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February 25, 2005
Men, Women, and Humor
For certain persons who don't think women are as funny as men, Cruella talks about an Ontario study that sought to see differences between men and women when it comes to humor and how that relates to sexual attraction. Dr. Eric Bressler polled 150 students about what they meant by a "sense of humour". He found that "for a woman, a GSOH means someone who makes her laugh. For a man, it means someone who laughs at his jokes."
So, those poor guys seek out women who think they are funny, but women go for content? No wonder the guys have such a hard time defining humor. It's all about getting an audience and maybe even a roll in the hay.
Posted on February 25, 2005 at 12:34 PM | Permalink
Comments
"for a woman, a GSOH means someone who makes her laugh. For a man, it means someone who laughs at his jokes."
Notice, though, that those two viewpoints are completely compatible with each other. Let's say that Bob can reliably make Alice laugh. Then Alice thinks Bob has a good sense of humor (he makes her laugh), and Bob thinks Alice has a good sense of humor (she laughs at his jokes). Everyone's happy.
Posted by: Joe Buck at Feb 25, 2005 4:36:38 PM
That's the danger of looking at things from a functionalist perspective: just because something works, doesn't mean everything's copacetic. The commonalities required to find the same things funny precede the telling or hearing of jokes. The sexism lies in the assumption that men actively tell jokes, women passively hear them.
Posted by: FoolishOwl at Feb 28, 2005 2:10:02 PM
Not only that, it only works if Bob is a reasonably decent joke-teller. If he can't make Alice laugh, they're both hosed as long as they both take that view of GSOH.
I've had the experience of being able to tell jokes and make people laugh, and to laugh at their jokes; and then half an hour later, somebody said something to me that I thought was rude or just plain not funny, and when I didn't laugh at it, all of a sudden I have no sense of humour. I haven't observed that to be limited to men. There are a lot of people whose idea of "sense of humour" hinges on whether you agreed 100% with them on what is and isn't funny.
I wonder if maybe it's a replay of the "men make the move and women respond" script, and everybody's just sort of playing along because it's not as obvious a rendition of that script as the better-known "men have to be the ones to ask for dates" version. I'm sure some people have made an effort to break the man-asks-for-date pattern for equality's sake, because it's fairly obvious; but a subtler pattern such as different perceptions of GSOH might go unnoticed, and everybody might just be unconsciously playing out their prescribed roles.
Dunno. I'm a woman, and I tell jokes all the time. Couldn't tell ya.
[Is it just me, or does this field render strange in IE? The script seems to be under the mistaken impression that I'm at a 1024 monitor res...works fine in Netscape]
Posted by: Frida at Feb 28, 2005 9:19:34 PM
