Culture . 02/22/2008 02:44 PM . Jennifer Carden

I’ve thought long and hard about suing Christopher Hitchens for stealing my “Why Women Aren’t Funny” idea, and worse, beating it beyond all plausibility into a platform for incontinent, self-congratulatory ramblings.

Those who know me can attest to the fact that I’ve been planning to write an article on girls not being funny for years. I can only assume that my plan reached Hitchens—probably sulking in a bar after a much younger woman didn’t find “but I’m f-ing Christopher Hitchens!” particularly compelling—at which point he staggered out of the bar, filled with the sense of purpose only a straight fifth of scotch at ten in the morning can endow, and wrote the entire piece.

At least, that’s one explanation for the article, which is a) not funny, b) really, really, not funny at all, and c) largely based on a plodding, upsettingly lengthy analysis of a Rudyard Kipling poem.

I kid you not. Stanzas and stanzas of Kipling, interspersed with analytical gems like, “For women, reproduction is, if not the only thing, certainly the main thing.”

Based equally on a misinterpreted Stanford study and his own opinion—“If I am correct about this, which I am” serves as primary source evidence—Hitchens’ major thesis is that women are “slower to get [jokes], more pleased when they do, and swift to locate the unfunny.” And that’s just when they’re confronted with humor. On this basis, “is it any wonder,” Hitchens ponders, “that they’re backward in generating it?”

The entire essay is rife with a sort of wink-wink-nudge-nudge impudence that has led many to believe that he wrote the entire piece in hopes that women would take it seriously, miss the joke, and prove his point. If so, then game, set, and match to Hitchens.

But frankly, I don’t really care about his motivation. I care about the way he dealt with the topic. Or didn’t. I agree that women aren’t funny, but I happen to believe the reasons extend beyond the fact that we are capable of bearing children.

Before I delve into my thoughts on the subject, however, let’s get this out of the way – “funny” is a qualia, or a sensory perception that can’t be explained by any part of its physical makeup or content.

What you and I sense as “funny” will often be entirely disparate (for example, I love Arrested Development and hate South Park), while other times, we might agree (hopefully, we both agree that the Colbert Report is usually hilarious). What people find “funny” is directly related to their life experiences, their environment, their personality, their intelligence, their childhood environment, and more specific to this article, their gender.

Yet a few nearly absolute commonalities still exist. Try this little test for me: Take a second and list your top five funniest people.

Done? Okay.

So, how many of the people on that list have ovaries?

Honestly, unless the title of this article jogged your gender-conscious sensibilities, I would be shocked if you gave me a number above zero.

When I’ve given this test in person, if I press for a member of the ovary contingent, I will eventually get names like Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Sarah Silverman, but only when I press. And when I ask the fatal question, “Well, then, do you think men are, overall, more funny than women?” the answer has always, always been yes. Obviously, the Y chromosomes have this one in the bag.

But if it’s not our unfaltering focus on reproduction—if I’m correct, which I am—or the vague notion that we’re, uh, women and somehow too slow to understand and appreciate humor, then why are we collectively less funny than our male counterparts? I submit to you two reasons.

Number One: Men don’t like funny women.

From a very young age, boys find that the skill of making people—especially women—laugh is about like being able to tear up phone books with your bare hands. If you possess it, men will respect and envy you. Women will want you.

We’ve seen this play out in countless films. The shlubby, overweight, funny guy lands the beautiful, albeit usually hardened and stressed-out female, because after a succession of jokes, she realizes that he makes her feel “at home,” and that she just “wants someone to laugh with” – not the other, super hot, perfectly nice guy with the bedroom eyes waiting at her beck and call. And hey, to some degree, it’s true. According to surveys, 77% of women placed “a good sense of humor” above “physically attractive” in response to questions determining the qualities they found most appealing in the opposite sex.

To guys, this is like a free pass into the wonderful world of smoking hot chicks. The only requirement? A couple of good jokes and decent comedic timing.

Armed with this information, visions of voluptuous blondes dancing in their eyes, men hone their skills carefully, jockeying for position among their friends. When you see men crowd around a nubile female, what do they do? They constantly put each other down, and top each other’s big-fish stories, each submitting a “fistful” of his own humor into what is most certainly a hard-fought battle for the sweet, sweet sound of her benign giggle.

Reverse that image for one moment. How does the nubile girl pick up gaggle of guys? Does she think to herself, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to walk over to their table, and I’m going to tell a joke. They will be eating from the palm of my dainty little hand.”

Hardly.

