Sexuality, Society, and Feminism

In an article on humor in Sexuality, Society, and Feminism,
Michael Mulkay examined the representation of women in men’s sexual humor by
analyzing dirty jokes collected by folklore researchers and comic routines in
British pubs observed by ethnographers. He identified four basic themes in this
male sexual humor:


1) The primacy of intercourse—all men want is sex.
2) The availability of women—all women are sexually
available to all men even when they pretend not to be.
3) The objectification of women—women exist to meet men’s
needs, and are, or should be, passive.
4) The subordination of women’s discourse—women must be
silenced.

These themes articulate why this
type of sexual humor is offensive and hurtful to women personally and also
detrimental to healthy relationships between men and women. I want to be
careful not to over-generalize from the two studies listed above, which reflect
a fairly small segment of English-speaking males. However, the fact is that
there is an over-abundance of jokes that reflect these themes. I will not
provide examples here, and I assume you don’t need to be convinced of the harm
this kind of humor can do to relationships.
Nevertheless, we have to remember
that some sexual humor can be healthy and appropriate. In the United States
there seems to be a tendency to label humor either dirty or clean, with
anything sexual belonging to the dirty category, thus perpetuating the
unfortunate notion that sex is dirty. I am not opposed to humor with sexual
innuendos, as long as it doesn’t use the themes outlined above. Mulkay’s
identification of these themes can be useful in distinguishing between sexual
humor that is harmful and that which is healthy.

There were three engineers discussing
the design of the human body. The mechanical engineer insisted that it must
have been a mechanical engineer who designed it since without the skeletal
structure we would be like jellyfish. The electrical engineer claimed that an
electrical engineer designed the body, given the importance of the brain and
the nervous system. The civil engineer said, “No, no, no! It had to be a civil
engineer. Who else would put a waste-water treatment facility in the middle of
a recreational area?

Isn’t it curious that while women
laugh more than men, and are even socialized to laugh, they are often told,
subtly and sometimes not so subtly, that they have no sense of humor?
Another way that men and women
differ is in their opinions about what’s funny. The British Association for the
Advancement of Science conducted an experiment over the Internet. The results
of this search for “the world’s funniest joke” in which 350,000 people
submitted and/or rated jokes were published in a book, Laughlab. According to the director, Dr. Richard Wiseman, an
unintended result of the experiment was a more accurate understanding of the
jokes preferred by each sex. Males favored jokes involving aggression, sexual
innuendo and the put-down of women. Women preferred jokes involving word play.
“These findings reflect fundamental differences in the way in which males and
females use humour,” Wiseman asserted. “Males use humour to appear superior to
others, whilst women are more linguistically skilled and prefer word-puns.”
Humor that uses aggression, sexual
innuendo and the putdown of women—especially humor that uses all three—is not
conducive to healthy relationships and, in fact, is harmful.

A difference in taste in jokes is a great
strain on the affections.
—George Eliot, author

A study in the Washington
Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say
to the authors of that study: “Duh.”
—Conan O'Brien, late night
talk show host

Word play:
• A Freudian slip is
when you say one thing and mean your mother.
• When you dream in
color, it’s a pigment of your imagination.

men, women, and humor

While it is no surprise to most
people that men and women are different from each other in a number of vitally
important ways, the differences in how men and women view and express humor are
not always well understood. Just as there are societal expectations about
numerous other gender differences, there are also subtle variations in how men
and women participate in humor.
One key difference: men have more
permission to be funny than women have. Society expects men to perform. Being
funny and clever is one type of performance. However, men also tend to laugh
less, perhaps because male socialization teaches them that they must always be
in control. According to Susan Horowitz in
Queens of Comedy, “The most resistant audiences—for both male and female
comics—are male, mainly because they equate laughter with losing control.”
On the other hand, women have more
permission (perhaps even pressure) to laugh. It makes them a better audience.
Horowitz quotes comic Jerry Seinfeld, “They’re more open. I’ve always felt an
audience dominated by women is great for me because they don’t have any
withholds on getting silly and doing things for fun. A woman’s sense of humor
is much more free, open and loving—it doesn’t have to make sense. If it’s fun,
great.”
Indeed, women, even while they have
been socialized to contain their own sense of humor, are led to believe they
should laugh even if they don’t think something is funny. They’re told it’s
good to laugh at men’s jokes, good to show a lighter side and support men’s
humor. And that may not be all bad. Dr. Madan Kataria, founder of the Laughter
Club movement and author of Laughter for
No Reason, states that even inauthentic or fake laughing delivers the same
health benefits as the real deal. This may be one reason women live longer than
men.

In Honey Hush, Daryl Cumber Dance describes how “proper ladies” are
supposed to laugh. “Hold your hand over your mouth . . . hold it straight and a
little to the side, like you’re going to whisper something to someone next to
you.” Now women seem to be reclaiming their authenticity, consciously choosing
when they will laugh and how. Perhaps that’s one reason feminists are accused
of not having a sense of humor.

