Boys Don't Make Passes at Girls Who...Don't Laugh At Their Jokes

In the Seattle Times this week, there is an article called, “When it comes to dating, show her the funny” by Nicole Tsong. Blech to that title, but it’s the Seattle Times. They always pull shenanigans like that. Double blech, however, to the tone of the article, which I will excerpt below. It addresses straight relationships and relies on exploring "traditional" male/female roles, and how each gender uses (or doesn't use) humor in romance. The article leaves gay relationships entirely out of the equation, unsurprisingly.

To begin and to keep things balanced, let's start with a good quote:

"If you think of any social relationship, shared laughter is one of the markers of success," said humor expert John Morreall, a professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "A person who tries to be funny and doesn't get a response from the other person, that's real failure."

True. But that little gem of common sense is followed by this nauseating chunk a bit later:

Boys and girls are socialized early with distinct approaches to humor, said humor expert Morreall. Boys are encouraged to entertain and act out, while girls learn to appreciate a joke, not put on the show.

That dynamic is prevalent in dating. To put it bluntly, men want someone who laughs at their punch lines, while women look for someone who makes them giggle.

There are exceptions, of course, with the rise of female comics who have appropriated male humor, like the brash Sarah Silverman. Others have succeeded with a more feminine style, like funny but gentle Ellen DeGeneres. But in general, men are expected to be the funny ones.

Oh, where to start...I’m going to leave that first paragraph alone, as making declarative, sweeping generalizations about gender relations isn’t really my scene. So, going down the list: doesn’t EVERYONE want someone to laugh at their jokes and then make them laugh in return? Isn’t that how friendly communication works? Most properly socialized women I know want men not to amuse them like dancing monkeys but to engage them in discussion. And that bit about “appropriated male humor” manages to both be condescending and faux-women’s libbish all at the same time, which is quite a feat.

So how do we approach this cognitive dissonance? I like to solve problems with rudimentary evolutionary biology (seriously, I do), and it turns out people who experiment on grad students do, too:

In a study published in the academic journal "Evolution and Human Behavior," psychologists Eric Bressler and Sigal Balshine tested graduate students with pictures attached to funny and nonfunny statements and evaluated the way it affected how men and women viewed each other.

They found that humor makes men more desirable to women but does not affect men's view of women.

"We found no evidence that men prefer humorous women as partners," they wrote in the article "The Influence of Humor on Desirability." But "women preferred humorous men as relationship partners, even when the humor they used was unsophisticated."

Men tend to like women who respond to their humor and banter easily, but do not necessarily want the woman to be aggressively funny, Morreall said. Which also means women can get away with being unfunny far easier than a man.

Ooh, lucky us. We don’t have to turn in our comedy homework.

I’ve always found funny men more attractive than non-funny men, as have most of my similarly picky lady friends. You are attracted to potential mates that espouse qualities you desire for your future self and your offspring, should you elect to have any, and if you would like happiness and friendly communication to come your way, well...you develop a junior high crush on Jon Stewart that will never go away.

I’d argue that a good radar and appreciation for humor IS the same thing as a sense of humor. Think about it--people you know who appreciate funny things tend to be funny in their lives, and are able to share jokes with other like-minded folks. When was the last time a conversation you were having devolved into a series of quotes from “The Simpsons” or “The Office”? That might just be aping someone else’s material, but appreciating and celebrating it together is a shared humorous experience.

Between this Seattle Times article and the recent underwhelming feature in Vanity Fair, “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” I’m beginning to despair that this tendency to overanalyze gender relations through humor isn’t going the way of phrenology any time soon.

So I’ll guess just shrug it off and close by aping a line from “Futurama:”

It’s true what they say. Men are from Omicron Persei 7, women are from Omicron Persei 9.