By David Futrelle
At this very moment — as you read this very sentence — some dude somewhere who completely lacks a sense of humor is explaining to a woman who does not that women just aren’t funny like men.
I have no evidence to back up that assertion but I feel pretty confident it’s true, and as a dude myself I regularly assume that things that pop into my head are definitely true. And come on, this one probably is.
Yesterday one of these humorless dudes — who happens to share the same first name with me, to the shame of all Davids — decided to inform Twitter that women aren’t funny. Responding to a quote from Tina Fey complaining that in TV comedy “women are treated like expensive cappuccino machines. … Where it’s like, ‘We have one. Why would we have two?!’,” this shitty excuse for a David declared that “as a general rule…women arent as funny….smarter not funnier.”
His comment drew some snarky responses from women funnier than him, including one from Ariel Dumas, a writer for the Colbert Show, who asked him “what show do YOU write for, david?” It also inspired this Tweet from writer Jennifer Wright, whose own personal wit was once described by People Magazine as being “as sharp as a guillotine’s blade,” but you don’t have to take their word for it; just read her Twitter timeline.
If a woman tells a joke and you do not laugh, she'll look away, embarrassed.
If a man tells a joke and you do not laugh, he'll repeat it, louder. If you still do not laugh, he will explain "that was a joke"
Somehow this has lead to men concluding that they're the funny gender
— Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright) April 12, 2018
This tweet served as a sort of batsignal for some of Twitter’s unfunniest men, who began arriving in droves to explain to Wright and all other funny women that, no, they really aren’t funny; it’s biologically impossible. Seriously, I have no idea how all these dudes found out about Wright’s tweet, but they turned the thread that followed into one of the most inadvertently hilarious things I’ve ever read.
Some were outright indignant that a woman would make such gross generalizations about gender and humor.
Wright gently pointed out to Max (as she did to others in the thread) that she was responding to a dude who had done exactly what Max and so many other dudes say that dudes don’t do.
Other dudes in the thread offered accidental rebuttals to Max by making their own truly gross generalizations about gender and humor.
ANDREW DICE CLAY is one of your two examples of funny men? ANDREW DICE CLAY?
One guy appealed to the DIVINE RATIONALITY OF THE MARKET as proof that men were just much funnier.
As one Tweeterer pointed out, this dude made a whole new Twitter account just to Tweet this ONE TWEET.
This guy, meanwhile, took a moment out from what I’m going to assume was a three-day meth binge to post this somewhat puzzling assessment of the issue:
One fellow attempted to prove that men are funnier by repeating what is possibly the laziest and most tiresome joke I’ve heard in years, one that has become something of an alt-right catchphrase.
Unfunny and unoriginal is no way to go through life, son.
(Ok, that response wasn’t original either, so sue me.)
But the most amazing response of the bunch was this one, which somehow worked in Tide Pods and “disposable males” while not actually addressing the question at hand at all.
That final “eminent” kills me every time I reread this one. Angry men, you never disappoint. (I mean, you always disappoint, which is why you never disappoint those like me who enjoy inadvertent humor.)
One woman asked the question I’m sure many were wondering:
![Amanda Jenkins @EaglesExMachina Follow Follow @EaglesExMachina More Replying to @JenAshleyWright Is there a name for the thing where a woman tweets about men being [not funny, stupid, bad, etc] and men show up to prove her right?](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/tg86790u9po.png?resize=580%2C322&ssl=1)
Go read the whole thread. There’s more of this, as well as countless genuinely funny retorts from the “women actually are funny, you nimrods” side.
Here, just for the hell of it, is Andrew Dice Clay angrily storming off of CNN; it’s the one funny moment in his entire career, and its humor is entirely unintentional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlLslb-Royo
Of course women have a sense of humor…
Some of us marry men, don’t we?
Andrew Dice Clay would only ever be funny if he slipped on a banana peel and landed on his ass in the middle of one of his cool-story-bro bits.
And you wanna talk class clowns? I got seated behind two or three of them a few years in a row, from about Grade 6 through 8. (I was the quiet but smart introverted kid with the glasses, who had to sit up front because my eyesight was so damn crappy.) The reason they got seated in front of me, blocking my view of the blackboard and wrecking my concentration? Because when they sat at the back, as they preferred to do, they wouldn’t stop talking with their buddies, making those easily amused gits laugh. The teachers plunked them in front of me in the fond hope that my brains, or at least my good behavior, would rub off on them. But what did they do? Turned around and started yapping at me, trying to make me laugh. Which I did, but not so much at their silly antics as at the general absurdity and hopelessness of the situation. I sadly fear that that only encouraged them to keep up with their (highly derivative, I now see) schticks, even though it wasn’t meant to.
