But I like the rape jokes best of all!

[slemslempike]

I am reading about humour at the moment. This is problematic because every now and then the authors will make jokes to illustrate a point, and they're never funny, and I waste time wondering if it's me or them. But the hilarity of the commentary more than makes up for this. My favourite to date:

"nonsense jokes were preferred by females, especially those with low intelligence".

There was an article that consisted, in its entirety, of a summarised paragraph of the time the author regaled a conference with funny things her au pairs had said. These were funny apparently both at the time, and then later once the girls had learnt English, and the family could throw their mistakes in their faces. There was also an article about Welsh jokes, that concluded that there was no staple stereotype used by the English when joking about the Welsh. I can think of one, and I bet most of you can too. Is it so recent? The article's from 1977.

Deserving of an extra special mention though, is an article called "Female Responses to Chauvinism". What I expected was a study on how women resisted sexist jokes. What I got was an article about how sexually attractive women were mattered for how funny they found jokes. The initial studies were criticised for how they decided the scale of attractiveness (they'd got some lecturers to compare notes on female students), which wasn't objective. There were also some whiners saying that perhaps judging women on their attractiveness wasn't quite on, and shouldn't it be how attractive they felt? So the authors did a new study, combining these! They used vital statistics as an objective measure of attractiveness (they went with the bust/waist ratio), and asked women to rate themselves.

It wasn't just seuxal attractiveness that was measured. "The girls were also assessed for their views on Women's Liberation." Interesting. "Those in sympathy expressed little amusement at cartoons involving rape", the humourless bitches. Furthermore, "they took special delight in the opposite, that is, jokes denigrating men". That was probably the start of when feminism started going Too Far.

Apparently plain girls are usually disapproving of sex because they don't get any and they're trying not to be jealous. They also laugh more at male chauvinist jokes becuase they are imagining themselves in the position of getting all that lovely sexual attention from men. Attractive girls are obviously very approving of sex, the dirty sluts, but they don't laugh so much at the jokes because they already have a surfeit of male attention. To be fair to the authors, they do momentarily wonder if using Freud as a basis for female sexuality is wise, but eventually conclude that:

Nevertheless, we are left with the finding that girls who are 'built; in the sense of having a desirable female shape expressed a relative liking for cartoons concered with intercourse and treating the female as a sex toy. Perhaps girls who are shapely but otherwise unattractive come into their own during sex play, that is, their shapely form will be most appreciated at this time.

Comments

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Arabs need better self-mocking jokes. Or maybe I am but a half-breed and not allowed to play.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Possibly they don't tell them to you because they think you're too attractive to laugh? Or you could develop your own line of mixed-race nonsense jokes and tell them at right-on people who will not know whether or not to laugh. Go on.