It may sound sexist, but I think most women, and certainly every honest woman, would agree with me when I say that the phallus is funny and the vagina less so.
The penis protrudes bizarrely from an otherwise harmonious silhouette. A penis flops around. It swells unpredictably or splurges prematurely. It has a little personality of its own. Even things that resemble phalluses are funny by association: trombones, sausages, pointy hats, the Washington Monument, oversized cigars, normal cigars. And History can attest, too: In Aristophanes' The Clouds, the characters chase each other with a big, fake penis and bop each other on the heads with it. Priapus, the ancient Greek's version of a scarecrow, was a demi-god with a hilariously swollen phallus that would sodomize crop thieves. Penis humor has a richly obscene tradition stretching back thousands of years.
In his recent Vanity Fair essay, Christopher Hitchens, our generation's jolliest provocateur, investigates reasons for what he labels "the humor gap" between men and women. Children, he argues, are the crux of the issue: men are childish, women have children, and the latter is definitely UNfunny. For most of human history, women have been important because they can get pregnant, and pregnancy has meant pain, suffering, blood, screaming, and a close shave with death. What is not painful about pregnancy is still not funny: life-creating power, strength, beauty, and for most cultures, mystery and the supernatural.
Okay. Maybe.
But what seems most likely to me, and something Hitchens just touches on, is that humor for men is like a defense mechanism. They know their penises are silly, so they need to make fun of them constantly and ruthlessly before women do in order to diffuse the situation. That means that the woman can be funny, but if she's too funny, she's a threat. A race to self-deprecate always needs to stay ahead of the one who can just straight up deprecate, so to speak.
A laugher gives power to the laughee.
Anecdotally: do you notice, as I do, that men who seem genuinely secure in themselves, as in, not needing to prove their masculinity to you, are also the men that you feel most comfortable making jokes around? They are far more likely to guffaw--I mean really guffaw--at your jokes. For these men, granting a woman funny status isn't threatening. Consider: when's the last time you didn't make a gay man laugh?
Men have a vested interest in making each other feel like an eleven on the funny scale, even if they're just a four or five. I have lately been in the situation to observe all-male 20-something acquaintances grouped together in conversation. They belong to that emerging demographic of man-boys: lacking the traditional rites of passage like marriage, war, or an important job, they are stuck in perpetual adolescence. From an objective point of view, almost nothing they say to each other is funny, but they constantly affirm each other's talk by forcing a laugh, or, more often than not, simply stating, "That is f*cking hilarious," or the more pared-down, "That is funny." Mostly, it is not funny. It seems that men have signed a social contract, something to the tune of "I'll make you feel funny if you make me feel funny."
True laughter is a spontaneous and involuntary reaction, and it also involves a shift of power. If I make someone laugh, male or female, that person just validated me and my personality. In essence, every time someone laughs because I cause them to, I get a little bit of power. But there's more! I can physically incapacitate them, well, to varying degrees--anywhere from the slight distraction to blinding tears, knee-slapping to pants-peeing. Making someone laugh is socially empowering for me, in addition to being physically de-powering for the other. That may be useful in the short-term if the goal is to make the person keel over with laughter and then deliver a swift right-hook, but the effects of endorphins are likely to give the laugher a long-term advantage. Something to think about.
I'm not suggesting we use humor is to advance a feminist agenda; that would be sad and unfunny. But I am suggesting (and this is where writing about being funny gets really unfunny) that humor is power, socially and even sometimes physically. To be funny is to cause a spontaneous, involuntary acknowledgment of equality or even superiority.
Now will someone write a post about the unequivocal awesomeness of Tina Fey?
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I think Hitchens is full of s***. He's a misogynist who can't accept that women can be funny because humor is powerful. Think of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They're humorists who have enormous sway in our culture. There's a reason women are cast as unfunny in our culture. Humor is power and Hitchens doesn't want us to have it, just like the rest of the patriarchy. The thing is, they're all wrong. Just look at Sarah Haskins!
