Women Aren't Funny

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Russell Parr
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Women Aren't Funny

Post by Russell Parr »

I've recently finally gotten around to reading Otto Weininger's Sex and Character. It's been a delightful read, and I'm just a bit over halfway through it so far. I'm impressed and appreciative of the first part regarding sexual complexity; it's given me a much clearer perspective on how the distribution of certain behavioral characteristics is dependent on the varied balances in one's sexual genetic makeup, despite gender.

Today, while reflecting, I wondered what Google would suggest if I started the search with "women are". The one that caught my attention was, you guessed it, "women aren't funny." This led me to an interesting article written by a Christopher Hitchens for the magazine Vanity Fair. While I recognize Hitchens from an image search, I'm not all that familiar with him. I just did a quick forum search on Hitchens and found that he has been the subject of a few conversations here.

Here's a link to the article.

A few notes:
  • What Hitchens is basically saying without saying it is that women aren't funny because they're illogical.
  • His reasons for women's lack of ability in logical thought is two fold: 1) because they don't have to be, from an evolutionary standpoint. Men excel in logic to such a degree that there is very little to zero need for women to go through the pains of the transition from stupidity to logical consistency. A substantially overbearing influence to this, and more fundamental, is 2) the fact that women are primarily responsible for human reproduction. Women are almost always engaged in the evaluation and/or management of their social status in regards to her sexuality, and are highly valued by sexually driven men (i.e., nearly all men) for doing so.
  • Another note of influence, not explicitly pointed out by Hitchens, is that children symbolize the fundamental innocence of humans, which is greatly treasured by adults, and is mostly felt lost among men. Women are, in a sense, the bearers of human innocence. Men try to compensate for this loss (e.g., by being humorous), while women instead try to personify it.
  • Reading Weininger has made me more alert to notice any particularly male-ish physical characteristics in women based on their stance on things. In the article, Hitchens refers to his conversations with a couple of female comedians, and their opinions on humor in women. So when he quoted comedian Fran Lebowitz in saying "The cultural values are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what's more male than that?", I did a google image search on her expecting to see a masculine looking woman. I ended up, for a second, thinking that my search had gone wrong, as I was sure that I was looking at a long haired man.

    He then addresses his discussion with Nora Ephron saying that "Ms. Ephron did not disagree. She did, however, in what I thought was a slightly feline way, accuse me of plagiarizing a rant by Jerry Lewis that said much the same thing." [Lewis on female comedians: 'I cannot sit and watch a lady diminish her qualities to the lowest common denominator.']I then performed an image search on her, expecting a more feminine appearance, and what else appears but plenty of makeup and hair styling. Still interesting to note is the masculine sharpness to her thin complexion.

    This, of course, does not prove that you can completely judge a book by it's cover, but the consistency cannot be denied.
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Kelly Jones
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Kelly Jones »

Great post, Russell.

All I'd add is that neoteny, self-presentation as infant, is what Weininger would class a sexual character for women. Babies giggle and laugh, not from a startled admiration of someone's contrived contrapposition of the real vs. imaginary (the sense of humour), but from a primitive surprise displayed in a way to please the parent. It takes experience, imagination, and rationality to recognise a cunningly contrived humorous situation, but also a willingness to recognise the game the contriver is playing. So there is also an element of socialising in laughter, a willingness to join in a game of camaraderie, and to applaud the wit of the humorist.

Neoteny is becoming a very popular trait for any gender. Could this be why most leading comedians these days are angry and emotional? E.g. David Mitchell, Russell Brand, Larry David, Ricky Gervais, and their ilk. If social comedy is about group cohesion, it makes sense that they use a form of comedy that women can understand and appreciate.

