"Are women as funny as men?"

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on June 8th, 2009

Women are “are exposed to less comedy,” “instructed to be demure” and “are often turned off by open-mic nights.”

A transcript of the lastest public appearance by Jerry Lewis?

Quotes from a June 1962 Look magazine, perhaps?

No and no! It’s an article in yesterday‘s Chicago Tribune on Chicago comic Cameron Esposito‘s comedy finishing school called Feminine Comique.

We can see why womyn would be turned off by open mike nights. Let’s let Ashley Vinson, a “thirtysomething executive producer at an ad agency” tell us why:

It was a bunch of 22-year-old guys in the audience. One guy got up there and did eight minutes about poo. I talked about my emotions.

You see, men (or “guys,” if you’re not interested in treating them seriously) are all icky and snickery and they talk about the wrong things. And they only like to hear other “guys” talk about icky things, so they can snicker a lot.

Women, on the other hand, are sensitive and they like to talk about their emotions. (But they apparently still have trouble telling reporters from the Chicago Tribune their real ages… hmmm… curious.)

Everybody’s gotta have an angle to sell their product. Cameron Esposito is no different, we suppose. (And we praised her quotes from an article in Chicago Time Out back in January on the Windy City’s “LGBT” comedy scene. Hers were the only sane ones!)

But surely a womyn-only class on standup can get the point across (and get some enrollees through the door) without resorting to such fiction as is quoted at the outset of this posting.

Women are exposed to less comedy? “Scan the crowd at the next comedy show you attend,” urges Esposito and author Chris McNamara. Oh, really? We’ve scanned the crowd at all the comedy shows we’ve “attended,” and we’d have to say that the vast majority of them are packed with just about an even number of men and women. Only rarely is the audience one gender or another. We’re not buying Esposito’s nonsense about “exposure to comedy and gender norms.”

Last time we looked, women were allowed to own (and watch) a television. And we hear some of them are allowed (in certain states) to hook those TV’s up to cable! Satellites, even! (And we hear that some of the bolder females in some of the more promiscuous states in America were purchasing VCR’s and DVD players and– Gasp!– renting videos and DVD’s! But you didn’t hear it here! Others, risking certain execution in the middle of the local soccer pitch, were using Tivo!)

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