Also, I don't accept the premise that penises are inherently funny while vaginas aren't. There's nothing inherently funny about anything. Humor is a social construct. What one culture finds funny, another culture doesn't. The fact that more jokes are made about penises is a function of our society, not any inherent quality of the penis or vagina.
I also dispute the premise that gay men can't be insecure in their masculinity. Gay men can be insecure and sexist too. You're stereotyping by saying that gay men always laugh at women's jokes. I have a gay male friend who's very sensitive about his masculinity and will bristle whenever it is brought into question.
I don't agree with Hitchens, but the point of my post was to use his article as a jumping off point and to DIFFER from him, not agree with him. Still, I think attacking Hitchens is so 2007. It just gives him more credit than it's worth.
And, I get that humor is a social construct. Throughout history and in the Medeival period especially, anything that stuck out was funny. Bodies and especially faces with abnormally big anything were considered grotesque but funny. Popping eyes, for example. Think about a court jester's or a clown's costume, where every element of the body is made to be exaggerated. So sure humor can be a social construct, but I would assert that anything popping out is inherently funny because it surprises us, as humans. We humans keep all or our bodily functions under control, but when something interrupts that equanimity and poise--like a fart, or a boner--that suddenly makes it clear that, despite our best efforts, we are NOT in control of our bodies. And that is inherently funny.
And, yes, I was stereotyping gay men. But it was also a joke.
But the female genitalia also do some very unpredictable things. I know my genitals love to remind me that I'm not in full control of my body. I'd say that the female genitals/reproductive system are just as fertile a source of jokes (pun intended) as the male. It's only a function of patriarchy that more jokes are made about male genitals, not any inherent quality of male or female genitals.
> ... all-male 20-something acquaintances grouped together in conversation. They belong to that emerging demographic of man-boys: lacking the traditional rites of passage like marriage, war, or an important job, they are stuck in perpetual adolescence
You sound like Kay S. Hymowitz. How do you call 20-something non-married females who haven't participated in any war and don't have important job? Woman-girls? Are they also stuck in perpetual adolescence?
Meanwhile, your idea of laughter as shift of power seems interesting to me.
Actually, the man-boy phenomena is well documented, from both the right and the left. Usually video games and confusion about what it means to be a man these days are both prime culprits.
And certainly women can be girl-women, but the "rites of passage" for women are quickly evolving. It used to be marriage and a baby made you a woman, but now women are understanding that being a woman means responsibility, independence, and intelligence among other things. And I would emphatically assert that women who crave dependence, don't think, and refuse to take responsibility for themselves are in fact girl-women.
But it's not the widespread phenomenon that it is with boy-men. Females in general have a constantly evolving sense of empowerment these days. The most obvious example is Hilary Clinton running for president, which added to an ethos of greater empowerment for women. While this doesn't automatically mean men will be less empowered, I think a lot of man-boys are confused about how to be a man (at worst), and just hangin' out (at best).
What do you mean by "well-documented"? Numerous articles in popular magazines?
Anyway, whatever people do they feel good for them (except breaking the law, of course) is not to be criticized by the people who advocate for getting rid of stereotypes.
> I think a lot of man-boys are confused about how to be a man
They are not confused. They are men. They don't need to prove it the same way as women don't need to prove they are women. Some other people just don't like the way these "man-boys" live and try to manipulate them by reserving the right to not call them men. Not a big deal.
While I agree with what Poetry said above, I also find your argument of humor as power really intriguing....and for whatever reason, at least reasonably accurate.
Thanks for writing this.
Or it's because women are socialized to think potty humor isn't as funny. Nothing biological, nothing deep, we're just told that mature women don't think bodily functions are funny, and men aren't.