Hopefully, she starts out by being nubile ( which is a big hope, ‘cause the free pass into the world of smoking hot men is shockingly not “a good personality” ). Then, she combs her hair, brushes her teeth, and shaves her legs so as to appear even more nubile. As you might guess, 99% of men in the survey I mentioned earlier rated physical attractiveness over humor.

Secondly, she giggles. I’m serious. She giggles.

You see, according to Eric Bressler, a psychologist at McMaster University in Canada, men and women don’t mean the same thing when they say they value humor in a long-term partner.

His research in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior manipulated how funny both men and women appeared on paper. Subjects were asked to choose a potential date of the opposite sex. Bressler found that women want a man who is a humor “generator,” while men seek a humor “appreciator.” Essentially, women want a man who will make them laugh, and men want a woman they can make laugh. As Hitchens put its in one of his more coherent sections, “[Men] want [ women ] as an audience, not as rivals.”

I believe this concept to be absolutely paramount to the whole discussion. If you note what we’ve found, women have absolutely no reason to develop their skills as humor generators, because they will eventually place her in competition with the males she would like to attract. If she feeds on this competition, her burgeoning skill will likely relegate her to status as “one of the boys,” or as a cold, hard, uh, shrew. It’s just not worth it.

So those skills go without honing, and the majority of women are resigned to a giggle, to the relief and appreciation of their surrounding males.

The minority chooses a different route.

Hence, Number two: “Funny” women tend to compartmentalize their humor into specific, schticky categories.

Hitchens nearly brings this subject up in his piece, although he skims the surface. “There are some impressive ladies out there,” he admits. “Most though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three.”

I would add “crass,” and “feminist” to his list, but I think he had a good start. We’re all familiar with the list of “funny women: Ellen DeGeneres, Whoopi Goldberg, Phyllis Diller, Margaret Cho, Sarah Silverman, etc. These women are touted as shining examples of feminine humor, but in fact, most of them sacrifice their femininity for the sake of humor.

Sarah Silverman is a prime example. The first woman to score her own Comedy Central show, Silverman is generally known as the first lady of comedy. A look at her stand-up routines, however, renders “lady” an inappropriate descriptor.

( Full disclosure: I also think she’s terrifically un-funny ).

Though she is written of in surprisingly Harlequin Romance-esque terms – comments about her slim, yet coltish “full figure” pepper most major articles – she wields her attractiveness as a tool to offset the shockingly coarse content of her routines. She’s not universally funny in a way that most everyone can appreciate, like, say, Demetri Martin, or Jon Stewart; she’s just shockingly, relentlessly dirty.

With a virginal smile and a naïve, girlish deadpan, she cockily recounts various and sundry sexual experiences from the stage, and makes stomach-turning, insensitive stabs at off-limits topics like abortion, rape, racism, and the Holocaust. With every joke, she systematically skewers the modesty, temperance, and gentility expected of a woman.

Yes, her routines get their share of uncomfortable laughter, but her humor relies entirely on its shock value – not on the basis of its cleverness, or delivery. To borrow Dr. Johnson’s line from Hitchens: it’s like the “comparison of a woman preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs: the surprise is that it is done at all.”

But do men find Sarah Silverman funny? Some do, yes – because of her attractiveness, her outrageous attachment to poop jokes + other off-color material, and the novelty she represents: a beautiful woman behaving in ways society deems inappropriate.

However, I think it’s safe to say that if most men met a Sarah Silverman in a bar, they might pick her up, but they’d probably drop her off the next day. Whether or not they find her shtick funny and momentarily appealing, no man wants a girlfriend making crude jokes around his mom’s kitchen table. In Bressler’s study, while men were found not to be interested in “humor-producing women” in long-term relationships, they showed a preference for such types when it came to short-term relationships and one-night stands.

Women like Sarah Silverman may have attempted to rise above their humor-challenged sisters-in-arms and increase the estrogen levels in the world of funny, but all they’ve really managed is to do is emulate men AND alienate them ( and most women, too ) at the same time.

So, is there a mid-range between the mindless giggler and the de-feminized vamp?

It’s difficult to say.

As a woman who grew up in a house full of very funny brothers, where every clever remark was hard-earned, and learning to tell a well-crafted story was a pre-req for speaking at the dinner table, I hope so. I certainly enjoy the feeling of a perfectly-timed retort, and relish being able to hold my own in banter-filled conversation.

I don’t think that makes me any less a woman.

But I have learned over the years, like so many other women, that sometimes, it’s better to sit back and laugh at someone else’s joke, rather than making my own. Sometimes, it’s better to let the perfect jab slip away rather than destroying a fragile male ego with one stroke – it’s more advisable to ‘not be funny.’

Thankfully, discretion is generally a feminine trait.

Jennifer Carden is the editor-in-chief of Kritik.


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