Women’s Humor - It’s about stories, reality and sharing

I saw two specials the other day on Comedy Central.  Both were hosted by comics.  One was a woman, the other a man.   The woman was significantly funnier than the man was.  Their styles were different too. She was more self-deprecating, and not afraid to be "naked" as we say in the blogosphere, when it came to how she joked about life, her travels through it, and her observations of it.  And the crowd was laughing out loud.   

The man’s humor was different.  It was more one liners and more challenges to the audience that they had better laugh, his material was funny!  His flow was off too, probably just a bad night, but while he is a funny, national headliner for comics, he seemed more prone to goad the audience into laughing about his material than telling a story to have them laugh with him.  It was an interesting contrast between the two.

That got me to wondering about humor between men and women.  Have you ever wondered how they differ or are the same?   Well there’s a great article, written by Gina Barreca, at Ms. Magazine entitled  "Real stories, real laughter, real women" that I think you might like that talks about this.

Gina Barreca makes this interesting observation about the differences:

The difference, in fact, between men’s humor and women’s humor seems to
be the difference between revolt and revolution. Masculine humor has of
course included digs at the conventions of the world, poked fun at the
institutions and establishments, but without the truly anarchic edge
that characterizes feminine humor. Women’s humor calls into question
the largest issues, questions the way the world is put together.

She also makes note that feminine humor has been and is often hidden:

Why has the feminine tradition of humor, ubiquitous as it is, remained
essentially hidden from the mainstream? In part it is due to the
Tupperware mentality that sought to preserve humor by keeping away from
the potentially hazardous male gaze. If men didn’t find funny what we
found funny, then they would think we were foolish. If they thought our
joking was foolish, we might learn to like it less ourselves. It wasn’t
worth the risk.

You can read the whole article for yourself by clicking to this link here.

(photo courtesy of benhamin’s photos, used under Creative Commons license)