And yes, you may assume what gender those clowns were. Hell, everyone else on that tweeter thread did…
…Maybe the autocorrect changed “cocaine” to “condom”?
Otherwise, I got nothing. And even then it’s not like Millenials/Gen X are the main ones who would be snorting cocaine, anyway. As far as I know, cocaine is one of the pricier addictions, financially. It’s a rich man’s drug. Not a lot of people in my generation can claim to be wealthy.
As far as I understand, that “snorting condoms” thing refers to, uh, a party-trick, where you pull a condom up through your nose and then out through your mouth. I guess like one or two teenagers did this as a fun trick on a party and then idiot media blew it up like it was something all young people do all the time nowadays.
@Dvärghundspossen
…
Right. You’re the philosopher. You explain that party trick and why it doesn’t justify Malthus.
Damn those Liberials!
I wonder what choices of dressing he’s offering with that word salad.
@Rabid Rabbit
Easy! Goofy physical humor is especially entertaining to the inebriated, and there’s no link between condom snorting and the sort of dramatic fall in agricultural efficiency that would result in mass starvation.
And children! I can make fart-sounds with my hands over my eyesockets, does wonders in my line of work (after-school-care, aged 5-10)!
I guess all feminists and progressives are fart-eyes now,because it’s on the internet and true!
@Bina;
The reason they got seated in front of me, blocking my view of the blackboard and wrecking my concentration? Because when they sat at the back, as they preferred to do, they wouldn’t stop talking with their buddies, making those easily amused gits laugh. The teachers plunked them in front of me in the fond hope that my brains, or at least my good behavior, would rub off on them.
Sorry, but your teacher was an idiot. If you put Class Clowns at the front of the class, they are (as you found) difficult for even the motivated learners to ignore. The secret is to put them at the back of the class…and bust anyone who turns around to look at them. Without an audience, they tend to pull their heads in.
I can say I am not very funny person and often I don’t understand jokes, even jokes my friends make in my own language and I also often don’t understand jokes on TV or movie. generally I will say I have sense of humour but it is not for things which most people think are funny or even for jokes – if I laugh so much i cry it is because of funny situation or thing in real life. for example when my cat ate fish food and made a red poo ? I don’t think men are funnier or have more sense of humour – men are only loud. ?
Just wanna point out that there’s a whole damn lot of cis dudes these days who are quite literally the unfunniest thing in the world.
Sinkable John: I personally feel that the most disarming thing you can tell to these kind of guys is something along the lines of “wow, you’re boring”. Its not even very far off as it is.
I recently watched a few Toastmasters vids on YouTube with Dina Hashem competing, the only woman to win one of their roasting tournaments. She is so impressive! The guys tend to be loud and brash, and she’s so quiet that you have to pay attention – and you do! Def recommend, just as always with YouTube, comment-readers beware.
Oh, God, I do the bloke thing..
If a joke is met with silence I often follow up with ‘Oh come on! That was gold!’ (if it stood on it’s own merit) or go into a faux-awkward over-explanation of why it was funny (if it was middling) or over-dramatically lament how I didn’t stick the landing (if I just ballsed it up by using the wrong wording or timing)
I don’t do it with strangers or acquaintances though. Then I just do go quiet and hope no-one realises I was trying to be funny at all or were just not really listening to me in the first place. Maybe that’s the difference.
CN: tl; dr
This is one of those gendered oppositions which doesn’t hold good across time and space, meaning that men are thought to be ‘naturally’ funnier than men in some times and places and that the reverse is thought to be true in others. In cultures where humor is thought of as social glue, women are thought to be funnier than men, and in times and places in which humor (and/or irony/sarcasm) are thought to be an inferior reflex, or inspiration-from-below, or news from the subconscious, women are also thought to be funnier than men. (Which is probably why Europeans, and the British to a more limited extent, think women are funnier than men to this very day.) Even more important, in cultures where the expectation is that the audience will laugh at the comic, women are expected to be (‘naturally’) funnier than men.
But! In cultures where humor is thought of as a social disruptor (and is either cherished or dreaded for that reason) or where humor is thought of as a gift from the gods (IOW: inspiration-from-above) and as proof of ‘genius’, and in cultures where the expectation is that the comic will laugh at his audience and not the other way around, in cultures where the position of the jester can be a privileged position — in these cultures, men are thought to be ‘naturally’ funnier than women are or can be. (America is a simon-pure example of a culture of the second type or kind.)
