen: when she and George Burns began their act he was the comic and she was the straight man. Burns soon noticed that Allen got more laughs on the straight lines than he got on the jokes.
Take a look at old movies: Mabel Normand the great physical comic of the silent era, Carole Lombard in the screwball comedies of the 1930s. For that matter, Marilyn Monroe was a brilliant comic actress.
Popular culture aside, I have known enough funny women that I never have been able to see the point of the “women aren’t funny” view.
Joseph: I disagree.
Hitchens (and I) acknowledge there are many funny women, just as you point out. But in general women are just not as humorous as men. I noticed that long ago. But what’s more, humor coming from women is not as well appreciated as an aid to their romantic attractiveness. That’s not to say that some men don’t appreciate it a lot. But again, as a general rule, women appreciate and are sexually attracted to a guy who’s funny more often than men are attracted to a woman who’s funny.
Bottom line: men think The Three Stooges are funny. Women don’t.
Being able to make a formal joke is IMO much less important than being able to see the humor in situations, especially stressful ones. The first attribute doesn’t really matter all that much, but absence of the latter capability should raise serious questions about prospective spouses, bosses, business partners, etc.
“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity”
–G K Chesteron
Doom, that is so sweet. Thanks! I figure most of the good guys are taken at this point.
DNW, I agree with what you posted, actually. My mother’s side of the family is mostly Irish and yes, the women are as funny as the men. Lots of Polish women in my area are hilarious, too, although they can sometimes make a sailor blush.
Odd local story about Rosie O’Donnell: She was prepped for Star Search by a Detroit-area woman (whose name escapes me at the moment). Many years later, the woman was interviewed about her long career behind the scenes in showbiz. She mentioned that O’Donnell was the most unusual person she’d ever worked with because when she was “on” she was really funny and gregarious, but when the camera was off, she was unfriendly. Most comedians – Gilda Radner to Jim Carey – LIKE people, but she didn’t appear to.
Oh, I almost forgot to ask: Do any of you remember the interview with the serial killer a few years ago on American TV? I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember which one he was. He only killed men.
He attempted to joke with the interviewer. When the interviewer chuckled at something, the guy’s eyes lost the laughter and he said, “See? I can make you laugh. You think I’m a funny guy.” He explained that he used humor to put his victim’s at ease, and at the time I thought, “I don’t think women would be put at ease by you.”
So if I said that “civilization is a result of nagging wives” men would see the humor but women would not because its probably true?
This obviously calls for a joke. Here’s one I borrowed from a New Yorker cartoon:
Snow White is facing the evil witch. The evil witch is holding out the poisoned apple and saying, “Why yes, my dear, it is organic.”
Now, how and when to tell it: Act out the part of the witch, holding out your hand as you say her line. And pause, just a tiny bit, before you say “organic”. If you can imitate a witch’s voice, that would make it even better.
If you are in a short line at, for instance, a supermarket, and the people behind you don’t look impatient, tell it to the checker. You’ll make their day.
Another joke? OK.
Why did Barack Obama have to buy another bus?
Because he ran out of room underneath the old one.
(Some time I’ll have to tell neo the Martian joke. I think she’ll like it.)
I usually get a bit edgy when people make pronouncements about men and women that appear to exaggerate their differences.
But when it comes to humor, I just don’t; that Hitchens article/video didn’t bother me, really.
I thought it was funny.
My mother is a frustrated scientist who got talked out of graduate studies in genetics by one of her professors (whom she had started dating–it’s a fairly awful story) but she rarely tries to be funny.
I don’t try, either. Though I married a comedy writer, and I absolutely know the difference between our normal joking around and when I really hit it out of the park–I get the laugh from the chest, the special laugh, and it’s very gratifying.
But pursuing that, as an end in itself? No, no–I’d have to analyze things that I don’t want to analyze: my brain would never turn off.
Yes–humor is an aggressive act. One is undercutting something, and that act always has to be done more deftly by a female vs. a male. It’s a tightrope, rather than a balance beam.
But there will always be exceptional women who take it on, just as there will always be exceptional women whose first love is science or math–to whom STEM studies are their home turf.
Both sets of women inhabit a special place on the bell curve. They may not be any smarter than I, but they are, in certain ways, more adventurous.
They make the world a better place. As long as we are not requiring all women to be comics (or scientists, or mathematicians), nor suppressing the natural abilities of bright women in these arenas, nor keeping down the exceptional women who truly excel in these fields, it’s all good.
* * *
A priest, a rabbi, and a woman all walk into a bar together.
The bartender says, “what is this–some kind of joke?”
The Belmont Club had a funny thread about the outrage of camel farts.
“I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel” was the title.
Which reminded me of this little gem about Queen Elizabeth, whose courtiers used to gripe that she would “stride about Hampton Court, roaring and swearing by God’s private parts.”
Judi Dench was talking about taking the role of Queen Elizabeth I in the movie “Shakespeare in love.” Dench said you had to love the queen’s sense of humor. For example – one of her courtiers cut a tremendous fart when he bowed to her in the throne room. Mortified, he left the court hastily
and stayed away — for several years. When he finally reappeared, the Queen spotted him right away and sang out: “Sir, the Fart is Forgot.”
Neo-Neo…One other observation re-women & humor: Your side of the aisle is far, Far, FAR more literal. Sometimes it leaves this T-Rex gasping. Sometimes when my head-turningly cute 95-lb/4’11” Sicilian spouse does the uniquely female Eye Roll-Lip Smack-Exhale thing(in perfect harmony), looking ceilingward or skyward & says:”Guys…Why’d HE make’um?” My reply is:”To make you laugh, Missy!” And, in tolerant moments of candor(-: , she’ll respond,”That’s true.”
The Male Infantile lengths we are capable of going to for a laugh/attention from youse goils was long ago summed up by a dear old friend–hugely experienced with the ladies–when he said: “Hopping on one foot while balancing an egg in a spoon and singing a high-spirited song.”
Me..? I always preferred Animal Magnetism.’Yo.
In the last few years, I seem to have encountered more people who are literal, to the point of not actually getting metaphor or analogy. The degree differs, of course, but it’s there. I’ve gotten to wondering if Asperger’s is infectious.
You need to be able to go beyond literal to get humor more than a step above the whoopee cushion.
Asperger’s or not, in my small sample, more women than men tend to be literal.
NeoConScum: I always smile at the end of Leonard Cohen’s song “I Tried To Leave You” when he sings, “here’s a man still working for your smile.”
Every man I’ve ever been in love with has been very very (intentionally) funny. In real life, I’m pretty funny too—for a woman.
Neo-Neo…Yes, you do have wit. A very nice gift for a lady to possess and, additionally, you’re damn good with metaphor and simile. I tend to distrust grindingly serious people of either sex. The inability to laugh at oneself and to ‘get it’ is a bore and often a true ‘Tell’ on a man or woman’s character.
“It takes a strong man to love a funny lady. Fortunately, there are still enough strong men to go around, although it might take some extra looking to find one.”
Nah, the problem is the lack of funny ladies.
My wife is absolutely hilarious and frequently has me in stitches laughing. But the vast majority of women I have met just aren’t funny (or witty) in the slightest; this includes the vast majority of female comedians I have seen. (I can count the exceptions on one hand.)
My whole family is full of funny women. But we do our wisecrackin’ in private. No one outside the family knows.
It’s unladylike.