There are very few classy intellects around. Anyone know of any contemporary comedians who don't whinge, or who do so ironically - like a Jonathan Swift?
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Russell Parr
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Russell Parr »

Kelly Jones wrote:Neoteny is becoming a very popular trait for any gender. Could this be why most leading comedians these days are angry and emotional? E.g. David Mitchell, Russell Brand, Larry David, Ricky Gervais, and their ilk. If social comedy is about group cohesion, it makes sense that they use a form of comedy that women can understand and appreciate.
Interesting point. In the US, Kevin Hart is probably the most popular comedian these days. He fits the description quite well: he's the miniature version of a full grown man, and his act includes lots of babyish whining and admissions of insecurity due to being small.
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Kunga
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Kunga »

Maybe the men that don't think women are funny have no sense of humor ?
Or their sense of humor is biased/limited by their deeply misogynistic psychological wiring ?
Funny, that the men that don't think women are funny, don't take women seriously....they should think women are hilarious.
I mean seriously....if women can't be taken seriously...then the only option is that they are a comical manifestation of illogic, and that should be funny, logically. So, if men that are logical, see women as not funny, then it's the men that are illogical, because they don't laugh at women that aren't logical, they laugh at men that are logical, which isn't funny, because logic isn't funny.
Last edited by Kunga on Fri Nov 01, 2013 12:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cold Cave
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Cold Cave »

Kelly Jones wrote: There are very few classy intellects around. Anyone know of any contemporary comedians who don't whinge, or who do so ironically - like a Jonathan Swift?
Zach Galifianakis. He can be hit or miss, but has very different brand of humour i find quite brilliant.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Russell Parr »

Kunga wrote:Or their sense of humor is biased by their deeply misogynistic psychological wiring ?
I will note that the Jerry Lewis quote I mentioned [source] actually gives off a misogynistic undertone, as he is implying that performing comedy, which he describes as "diminishing one's qualities to the lowest common denominator," not only serves to diminish women's femininity (and he's right), but also that such an act of self-exposure should be limited to men. He, like most men, would rather have women stay cute and innocent than to subject themselves to self-reflection.
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Kunga
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Kunga »

Russell wrote:an act of self-exposure should be limited to men. He, like most men, would rather have women stay cute and innocent than to subject themselves to self-reflection.
I don't see this as being misogynistic, it's not coming from a deep seated hatred of women, but from a deep seated respect for women.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Russell Parr »

Oh Kunga.
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Kunga
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Kunga »

And Jerry Lewis was a good Jewish boy.
I loved him btw.
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Russell Parr
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Russell Parr »

What do you think of the reader comments from that article? Most of them (especially women) dismiss Lewis as a misogynist, although for different reasons than I outlined.
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Cory Duchesne
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

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Kelly Jones wrote:Great post, Russell.

All I'd add is that neoteny, self-presentation as infant, is what Weininger would class a sexual character for women. Babies giggle and laugh, not from a startled admiration of someone's contrived contrapposition of the real vs. imaginary (the sense of humour), but from a primitive surprise displayed in a way to please the parent.
If we relate this to comedy or preforming, it would seem that the audience becomes the parent. A society that expresses itself with increasing neoteny is a society of increasingly low-scope parents. So if we're disastisfied with the immature behavior we have to examine what's happening in the family unit.

My own recent experience is that mothers tend to see everything as very small, suffering and helpless. It's both their strength and their weakness. I had to recently schedule my own mother on a calender, limiting her visits to the holidays. A man's mother has a way of slowly soaking into his consciousness in a way that makes him feel helpless and small. It's the way a mother treats her son in a sequence of moments. It's hard to notice what's happening, but many of the gestures are of devaluation, belittling. This is true even when she has the most warmest and kindest intentions. With girlfriends there's a similar process of belittling the man's interest, and leading him into more social concerns.

Because a man feels so cloistered by the gestures of devaluation, the artistic and comedic expressions become very primitive, vulgar, angry and approval seeking. It's a way of blowing off steam. An overly maternal environment is a very oppressed one. The oppression manifests in vulgarity of all kinds. In the lower-classes of Catholicism, we see Priests dressed in pink with a predominantly female and child audience. We find higher incidences of pedophilia in these overly maternal environments.

