I’m an equal-opportunity hater, I guess, because a couple of
days ago, I linked to a Cracked article that I agreed with and said so.
Today? Not so
much.
This article, about why we don’t find women to be as funny
as men (a premise that I don’t necessarily agree with to start off, because I
think many women are funny as hell, just in a different way than men) starts
from so many false premises and incorrect assumptions that it is truly
startling that the author didn’t see it.
From the first point made, the author assumes that the
reason that young boys tell more jokes, and are more often the class clown than
young girls is because we “train” young girls to not be funny, not tell jokes,
and not be the class clown, while we encourage that behavior in boys. Of course, no evidence to this effect is
presented; it is just assumed that because there is an actual difference, and
because feminism requires that we don’t insinuate that there may be reasons
other than social conditioning to explain it, that the explanation is obviously
social conditioning. The author never
once stops to consider that this difference may occur simply because little
boys and little girls are different
on more than a physical level.
Certainly, we can’t consider such nonsense, right?! Everyone knows that boys and girls are
exactly the same in every way, except for the ways society teaches them to be
different! Misogynist!
Except that they aren’t
the same. Not by a long shot. The survival of our species absolutely depends
on them not being the same, and to ignore the fact that there may be a genetic,
evolutionary explanation for the “humor gap” between boys and girls ignores the
fact that evolutionarily speaking, there
must be one.
I know that I’m treading thin ice here; that isn’t
acceptable neo-feminist thinking, is it?
We aren’t allowed to consider the fact that women and men are different
on any level other than the socially-conditioned level. You know, the “patriarchy,” making women the
weaker sex for eons because men suck and are evil and want to subjugate women
and such.
No discussion allowed about why a sex that is equal on every
level would allow itself to be “subjugated” for so many eons, though. Don’t even bring that up. That’s grounds for public castration.
As if women were “subjugated” in general practice in western
society, anyway. Yes, they held
different roles, but “different” does not mean “less.” This is where so many people go off the
rails when discussing both gender and
race.
When the men marched off to war, for instance, and were
slit, split, slashed, and flayed; dying in the bloody mud, in order to protect
the women of their society (who weren’t required to do these things), one
wonders how subjugated the women felt.
When women were watching the kids and gathering berries, and the men
were off engaging in mortal combat with a fucking wooly mammoth using nothing
sharpened sticks, one wonders how subjugated they felt.
When you start an article from the premise that boys get to
do whatever they want, while women are forced into a burdensome gender role
right off the bat, you start from an incorrect premise. Men were froced into their roles, too, even more forcefully than women ever were. A man who didn’t want to go to war went
anyway, because he was a man. His gender
role required him to kill or be killed in order to protect his offspring. Such has been the way of it for the entire
history of mankind. Each gender filled
out the role that their unique abilities caused them to fit best, and for the
benefit of the group or tribe, they were damn well expected to fill that role.
The reason for this is because men and women are different,
not only physically, but mentally and psychologically. There is no arguing against this point. If you believe in evolution, then you
absolutely have to believe this, because the survival and success of our
species proves it.
Given the different sociological, psychological, and
resource-driven requirements of reproduction between males and females, why is
it so hard to believe that women and men have different requirements in the reproductive
game? If you believe that (and let’s
see, how could you not, given that women get pregnant and give birth and
breastfeed, whereas men’s entire investment in a reproduction, should he so
choose, is about 5 minutes of effort and a warm squishy feeling), then you have
to believe that there are differences that run deeper than the skin or the
genitalia.
Or would you like to eliminate men’s and women’s
professional sports, and just lump them all in together? Even in feminine sports like figure skating,
you’d see the last of the professional women’s athletes if you did that,
because the men would dominate. There
are differences. You cannot ignore that.
So here’s the deal, feminists. I know you aren’t going to like what I’m
about to say, but I’m going to put it out for you to chew on here, and you tell
me how wrong I am after:
Men are evolutionarily wired to be funny. They are wired to more easily develop
camaraderie, and create closer bonds with others, than women are. They had to become this, because their lives
and fortunes depended on the man standing beside them. It was his spear that might kill the mammoth
that is about to trample him some day, or skewer the enemy soldier who was
about to kill him, and that man will be more likely to try harder and even risk
his life to save yours if he is your friend.
Men did dangerous things. They
did this because it made sense evolutionarily.
Men are more expendable than women, because a woman’s ability to
reproduce is limited to maybe five to ten babies in her life, where one man can
sire hundreds of babies. It is easier
for a tribe to absorb the loss of a male, and so males evolved to do the things
that were likely to get them killed.
They got stronger, faster, and more aggressive, and since these
dangerous tasks required the help of other men to get them done, men are more
predisposed to telling jokes around the campfire late at night in order to
maintain and strengthen these necessary bonds.
Other men were not so much competition to a man, and so evolution
favored men who were funny and genial, as well as capable and strong. In fact, I think it was often an “either/or”
premise, where the weaker men would make up for their physical lack of strength
by becoming more valuable to the others by being fun to be around. This, I think, is why you don’t see very many
strong, powerful, athletic comedians, even today.
Women, on the other hand, are evolutionarily wired to see
most other women as competition. Her
man, back in the day, would be disposed to promiscuity, and if he invested in
another woman by having children with her, too, then his resources would be
split between them both. Any resources
that went to other women and their children, would not go to her and her
children. While gathering roots and
picking berries, whatever the other women picked, she generally did not
get. The friendship bonds that she
creates would be with a few, and they would be tight, because the benefit of
friendship that a woman gets is to have someone to share child rearing duties
with; someone to watch the kid while she dug roots and gathered berries. It was beneficial to create an “us vs. them”
dynamic within that group, so that she would not lose her friend to other
groups, and hence, the woman’s predilection to gossip and back-biting between
groups.
It is for this reason that we still see women generally
having smaller groups of friends, with a few with very tight bonds, that gossip
about other women for fun, while men generally have much larger groups of
friends, generally with all of them being similar in closeness, and when they
get together for fun, they drink, tell jokes, and fart on each other.
If you look at the comics of today, you see a wide range of
comedy types coming from male comics.
Some are innocent, some dirty, and some nasty. Most women comics, however, base their
routines on the shock value of being nasty.
I can’t think of very many that don’t.
Ellen, maybe, but a person could argue pretty handily that she’s wired
more like a man than a woman.
I know that to many of you, even to the non-feminists out
there that have bought into the prevailing narrative, this will all be
offensive. However, I think if you
ruminate on it hard enough, you’ll see that I’m right. It will be a hard thing to accept, because
you’ve been told your entire life that you’re not allowed to think such things,
but the fact is, evolution does not care about political correctness.
Women are less funny than men because they are wired to be
so. It has nothing to do with societal
conditioning, and everything to do with evolutionary game.
One of these days, we’re going to get past this “different
must mean better/worse” and accept the fact that differences don’t necessarily
mean that one is better and one is worse.
It is fallacious thinking. Our
species needs both genders, filling out both gender roles, and to lose either
one would result in ruin. I think our
society has reached point where we can
give individuals the choice of which role they want to fill, and to be honest,
our “patriarchy” has always made room for great women (Joan of Arc, Marie
Currie, etc.) when they rose to the top of the pile. Great women were always allowed to cross
gender boundaries. It was generally the
men who wanted to cross gender boundaries who were shunned and ridiculed. We have room for that now, so we should be
okay with it happening. What I’m not
okay with, however, is refusal to admit the truth. A woman that wants to try out for men’s
basketball needs to understand that it isn’t societally-induced conditioning
that causes her to fail, it is her sex that makes her less physically capable
than the men she’s up against. This is
the truth, whether you like it or not.