Yes Yes Yes! One of the most irksome things to me (I was actually considering posting on it) is when I am out in a setting like a bar with men and they are all laughing up a storm and slapping each other on the back for jokes that I and they have heard a hundred times and weren't very funny the first time. Then I make a joke and the guys all look at me with very blank faces and I can tell that they are determined not to laugh. (I would think that maybe this means I'm just not funny to men except that if I get one man alone he will laugh at my jokes and I have witnessed guys who did not laugh at my jokes then steal my joke for later where they tell it to guys and get..laughs). Girls, apparently, can be laughed at for doing something "airheaded" but they can not be laughed with. Of course, if you don't laugh at a guy's unfunny joke then you are a "bitch" and have no sense of humor. I think that it is a power thing, guys don't want to give you credit for having a personality as complex and interesting and witty as theirs and they want to in these ways make sure you don't join their "guy club" as an equal. They include me to a certain extant because they find me attractive but god forbid they afford me the same level of respect and appreciation for my personality as they give one another. Of course this is not all men, just, in my experience, a certain type of man. Oh, and my female friends and I do think potty humor can be funny.
One of the most irksome things to me (I was actually considering posting on it) is when I am out in a setting like a bar with men and they are all laughing up a storm and slapping each other on the back for jokes that I and they have heard a hundred times and weren't very funny the first time.
omg. my boyfriend does this all the time. Breaks into gales of laughter at his own lame, lame jokes. He laughs at what I say too, though. The thing that annoys me is, especially when my sister makes a joke, he tries to get in on it and follow up with something funny. And she's much funnier than he is, in a dry, deadpan kind of way, and then he kills the joke with his lame, obvious attempt. He wants to be the master of wit. For the most part, he's stopped doing this, because I told him repeatedly that he's not that funny and should stop ruining my sister's jokes.
It does have to do with power dynamics, because my sister and I are very close, we understand each other's sense of humour, and when we joke around we have our own comic rapport/banter thing going on. And I think my boyfriend wants to be included in that. But he has some work to do before he's funny enough.
This is very interesting...
I have never found this to be true. Men have always laughed at my jokes and witticisms. I think men do tend to laugh at certain things that women do not find particularly funny, but I have never noticed them not laughing just because the humor came from a woman.
I'm not suggesting we use humor is to advance a feminist agenda; that would be sad and unfunny.
???
Do you mean, like feminist comedians? Because there are feminist comedians, and they're funny. I don't see why feminist humour would be any more or less inherently funny than political humour.
1- I don't think men are funnier than women
2- Maybe more men "try" to be funny than women
3- That might have something to do with the fact that women have had to be (and continue to be desired to be) appropriate and quiet and nice and uncreative (remember when speaking up used to be bad?)
I hate bullshit
Very interesting! Nice, solid hypothesis here. I can see it play out in my own relationships with men and women and I think you may be on to something.
My first lover was a feminist and you hit the nail on something I've been trying to articulate for some time now. I was instantly comfortable around him (for a variety of reasons, of course) and one of those reasons which I now understand is that there wasn't such a power struggle over humour as there tends to be with my non-feminist male friends. He was very at ease with my own offbeat humour (and I with his). One of my favourite things to do was to try to make him burst out laughing while giving a lecture (he was a professor). It instantly put him and his students at ease because it softened the power relations and made them see that he was just as human as they were.
Another thing I found with him was a lack of aggression in his jokes in the sense that he wasn't posturing or trying to prove anything to anyone. He didn't have to put people down to get some laughs or build himself up in relation to someone else...likewise he was able to appreciate my own humour without feeling threatened. Same goes for my non-romantic feminist male friends. When I make a particularly funny observation or joke, they do not try to suppress their reaction or try to "play it cool" as so many of their non-feminist counterparts tend to do. They give themselves permission to laugh and acknowledge the truth of what I just said which, yes, does give me power and increased social standing within our group. Remember how much power the class clown wielded with us and how easily s/he was able to take the wind out of the sails of our teachers when we were kids? Think about it.
I think that yes, it does boil down to power, who has it, who's getting it, and who's giving it away.