I see Comedians like Louis CK as a kind of bridge between the Dionysian and Apollonian. He uses a lot of vulgarity to make relatively sophisticated points, so you can see how Neoteny, if used with skill, can form a bridge of transmission, elevating the culture. Leadership is essentially the ability to inflict pain, to push peoples negative emotional buttons so that the programming soaks in with more concentration. It's a sign of a culture feeling desperation, and in North Americas case, a culture oppressed by its poor use of excessive freedom.

"I think the reason that swearing is both so offensive and so attractive is that it is a way to push people's emotional buttons, and especially their negative emotional buttons. Because words soak up emotional connotations and are processed involuntarily by the listener, you can't will yourself not to treat the word in terms of what it means." (Steven Pinker)
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Cahoot
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Cahoot »

Russell wrote:
Kunga wrote:Or their sense of humor is biased by their deeply misogynistic psychological wiring ?
I will note that the Jerry Lewis quote I mentioned [source] actually gives off a misogynistic undertone, as he is implying that performing comedy, which he describes as "diminishing one's qualities to the lowest common denominator," not only serves to diminish women's femininity (and he's right), but also that such an act of self-exposure should be limited to men. He, like most men, would rather have women stay cute and innocent than to subject themselves to self-reflection.
Lewis does make his evaluation of female comedians in terms of “broad comedy,” which was his specialty.

That he has no favorite female comedian of any style speaks more to his limited interest in his own specialty of broad comedy.

Mae West was funny but she came from an age of heavy literary influence and her style was one-liners and word play, like Steve Wright. Her comedic shock value, appreciated in her time, lay in self-determination and control by a woman, rather than the self-deprecation of humping a barstool onstage.

Funny that today Shakespeare is considered high-brow but in his day he wrote for the common folk.
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Kunga
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

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Russell wrote:What do you think of the reader comments from that article? Most of them (especially women) dismiss Lewis as a misogynist, although for different reasons than I outlined.
All I know is that when I was young [7-10 ?] I remember watching his movies and laughing a lot. I didn't think he was funny anymore as he aged, and as I became an adult.

I don't think of him as a misogynist. His reasons for not thinking women are funny are based more on his respect for the feminine. To "lower" oneself to the "lowest common denominator", which entails gross, lewid, baudy, obnoxious behavior [unlady like/ masculine], is hard for him to laugh at, as his esteem for the feminine would be tainted.

That's how I sense it.

I was trying to find a funny YT video of him to post....but I no longer see much humor in his antics. Perhaps I was influenced as a child by the people I lived with.

I think sometimes women over-react/dramatise...as in some of the comments of his misogyny. Perhaps if they thought more about why he said what he said, they'd realize what I realized...that Lewis idealized femininity, and didn't think women made good comedians, not because they weren't intelligent, but because of their feminine nature , it was unbecoming for them.
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Cahoot
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

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Kunga wrote:
Russell wrote:What do you think of the reader comments from that article? Most of them (especially women) dismiss Lewis as a misogynist, although for different reasons than I outlined.
All I know is that when I was young [7-10 ?] I remember watching his movies and laughing a lot. I didn't think he was funny anymore as he aged, and as I became an adult.

I don't think of him as a misogynist. His reasons for not thinking women are funny are based more on his respect for the feminine. To "lower" oneself to the "lowest common denominator", which entails gross, lewid, baudy, obnoxious behavior [unlady like/ masculine], is hard for him to laugh at, as his esteem for the feminine would be tainted.

That's how I sense it.

I was trying to find a funny YT video of him to post....but I no longer see much humor in his antics. Perhaps I was influenced as a child by the people I lived with.

I think sometimes women over-react/dramatise...as in some of the comments of his misogyny. Perhaps if they thought more about why he said what he said, they'd realize what I realized...that Lewis idealized femininity, and didn't think women made good comedians, not because they weren't intelligent, but because of their feminine nature , it was unbecoming for them.
Would you then say that in general, abusive men who idealize women have a faith in what a woman should be, and are abusive when a woman falls short of the ideal?

