Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Flip

Original poster

Women and comedy

15 replies

FlyTipper · 29/04/2018 20:14

After reading the criticisms around Michelle Wolf, I was reminded of Kathy Griffin and Trump's grudge campaign against her. It also made me think wider: what is it with men and women's humour. For all my adolescence and early adulthood, people told me women were just 'not funny'. They came up with all sorts of reasons - the male culture of one-upmanship - how women love a funny guy. But I suppose I just accepted it. Now we see more than French and Saunders on TV, the blanket statement of 'unfunny women' is clearly false to everyone. So I'm surprised at the backlash. Women's jokes are crass, over the top, inappropriate....I sometimes think the illiberal left is as bad as the right: a woman can't go after another women without being accused of disloyalty to the sisterhood. Is the women's rule: make jokes if you have to, but make sure they are inoffensive rib-tickers or we'll destroy your career.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/29/white-house-correspondents-dinner-michelle-wolf-stuns-media-with-sarah-sanders-attack

OP posts:

thebewilderness · 29/04/2018 20:17

The media were not stunned.

c75kp0r · 29/04/2018 20:23

Think you are right. Paul Ryan got quite a bit if sarcasm on twitter for his “attempt at comedy” but the critisim was around him being a bit lame. Obviously a fair number on the left would have hated whatever he did, but he was being mocked for being rather tame. This is possibly because it would have been more manly to use more power. Michelle on the other hand was too powerful /biting. She didnt hold back. Megyn Kelly wasnt laughing.

ReappearingWoman · 29/04/2018 20:34

I think she was painfully truthful & none of her targets (the WH staff & the press) liked it one bit. Michelle Wolf is fucking hilarious & I think her 'roast' was totally on point. It was excruciating but completely deserved. All the faux sympathy for SHB is utterly ridiculous. Hassan Minaj did it last year & did a not too dissimilar routine. They're both Daily Show regulars & minaj didn't get quite the same reaction. The audacity of her, a woman, to call out the shit show that is the WH & the press circus.

Original poster

FlyTipper · 29/04/2018 20:43

I loved her last bit, where she blames the press for giving the oxygen of publicity that brought the Trump beast into existence. It wasn't funny. It was spot on. Perhaps they hate her for her honesty.

OP posts:

LassWiADelicateAir · 29/04/2018 20:45

I think she was painfully truthful & none of her targets (the WH staff & the press) liked it one bit. Michelle Wolf is fucking hilarious

Perhaps the edited printed version loses something but I didn't find it funny or clever.

BlytheByName · 29/04/2018 21:27

I was/am a huge admirer of Christopher Hitchens but he used to say that women can't be funny.
I just think men don't like women being funny, they like to reserve that spotlight for themselves.

My best friend in my 20s married a very arrogant but basically insecure bloke. He took quite a dislike to me, I quickly realised it was because he thought my friend and his wife thought I was funnier than him. He couldn't accept that and tried to patronise or belittle me as a result. It was rather pathetic really.

Voice0fReason · 29/04/2018 23:20

I think she has come under far more criticism than a man would have done. She was close to the mark at times - just as many male comedians are, but she was funny.

FermatsTheorem · 29/04/2018 23:32

The brief clips I saw I found very funny. And if a bloke did it to other blokes, no-one would bat an eyelid. In fact, the critics would be lauding a male comedian for his biting, savage satire of a system that desperately needed taking down a peg or two. But women are meant to be "nice".

thebewilderness · 29/04/2018 23:33

How much criticism they get seems to be directly correlated to how accurate they are in their criticism, ahem Colbert, and their sex.

boatyardblues · 29/04/2018 23:42

I thought a lot of her roast was extremely close to the bone. It was powerful, but perhaps too close to home for some.

Original poster

FlyTipper · 30/04/2018 07:02

It was fabricated outrage. The head of the American Conservative Union walked out saying “Enough of elites mocking all of us." Wolf is a 32-year old relative unknown. She is not the elite mocking the 'people'. Just crap. I think it is easier to channel the outrage against a woman - somehow men are allowed to carry off this sort of humour. Sanders is hard as nails - that she was 'upset' at three jokes at her expense, frankly, beggars belief.

OP posts:

womanformallyknownaswoman · 30/04/2018 07:32

I loved some of her lines:

"I would drag him here myself, but it turns out that the president of the United States is the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab"

"He wants to give teachers guns, and I support that because then they can sell them for things they need like supplies."

“It’s 2018 and I am a woman so you cannot shut me up. Unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.”

“I’m 32, which is a weird age — 10 years too young to host this event, and 20 years too old for Roy Moore.”

boatyardblues · 30/04/2018 08:15

I liked her Ivanka burn which was “about as much use to women as an empty tampon box.”

Shadow666 · 01/05/2018 11:36

I thought she was so funny. She was exactly the same on the Daily Show, so it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise to people that she said what she said.

I also agree with her on the vagina hats, that mine also has a lot more wool than that.

She called Sarah Sanders a liar. Sarah Sanders is A liar. Can’t fault her for that.

DJLippy · 01/05/2018 13:12

"Men are scared that women will laugh at them. Women are scared that men will kill them."

Flip