Why Are Some Men Turned Off By Funny Women?

[ismnotwasm]

This is a no- holds--barred opinion piece I found very interesting

Women can be funny. Why is this obvious fact still controversial?

We're at the beginning of what's looking like a new age of female comedy. A brigade of female comics—women like Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Sasheer Zamata, and the great Tina Fey—has stormed the cultural landscape.

Adweek reports that of the 44 comedy pilots ordered by the networks in anticipation of the 2012-'13 season, 18 were conceived and/or written by women. At NBC and ABC, exactly half their combined sitcom orders were female-driven comedies. The hilarious women-centered comedy-drama "Orange Is the New Black," soon to begin its second season on Netflix, is a runaway hit. Comedien Amy Poehler debuted in her first romantic comedy, They Came Together at this year's Sundance, an event that buzzed with the success of funny women.

Yet the women-aren’t-funny camp clings to its beliefs like cave dwellers afraid of the sunlight. He-man comedian Adam Corolla complained that unfunny women get preferential treatment in Hollywood due to political correctness. Jerry Seinfeld recently grumbled that he didn't care about diversity in comedy. Some men see humor as their special provenance, an echo of the primal cry-of-triumph over the enemy—something far too potent for ladies. They don't like encroachment.

The funny female is not only too bold and brainy, she may be too sexually powerful for the ego-challenged male. Going all the way back to Greek courtesans, men have associated humor in women with sexual subversiveness and potency. Think of Mae West, whose remark, “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” is the kind of repartee that can be either exciting or emasculating, depending on your confidence level. Bawdiness isn’t nice—it might be unclean, or downright scary. A smiling, laughing woman is taboo, disruptive. She might want to eat you, blast you with her crazy, or snap at your with her toothed vagina.

It's true that some women try not to let their humor out of the bag as a survival technique. When we are funny, we can quickly become construed as a threat, so sometimes we figure it’s better to keep our heads down and pretend to be serious so we don’t become a target of outrage. This is a technique common to all oppressed groups, and it’s one reason that, I would argue, women and minorities are often much funnier than white men. They just keep it on the qt.

http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2014-02-why-are-some-men-turned-off-by-funny-women

[bettyellen]

1. Tina Fey has a lot to say about this in Bossypants

When they wrote a bit between two women everyone said-no ones going to want to watch two women. Whoa.
When they talked about casting, basically any funny woman past the age of forty was called "crazy"- Tina concluded that men thought they were crazy for expecting an audience when they weren't fuckable.
She noted Betty White as the exception - joking it was because everyone wants to have sex with Betty White. Ha.

[ismnotwasm]

2. That's a good point

And that comment is funny as hell. Betty would love it

[tridim]

3. Don't know, it's my number one criteria.

Not funny, not interested.