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https://psyche.co/ideas/just-when-in-history-did-men-decide-that-women-are-not-funny>
"Maybe you’ve heard that women are not funny. It’s a stereotype that has often
been repeated. In the 19th century, the popular press could refer to it as ‘the
old theory that women have no sense of humour’. But how old is it in reality?
Spoiler alert: it is not as old as people think.
The idea of women’s humourlessness thrived in the 20th century, when serious
psychologists and sociologists embraced it. Freudian theory, in particular,
held that women do not need humour as men do, because of women’s less complex
psychic development. The roots of humour, for Sigmund Freud and his followers,
lay in ‘castration fear of the superego’. A 1934 article in
The Psychoanalytic
Quarterly expounded at length on the reasons why ‘humour is a masculine
trait’.
You might think that by now the successes of female comedians, not to mention
common sense and daily experience, would have quashed the idea that women have
no sense of humour. But it still rears its head. The stereotype is especially
prevalent in Anglo-American culture, where multiple publications either promote
the idea or seek to refute it. It’s not yet clear how far it extends across
cultures. Some researchers have suggested traces of the stereotype elsewhere in
Europe and Asia, while others find variation within Western culture."
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