A man asked the reference librarian where he could find the
book, The Male: The Superior Sex.
Immediately the librarian responded, “Oh, that would be over in fiction.”

A couple of weeks ago a comedian complained to me it isn’t
fair that women can tell jokes about men and get away with it, but men can’t
tell jokes about women without being criticized. I wanted to tell him about the
various theories on laughter as a weapon of the underdog—but it had too many
words and no pictures. I told him that if all males would relinquish their
power, eradicate rape from the face of the earth and give women twice as much
money as men for the same job, then he could tell as many jokes about women as
he wanted. Until then, tough luck.
From Mary Hirsh, “ Heard Any Good Jokes Lately?” Minnesota Women’s Press

I Saved a Marriage Once

I saved a marriage once. In my humor workshops, I invite participants to take something away that they can use in their lives. One recently married workshop attendee was upset when her hilarious pranks didn’t seem to be funny to her husband. In fact, he was emphatically unappreciative of her efforts at humor. When I spoke about how we tend to give away our own humor instead of finding out what makes others laugh, suddenly the light bulb went on for her. She immediately understood why her prankster tricks weren’t working with her husband. Not only did he not appreciate that kind of humor, she wasn’t at all clear what actually made him laugh. The woman left the workshop intent on finding out. When we met again, she told me her humor relationship with her husband had improved immeasurably. She had discovered he was a punster. Now she enjoys finding puns that make him laugh.
Experiences like this keep me going in this business!
However, there also have been marriages that I could not save. For example, Cameron hired me as her humor coach because she wanted to lighten up. In truth, her husband, Keith, wanted her to lighten up. Committed as she was to being the best partner she could be, she came to me to learn how. For several weeks, she spent time getting to know his humor, creating opportunities to bring humor to their relationship as well as to the rest of her life. She had great success bringing humor to her relationship with her five-year-old son and to her work as a physician in a small town clinic.
During one of our conversations, she happened to mention her concerns about Keith’s gambling. Having spent four years in the Professional Education Department at Hazelden, I understood how addictions could destroy relationships. I urged her to protect herself and her son and referred her to professionals who could help with that issue. As it turned out, my suspicions that Keith’s gambling were at the root of the family’s problems were confirmed. The family had been devastated financially by Keith’s gambling and that he was unwilling to seek professional help. Cameron continues to lighten up and develop her humor outside that relationship.
Both of these examples illustrate an important lesson about humor and healthy relationships: humor is a tool, a means to an end, not the end itself. True intimacy requires a respectful, trusting relationship. Without the commitment to re-establish trust, Cameron’s effort to lighten up within her relationship with Keith was doomed. Humor doesn’t promote intimacy where there is distrust, disrespect or denial. Healthy humor is based on relational trust.

*******

Write a fun personal ad. If you are already with a partner, write one for each other. Write what you think your partner wants in a mate. Compare ads.

Senior Personal Want Ads:
WINNING SMILE: Active grandmother with original teeth seeking a dedicated flosser to share rare steaks, corn on the cob, and caramel candy.

MINT CONDITION: Male, 1922, high mileage, good condition, some hair, many new parts including hip, knee, cornea, valves. Isn't in running condition, but walks well.

I’m tired of all this business about beauty being only skin deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want—an adorable pancreas?
—Jean Kerr, writer

Humor as Aikido or “Tongue-Fu”

For many of us, fighting or fleeing is the automatic reaction to conflict. It is possible to develop a third way—go with the flow. Thomas Crum, author of The Magic of Conflict, teaches the martial art aikido as a metaphor for embracing conflict as an opportunity. Rather than fighting back or running away, you learn to go with the flow, to embrace the energy. Crum urges us to relate to conflict as a gift of energy, in which neither side loses and a new dance is created.

I first encountered Crum at a conference sponsored by The Humor Project in Saratoga Springs, New York. In demonstrating aikido, he proposed that humor can be a verbal form of aikido. Crum tells how a teacher dealt with her students when they all conspired to push their books off their desks at the same time. She had her back to them, writing on the blackboard, when the clock struck 2:00 and in unison the books hit the floor. Without missing a beat, the teacher turned around, pushed her book off her desk, and said, “Sorry I'm late.” By joining in the mischief, she demonstrated going with the flow.

Another example of using humor as aikido or “tongue-fu” is from Joel Goodman, director of The Humor Project. He tells the story of a woman who got an obscene phone call at 3:00 A.M. The voice on the other end of the line asked, “Can I take your clothes off?” The woman yelled into the phone, “Well, what the hell are you doing with them on anyway?”

I shared the above stories with the late Bea Swanson, an Ojibwe elder. She said when she gets an obscene phone call, she asks the caller if he needs to talk. She is there to listen.

