Gender Equality in Humor

I was watching a show a few months ago featuring an author who wrote a book about talking to boys. In her book she asked boys, essentially, “What’s important about being a boy?” Number 4 on the list–if I’m remembering correctly–was “being funny.” This author also wrote a book about talking to girls. I’d bet folding money “being funny” wasn’t number 4 on the girls’ list. In fact, I’d be surprised if it made the list at all.

I’ve gotten into flame wars before about the subject of women and humor. If you’d like me to die of a rage stroke please tell me that men are inherently funnier than women. No, wait, don’t do that: I have lots more mediocre jokes to tell on a somewhat well-known blog known primarily for covering politics and baseball.

Anyway, yada yada yada men and women are both funny. And I think they’re equally funny. But there’s probably never going to be the same quantity of funny women as there are men until we start valuing and encouraging funniness in women. Basically, we need to get “being funny” on our lists.

It’s something we don’t do now. We tell women they aren’t funny. We also tell them, “Hey, funny schmunny, lemme get a look at that AZZ.” So, girls tend not to grow up thinking “I want to make people laugh.” They grow up thinking “I want to attract people.” And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting be attractive. But I do think women are going to lag behind–ever so slightly–in the game of humor if they don’t start thinking about it almost as a competitive sport.

There’s also the matter of establishing yourself in the comedy world–it can be grueling. It’s not conducive to keeping marriages afloat and raising children. So for women (and women only, naturally), it often comes down to choosing between a career in comedy or having any sort of personal life. I watched a documentary about women in comedy and many of the comediennes said even dating was difficult. So until we have more egalitarian arrangements in our marriages and home lives, women will not have the voice in comedy that men have.

One thing I love about the internet is that so far as humor goes, it’s a decent equalizer. Yes, women are going to be harassed for being snarky and funny, but the bottom line is is that everyone can blog. So it’s heartening to me that some of the funniest voices on the internet are women’s. Perhaps being funny on the internet will translate to being funny everywhere someday.