Short version: wherever and whenever the business of being funny stands of chance of lifting its practitioner to social prominence and of being financially well-rewarded, men are given credit for being funnier than women; when and where the reverse is true, not so much. (Sorry for the paucity of laughs.)
@ bekabot
That’s a really interesting analysis; and it does explain a lot. I couldn’t comment on this thread before because the whole premise was so alien, and not just by usual MRA standards.
And that’s part of it. I suspect if you did a random survey of Brits as to who’s funny, the list would be dominated by names like Victoria Wood, Dawn French, Sandi Toksvig….etc.
@Alan Robertshaw:
thanks for reading.
Thanks for taking the time to write it!
I work in construction and for the most part guys on my sites are decent people. But there was this one time a few months back… a contractor made a sexually explicit joke at my expense. I politely said ” hey man, that’s not funny, I don’t appreciate that.”
His response ” maybe you’re just a fucking bitch with no sense of humor.”
That has happened many times throughout my life, where if you’re a female who does not laugh at a man’s ” joke” not only do you not have a sense of humor, you’re also labelled a bitch.
You’re welcome.
I’m seeing this shit a lot with older comics as well. Like that one show where Jerry Seinfeld decided that clearly the college audience clearly didn’t have a sense of humor because they didn’t laugh at his jokes, or how his daughter called him out for saying something bigoted and he was like “wtf”. Like it never occurred to him that he just might not be fucking funny anymore.
It just seems to stem from typical cishet white dude entitlement, imo. They believe they’re not only entitled to an audience, but an audience that will validate them and laugh at all their jokes, rather than them putting in the work to actually figure out what their audience will find funny and trying to play to that.
@bekabot, @Alan
I wonder if that in part explains the rise of Boris Johnson, or at least his ability to pretend to be a champion of the masses? Yes, he’s a classicist and member of the elite, but he’s so entertaining that the audience laughs at him, and that averages him out to a normal bloke?
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
I felt the same way about Tracy Morgan. I loved him on SNL in the day and my man took me to his stand-up in our city. It was horrible. Just misogynist garbage delivered in a very loud yell. I was disappointed, the dude was also disappointed. In general, I can’t deal with that guy anymore.
I put Boris Johnson in the same category with Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump. (Which may not be fair, but I don’t pretend to be anything other than an American who listens to public radio maybe every other day.) The standards for such men aren’t high: in fact they (the standards) are so low as to be nonexistent; with the result that the reputation they (the men) earn for being funny (when they have it) stems not from their wit (when they have that) or from their humor, or whatever, but from their ability to present to their marks with an image of themselves which looks bulletproof from a distance and which is at least five times larger than life.
IOW, I would say that Boris Johnson derives his reputation for being funny not from his ability to be funny but from his ability to play the part of a bloke. When he plays to the blokes, the blokes see another bloke, but what they see is a bloke whose head scrapes the ceiling. (IMO, Andrew Dice Clay based his career on the variations he played on the same theme.) It’s not very different from the situation which prevails with Trump and the Deplorables: Trump’s base adores him and grants him kudos for being funny, not because he’s funny (he’s not) but because he affords to them an outsized and powerful vision of themselves. He grants them the chance to be the ones who are in on the joke: the laughers instead of the laughed-at. Trump’s base loves Trump not because Trump knows how to tell a funny story but because Trump relieves them from a position they’re all too familiar with — the position of being the butt of a joke. (For which they’re hugely grateful; as, of course, they would be. Makes sense.)
So: I don’t know that I think that Boris Johnson gets his audience to laugh at him: what I think he does instead is enable his audience to laugh at the rest of the world, with him as their go-between. The audience, when it laughs, isn’t laughing at Johnson; it’s laughing at Johnson’s enemies, which are presented as its own. Johnson isn’t the target of the laughter, he’s the channel for it; and he doesn’t stand for the world outside but for the audience itself. That, at any rate, is the way Donald Trump does it, and I expect Boris Johnson’s schtick pretty much amounts to the same tune somewhat more skillfully played in a finer tone. (But then, you have to remember that I’m an American and that I’m not any better schooled in foreign affairs than most Americans are, which means I have no idea what I’m talking about.)
Oh, golly, I had a random man at the hardware store tell me a “funny joke” about “women drivers” today. (There was junk in the aisle, and my cart caught on it, making it go all sideways for a bit. Of course he felt it was appropriate to comment. *eyeroll*)
Thank you, rando guy, for your “joke,” but you will have to explain the humor of it to my poor addled incapable of driving lady-brain. Maybe make a pie chart for me. Those are actually made out of pie, right? My ladybrain understands pie, because it is a kitchen thing. Pies are circle right? Gosh, math is hard… (sarcasm)