Sociopath Community

Turncoat said: 

My guess is over how willing and acceptable it is for men to self-deprecate. 

By societal standards, men can look worse while still seeming endearing while women are meant to look appealing, which as such would lend to the gender divide. 

Is this really just about privilege? Men have less to prove as a byproduct of society, is that all that lends to the comfort? Women have to represent "Women", while masculine figures can be whatever they want ala Eddie Izzard. 

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that as a blanket premise. 

Most male stand up is funnier (in my opinion), but some of the funniest episodes of sit-coms were written by women. 30 Rock, Broad City, Parks and Rec, many episodes of The Office. These are some of the most popular comedy series of all-time, so arguably the public consensus isn't that male comedy is uniformly funnier. 

Also, comedy tastes have a sociocultural context. There's no empirical metric for "funny". It might be that male-dominated culture favors male-dominated ventures. 

But this whole "women aren't funny" thing is a pretty transparent and unintelligent expression of misogyny. I guarantee that everyone who's said that has accidentally laughed at something written by a woman.  

Outro said: 

Most male stand up is funnier (in my opinion)

This part lends to self-deprecation and relatability, and is where the challenges within the gender social construct start to show. Women are typically in less of a position to be laughed at as a means of success, aiming instead to be laughed with. 

, but some of the funniest episodes of sit-coms were written by women. 30 Rock, Broad City, Parks and Rec, many episodes of The Office.

I don't know Broad City, but for the rest of those? None of them really show a woman being a failure beyond being a social klutz, stubborn, or old fashioned, which seems to be one of the more acceptable forms of writing for them while men are allowed to be written as if straight retarded (especially as a husband and wife). I feel like if they were to write truly flawed female characters that it'd either typically stop being a comedy or at the very least it risks becoming preachy (like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) while the flawed characters fall into more classically male archetypes through Tomboy-isms. 

Women are given less room in writing to be failures or have things be at their expense these days, you won't see too many Edith Bunker types anymore, or even Judy Tenutas. They would pass the Bechtel Test however, which is good, but I think we need to be entering a stage where female writing is allowed to be more flawed without the genre becoming more serious with it. 

Men are allowed to be ugly, be gross, and fail, which then lends more room to feel open laughing about it without it dragging all men down. The idea that men pursue and women are pursued still persists across the average layman, putting the two into two very different constructs of expectation over how much media (and the social reinforcement following enough people watching it) reflects 'The Male Gaze' to the point of women carrying it as well. 

Also, comedy tastes have a sociocultural context.

That's more where I'm focused on, in relation to US television at least. 

There's no empirical metric for "funny".

Maybe not empirical, but it is something that can be studied with it's own subgenres. How jokes are set up does have an accepted canon, both for going along with it or the room to subvert it. 

What is funny has to be fairly unexpected for it to hit, but otherwise does have consistent elements that test well across peer groups when it comes to comedy structure. A lot of it is conditioned from the shows' predecessors setting the expected tone. 

But this whole "women aren't funny" thing is a pretty transparent and unintelligent expression of misogyny. I guarantee that everyone who's said that has accidentally laughed at something written by a woman.  

That doesn't however negate the challenges female writing faces compared to how freeform male writing can be. Even having a female writing staff doesn't tend to suddenly lend to the men being written with less detail by contrast to a male writing staff writing female characters. 

It's less that women aren't funny so much as they aren't as allowed to be by society, drawing from the comedy well in such a way that they have less options to pick from compared to someone like Louis CK (yet another show where the feminist overtones make women out to be more like swans than human beings). 

Kinda digging Natasha Leggero's energy. Credit for finding this one goes to the channel Comedy Time, a female standup comedy channel for testing material and networking names. The footage on Comedy Time is usually not them at their most confident, but it's been a way to find some names. 

Edit: Decent interview, listing her influences as Neil Simon, Miss Piggy, and John Waters: 

i think a big part of comedy has to do with frankly challenging social norms or otherwise giving commentary on what individuals or the collective are doing. women, being naturally higher in agreeableness, are less likely to express thoughts that could make them outliers or otherwise not show solidarity with the paradigm of their choice

Tryptamine said: 

i think a big part of comedy has to do with frankly challenging social norms or otherwise giving commentary on what individuals or the collective are doing. women, being naturally higher in agreeableness, are less likely to express thoughts that could make them outliers or otherwise not show solidarity with the paradigm of their choice

There's plenty of women who are not agreeable who very openly challenge social norms, but by contrast they tend to be taken as either crude, preachy, or bitchy in ways that seem less excusable out of that gender to their audience. Rather than have women who fit the comedy mold appear as paragons of their craft, their behavior is almost seen as clashing in some way when compared to men doing the same things. 

I still think it has to do with audience perception conditioning the comedian early on more than the gender itself, as even female comedians and comedy writers who are considered successful by the mainstream tend to not do so through self-deprecation beyond being a social klutz. 

or maybe they're just not as funny usually

Tryptamine said: 

or maybe they're just not as funny usually

Right, because they're just so agreeable. 🙄

yes, that's mainly why

but beyond that they just aren't generally as provocative

Men are better at some things. Women are better at some things.

Society needs to embrace our differences, not try to make us all the same.

As a women ages, she finds that this liberal society has betrayed her. Deep inside she knows she was betrayed by shunning her true nature.