"... he has cultivated faith - faith in a saviour or an ideal - and faith invariably breeds violence."
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Kunga
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

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Cahoot wrote:Would you then say that in general, abusive men who idealize women have a faith in what a woman should be, and are abusive when a woman falls short of the ideal?

"... he has cultivated faith - faith in a saviour or an ideal - and faith invariably breeds violence."

I don't think men that idealize women, are abusive towards them....quite the opposite. Men that abuse women have no respect, so how could they idealize something they have no respect for ?

An abusive person feels threatened,and is in need of power, and will prey on the weakest & most vunerable to empower himself. Not all women are weak and vunerable...so women that cannot be bullied by an abuser, are the strong and independant types.
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

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Kunga wrote:
Cahoot wrote:Would you then say that in general, abusive men who idealize women have a faith in what a woman should be, and are abusive when a woman falls short of the ideal?

"... he has cultivated faith - faith in a saviour or an ideal - and faith invariably breeds violence."

I don't think men that idealize women, are abusive towards them....quite the opposite. Men that abuse women have no respect, so how could they idealize something they have no respect for ?

An abusive person feels threatened,and is in need of power, and will prey on the weakest & most vunerable to empower himself. Not all women are weak and vunerable...so women that cannot be bullied by an abuser, are the strong and independant types.
Well, ol' Jerry reportedly was. Is?

Abuse is a form of violence.
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Kunga
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Kunga »

Cahoot wrote:Well, ol' Jerry reportedly was. Is?

Abuse is a form of violence.
Wel, I don't have the time right now to investigate his life & how he abused women....yes, I did read how he mentally and physicall abused his kids.
Of course abuse is a forum of violence....no doubt about it !

The faith causing violence I also understand....as we all have seen what religion can do.

I guess it all boils down to our perceptions.
Wrong view or perception, will generate the wrong response.
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

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Kunga wrote: The faith causing violence I also understand....as we all have seen what religion can do.
Then, since we’ve all seen what faith in religion can do, and since faith is a conceptual ideal, we can say that since faith invariably breeds violence, the mental violence of misogyny is bred from faith in an arbitrary, conceptual ideal of a woman.

The trick is to make the real the ideal, without faith.
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Kunga
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Kunga »

Cahoot wrote:the mental violence of misogyny is bred from faith in an arbitrary, conceptual ideal of a woman.The trick is to make the real the ideal, without faith.
Yes. But misogyny is a hatred that is blind to the ideal of woman being anything but inferior. Faith based on hatred cannot see truth.
Truth is based on the real. Faith without hatred has altruistic motivations...higher ideals. Hatred can only lead to false ideals.

Faith in altruistic ideals opens the way for the real to enter.
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Cahoot »

Faith in any savior or any ideal invariably leads to violence of thought, speech, or action. Even faith in the rightness of one’s words.

By the time the groundless emptiness of no-faith becomes apparent it’s too late to back out. The truth can’t be unseen.

Keep in mind violence can also lead to the faithful, making them victims, but because faith is, faith invariably leads to violence.
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Dennis Mahar »

if you 'see woman/see killer'
its your shit
empty
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Cahoot
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

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Sure, if your perception is based on faith.

That’s the beauty of Krishnamurti’s insight. It’s logically unassailable.
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Kunga
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Kunga »

Faith is not synonymous with violence.
Being faithful to your wife/husband does not mean you are being violent.

Faith is trusting in the absence of proof.
Do you need to be reassured daily that your wife isn't cheating on you ?

Oh yea of little faith ?
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Dennis Mahar »

In the state of nirvana, all is seen to be empty, and nothing is right
or wrong, better or worse.

How hard can it be to understand that?
Too simple for clever dicks.
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Re: Women Aren't Funny

Post by Dennis Mahar »

That’s the beauty of Krishnamurti’s insight. It’s logically unassailable.
logic is empty.
wtf?
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