Some time ago, for my professional growth, I attended a week-long humor workshop in the New York Adirondacks, put on by The Humor Project. One evening a group of us, men and women, went to the local bar. Usually I don’t like the bar scene, but I figured there was safety in numbers. I was standing with our group, when one of the locals, who was drunk, took me by the hand and led me over to dance with his buddy. Mind you, he didn’t ask, but just pulled me over. I was shocked and didn’t offer resistance at the time. Thank God, his buddy wasn’t interested in dancing. A while later when I was sitting at the end of our booth, the same guy came over, picked me up (and I am no featherweight) and carried me to the dance floor to dance with him this time.

The irony was that we had just learned about using humor as aikido. The session was on how humor, like aikido, can be an art form turning a conflicting situation into an opportunity. One learns to use the energy of an attacker and turn the attack into a dance, where no one gets hurt.

Here I am on the dance floor (again without being asked). How do I turn this energy, which feels like an attack, into a dance? It was a fast dance so I could keep my distance from him. However, at one point in the dance, he decided to pick me up again. This time, since I was ready and had my arms in front of me, I pushed off his chest. He finally got the message, and I returned to the booth with the other workshop participants.

I was upset. The next day, for the first time, I had the courage to talk to four men about that experience. I received a broad range of responses. The lawyer said, “Boys will be boys.” The psychologist’s comment about the man’s behavior was that it was inappropriate. The high school counselor realized he had not talked with his eighteen- year-old daughter about these kinds of things. (I appreciated that someone might benefit from this incident.) Finally, the male kindergarten teacher said, “That was a violation.” His response made a difference; somebody got it!

At the gift center at the local park, I bought myself a present to turn this negative experience around: a T-shirt with wild animals on it and the inscription—Get to Know the Locals. Despite this experience, it was a wonderful week.

If you want world peace, you must learn to let go of attachments and truly live like nomads. That's where I no mad at you, you no mad at me.

—Swami Beyondananda http://www.WakeUpLaughing.com

Don’t Be Offended, Even if It Is Intended

In my humor workshops, we explore various uses of humor to turn tense situations around and brainstorm lighthearted options for reducing the impact of stress on our lives. Stress is one component of life, perhaps, part of the human condition. Stress emanates from positive events as well as negative. Whatever the source, we can learn to reduce its impact in our lives by incorporating laughter into our day. One common source of stress, particularly for women, is taking someone’s comments too seriously. It is not easy, but since I’ve applied the practice of not being offended, I am a lot happier and more serene. People have to work harder to offend me. On the other hand, it’s a paradox. Don’t be offended, and don’t put up with put-downs. I urge people who are offended by toxic humor to use the offense as an opportunity to educate.

One simple technique is to ask the offender to explain the joke or comment. A joke often loses its appeal when it needs to be explained. Avoid sources of negative humor. That is, avoid people you experience as being negative or offensive. Another way to build your humor immunity is to be prepared. Who says humor always has to be spontaneous? Have humorous comebacks ready for situations or circumstances that repeatedly happen.

In her book, They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor, Regina Barreca describes a great comeback. Former news anchor Connie Chung was asked by a new co-worker about the relationship between her position as an Asian- American woman and her rapid rise in the broadcasting field. Her response to the insensitive question was both keen and humorous. She pointed to the senior vice president and announced, “Bill likes the way I do his shirts.”

Personally, I am not quick at comebacks. I often think of a funny response to a situation a day or two later. Of course, it’s better late than never. It takes practice. I still enjoy my funny responses even if they don’t occur to me right away. At times when you wished that you had a witty response, talk it over with others. Together you might come up with one. Even if you didn’t get to use it at the moment, it can be a good way to let go of negative experiences. And you’ll be prepared if a similar situation happens again.

During one humor and spirituality retreat, a participant, Pam, brought up the following situation in which she would have liked a comeback: While she was standing in a buffet line at a restaurant, a couple of white guys behind her were impatient with two Latinos ahead of them and snidely questioned whether the Latinos had green cards. Her response might have been to say, “I wonder where we would be if Native Americans had required us to have green cards.”

Humor and Stress

Laughter is one of the most effective tools we have in overcoming stress and the limitations it puts on our lives. Humor allows us to forego pomposity, and increases our possibilities to discover options and live joyfully.

—Loretta LaRoche, public speaker

Stress is one of the leading causes of ill health. Humor, a powerful coping mechanism, relieves stress and adds years to life. The Loma Linda University Web site states that, according to a President’s Science Advisory, stress costs our economy $200 billion annually.

According to Jane Wagner, in her delightful book, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, “Reality is the greatest source of stress amongst those in touch with it.” Wagner further asserts that since she put reality on the “back burner,” her life became “jam-packed and fun-filled.” One way of reducing tension in our lives is to envision a lighter view of reality. For instance, I grew up with the notion that life is hard work. Since I have now put that view of reality on the back burner, my life, too, has become jam-packed and fun-filled.