It also puts into a whole other light the phrase "feminists have no sense of humour." Really? Substitute "sense of humour" with "power" and it all suddenly becomes quite clear...
Great post. Thanks for this!
Something to note, my dad thinks that Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are funny, and has even said he finds some of Rush Limbaugh's jokes to be funny. However, he finds Rachel Maddow to not be funny at all- he claims she just bitches about the right without even mentioning democrats.
This could be because he hates both sides and wants to see both get bashed by an unbiased view, but I still think it has something to do with sexism. I just hate to think that my dad can't handle a smart, funny woman.
I agree with a lot of WhitneyM's statements, and it's something that I've thought about a lot in my own interactions with people. I remember reading somewhere that women on average laugh at a man's jokes a lot more than the other way around -- they saw both jokes and laughter in these experiments as a way of flirting, of breaking the ice, etc. etc.
Just last week, I was IM'ing one of my (male) friends and discussing a moment of such awkwardness in my typical, hyper-self-conscious fashion:
me: My [female] friends and I went out for Indian food today, though, and that was nice.
me: though let me tell you what: I apparently was not funny tonight, because I kept trying to drop jokes into the conversation, and I had about a 20% accuracy rate on all of them. It was pretty bad.
friend: eek eek
friend: I feel like that all the time
The way in which all of us, but even moreso guys (i think) treat humor as a measure of self-worth can definitely lead to power dynamics. I often catch myself feigning a dry and sarcastic demeanour around girls when they make jokes and I wonder: is hidden beneath this sort of reply merely an attempt to withhold acceptance and raise my own "humor quotient?"
A lot of humor is based on affect, which is itself based on confidence. Withholding the positive reinforcement of a laugh can thus be more powerful than we might otherwise expect.
(oh, and i took a test online! my HQ is about a 115)
"I'm not suggesting we use humor is to advance a feminist agenda; that would be sad and unfunny."
I'm confused by this quote. Don't many women use humor to advance a feminist agenda in a way that is profoundly NOT sad and unfunny? I'm not only thinking of Sarah Haskins and Tina Fey, but of the various witticisms of Agnes MacPhail or the extremely effective mock trial held by Nellie McClung that essentially ousted a sexist politician from office. Humor is extremely effective, as you've argued. Why should we not use it more often?
I like the idea of incapacitating men with laughter and then beating them up. That'd be a fun play on the 'black widow' stereotype.
First: I have never ever considered the concept of humour being a power dynamic before and am, quite frankly, fascinated. Good discussion.
Second: I had a conversation about this kind of thing with my mom this summer. We went on a mother-daughter trip to Montreal and checked out a comedy show that happened to feature a female headliner. We got into the discussion that it was a perfect girls' night because without the men in our family, my dad and brother, it was a better night to see a female comic than if they were there, because for whatever reason women laugh at female comics and male comics equally, but men always seem to have a harder time laughing at female comics.
And now, I feel like I understand it a little better. Humour is DEFINITELY about power - I can't believe I didn't pick up on this before. This is brilliant. There should be books on this.
OK I'm done gushing. But, props Whitney, well-articulated. And for the record, poop is hilarious. It also brings to mind the most obvious ways women's humour is silenced; if my boyfriend farts in a big room everyone will be like "ew," and laugh and make jokes that something died in his ass and other guys will try to fart louder to get more laughs. If I do, though, people will be all akward and like "what? A girl farted unashamedly?"
about laughter and gender: cixous hints at potential 'castrating' effects on men of the laughing woman (the medusa). Of course this is rather psychoanalytic. Her piece is called The laugh of the Medusa, worth a read though...
Oh, and about humour and men; I like irony - and am quite amused when someone doesn't get it, gets confused, thinks I am being serious when I am not. Call it sad, but there's a certain power in that as well, even if people don't get it, and don't laugh because they get confused.
Of course it's your job, then, to relieve that ensuing tension with a friendly smile, or pacifying remark. Which I usually do.