to ask if to ask why men have a better sense of humour than women?

[mdowdall]

Was discussing this with my mate in the pub earlier. Why are women just not as funny (generally speaking) as men? Where are all the great women comedians? I can only think of Victoria Wood and that chubby one with the grey hair. It's just weird.

Evidently, mdowdall. Maybe you should have got a real education and learned not to be an idiot?

animula, I think women are just as good at that stuff - think about Hully on a fast-moving thread!

Give me an honest answer here please.
Is there any women anywhere who has the comic genius of say...
Steve Coogan
or, in America...
Larry David

i think it is subliminal - laughter is to ease tension.

alot of comedians are rather large....thier purpose isn't to scare though, however comedy requires tension, and women (those lovely cuddly creatures that spawn us) are inclined to dispel tension by sending other signals.

Seriously?? Those are your comic idols?

Now that really is funny

and Lumley...she is pants.

Who's Larry David?

Steve Coogan's ok, but I'd take Shappi Khorsandi any day.

though studies did find that people laughed less at women, found women less funny even delivering the same material...

i don't think women are less funny though. i think the diffference lies at the receiving end.

Coogan - a genius, end of.

V. true - LRD. And Hullygully and Cod and some of the others are v. situational and swift.

Steve Coogan is about as funny as a dose of herpes.

If that's your yardstick, well...

Larry David wrote major US sitcom then did Curb Your Enthusiasm - funniest show in the world, ever. Youtube it.

EggyAllenPoe - that's interesting (both the fear idea and the idea of it lying with the audience). Think you're right with those observations.

"Leaving aside the male dominated comedy industry, women are not rewarded for being funny in the same way men are (ie with sex/partnership/love), therefore fewer women strive to be funny.

Women are constantly fed the message that what they say is secondary to how they look, ergo many women spend more time on that."

This +1

PMSL at 'end of' as a rhetorical tactic! Bless.

As bad as the OP is, this is unforgivable "Steve Coogan's ok, but I'll take Shappi Khorsandi any day"

FWIW I do find men funnier in general but that is probably cause I'm male so in broad sense male humour is more likely to appeal to me. I rarely find women as funny as I do men to the point that the ones I do would be the exception. I wouldn't say men are objectively funnier though. just that I have a preference towards male humour.

There are structural inequalities in careers like stand-ip comedy, which requires years of late nights in pubs and a lot of travelling, cutting out many women from being able to pursue it around their families, for example. If childcare didn't tend to get left to women, that might change. So to be blunt, we are generally too busy to be 'funny', at least professionally. But if men aren't hearing women in their real lives being witty and interesting, it tends to be because they aren't really listening. And socially, men really do seem to prefer the sound of their own voices, on the whole. It's this little thing you might have heard of called sexism.

Doh, this thread is going way above my head now.

Sorry, mayor - variety is teh spice of life, let's be glad we're all different, eh?

BoF - my mate was saying recently she's just seen a show by the Oxford, Cambridge and Durham stand-up grounds ... these are meant to be some of the brightest comic talents, but not one of the Cambridge team was female.

Equal gender split at Oxford and slightly more women at Durham, though, which is good.

Normally I'd agree to disagree but it's people like you who mean shappi khorsandi still gets booked. It is for this reason alone that we are now mortal enemies.

LRDTheFeministNutcase - I like it

Erm ... how should I redeem myself?

Even on this forum, the humour content is poor considering the level of traffic.

Considering I spend most of my other forum time on very high-traffic, very male, techy sites - I can PROMISE you there's absolutely no sign of superior humour there! Or any at all. I stopped making jokes because I always had to spend the next three days apologising to self-absorbed genius twerps.