Sober Thread: Gender Bias

Carolla responds to the hub bub.

 

No, actually, it doesn't stand to reason this at all. Adam said that in general in his experience, women are funnier than men, but then pointed out a bunch of women he found funny, and stated that of course women could be funny.

I don't see how or why any funny woman should be offended by that.

Also, stating that this was a "huge portion of the negative press". Most of the angry Tweets and comments Carolla got came from men, which is typical for this kind of media-driven, liberal bullshit. The only woman I know of who is related to comedy and responded was Lena Dunham.

You're getting angry and indignant about this, but you're completely wrong about his actual quote! That's typical of most of the Twitter idiots crying about this.

Again, no one ever said "women aren't funny!". That's a bullshit strawman you keep propping up. Had you bothered to either read the original interview or Tucker's take, you would know this.

 

The distinction that's added by putting "in my experience" in front of a statement is sometimes minimal at best and hand-waving ass-covering at worst. Saying that the overwhelming majority of Jews I've met were greedy and sneaky isn't that substantially different from just saying "Jews are greedy and sneaky."

If you say "yeah, my experience suggests [stereotype] is true practically every time", you might as well just say "[stereotype]"

But more to the point, he didn't even say that. He said: "The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks."

Contrary to what Tucker suggests, there was no trickery or subtlety to the interviewers questions. Carolla said exactly what he meant to say.

 

He says there are specific women who are considered AS funny as men, but he also went on to name a few women comics who are comics only because they are women. His statement is literally, "If they were men, they would have no career." That's a pretty incendiary comment, and if I were a female comic, I'd be annoyed that he thought I got to where I was based solely on my vagina, and not on my talent at all.

 

I'm actually not surprised that you don't see that, because you seem to have a particular blind spot when it comes to any argument regarding tone or subtlety. It's not so much what he said exactly, but the tone and the underlying implication. I'm not sure how many female comedians you're friends with, or female comedy writers you read, but this sort of thing is almost always code for "I don't think women are funny in general, but I'm going to throw out a few token examples."

If I can analogize, imagine if he had said, "hispanic people aren't as smart as white people. Sure there are examples of really smart hispanic people, but look at most of congress -- it's white people!" I'm fairly certain that you'd see a bunch of hispanic bloggers taking umbrage.

I assume you missed Kelly Oxford, Julie Klausner, Morgan Murphy, Jenny Johnson, Retta, Lauren Greenberg, Emily Donahue, Shelby Fero, Chelsea Peretti, Jill Morris and Lauren Ashley Bishop.

Did you actually read what I wrote? I actually addressed all of this, and I read both things carefully. Once again -- I know he was talking about his personal experience. Nonetheless, I feel like the logical inference from what he said is a negative
one.

 

I actually think Carolla is right in practice, although I think it has little to nothing to do with being innately funny. There are fewer hilarious women, and few good female standup comedians, proportionally speaking. A number of the famous ones are hacks (Lampanelli, Cummings) or likable enough but simply not especially funny (Cho). I doubt that female standup comedians as a group as shittier than your average standup comedian, but since there are more male comedians, there are more good male comedians.

The problem he ran in to was that his phrasing implicitly suggests or at least sounds like this is a cause rather than a consequence. "Why aren't there more funny women? Because women aren't funny" versus "Why aren't there more funny women? Because in today's social forces incentivize them not to be, and incentivize men to be funny."

Men rarely identify "sense of humor" as a prime characteristic in an ideal mate, and when they do, they typically mean "she laughs at my jokes." We are pretty much trying to be funny from the second we realized what our penis is for, so we get a lot of practice that way. I think it's not a coincidence that a lot of really funny standup comedians are guys who are kinda ugly, because how else is Brian Posehn going to get laid?

And that's just the positive feedback. This line of reasoning will probably illicit a great deal of derision from KIMaster et al, but certain brands of comedy are in practice really difficult for them because society criticizes them for making those jokes. Sarcasm, cynicism, dismissiveness, snideness, etc. are treated very differently by the average American when coming from a woman. It's not even just a matter of how they're treated once they're on stage; in fact, that's probably the fairest time, because their audience literally paid money to have a good time. In the year leading up to that point, they're punished any time they even inch in the general direction of bitchiness. It's really hard to imagine a female Hicks (who i don't even like) because that personality type isn't socially acceptable for a woman. And if they are more self-effacing a la Oswald, Hedberg, Gaffigan, etc. it's "low self-esteem." It's practically a miracle that any women end up in comedy, since we spend the preceding two decades trying to bully it out of them.

 

The irony of this is that all of the rebuttals I have read by these women were painfully unfunny, and all the women who are legitimately funny didn't respond because they had better gigs than writing for shitty blogs.

 

Wall of text!

Spoiler

Obligatory Disclaimer: This is due to a set of unique circumstances that simply aren't present in the civilian world. Cops and firefighters will know exactly what I'm talking about, however.

I have had some pretty crappy experiences working with women. I'm in a field that has a few women, (ATC maintenance) and I work with a field that has a fair number of women (Air Traffic Control). My squadron has a large amount of females in Admin.

I do not have a problem with women in the military, in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, things become ridiculous really, really quickly.

The main problem is the double standard. When I fuck up, I get called a worthless piece of shit, hazed, and told in no uncertain terms that my world will be fucked in half if I repeat the mistake. When a woman fucks up, she is "counseled." There's a few reasons for this. The first is that it is extremely distasteful to yell at a woman. I've done it once, (for outright disrespect and lying to my face) and I felt bad after she started crying. The second is that the woman is far more likely to request mast / call the Equal Opportunity Officer on the poor fuck who was a meaniehead to her.

But it's not just that.

Take an average male lance corporal. He's okay at his job and in decent physical shape, but he has absolutely no command presence. He's quiet, unassuming, and shy. The leadership will say, "Well, he's a good Marine, but he's not ready for promotion."

Take a female lance corporal with the exact same attributes... she'll be on the next meritorious promotion board, guaranteed. Why? Because no command presence is expected of her. It isn't her fault, but the command will say, "Oh! She isn't a complete bag of ass like the rest of the females around here, so let's promote her!" As a result, you end up with a meritorious corporal who can't lead her way out of a paper bag. This leads to a lot of problems down the road.

Not to mention, the standards themselves are skewed. For example, for me to get a 300 (perfect score) on the Physical Fitness Test, I need to do 20 pull-ups, 100 crunches, and an 18:00 run time on a three-mile run. A female needs to be able to do a 70-second flexed-arm hang, 100 crunches, and a 21:00 run time. This means that a woman who can barely do three pull-ups and whom I can easily run into the dirt will get a higher score than me and be more competitive for promotion. My 20:30 is a shitty score compared to a woman's 21:00.

The result is that an average (by male standards) female is treated like a water-walker male. Why? Because the average female in the military sucks ass if you treated them like everyone else, but they don't want some whistleblower to yell, "Females make x% of the military population but only make y% of senior leadership!"

I had a wook sergeant. Complete and utter garbage. She was 50 pounds overweight, and every time they tried to start proceedings to kick her ass out, she would get pregnant again. She didn't know shit about her job, either... but God help you if you contradicted her.

I had a wook staff sergeant. Completely batshit insane and would physically attack Marines when she got angry. A lance corporal had enough and beat her ass, and she tried to have him court-martialed for assault. Luckily there were witnesses and the charges were dropped... she's a gunnery sergeant now with 2 NJPs for assaulting subordinates. Classy.

On the other hand, one of the best leaders in the shop right now is a female sergeant. She's smart, funny, a pleasure to work with, and knows her job. Don't expect her to lift anything, though; she's 120 pounds.

 

You don't see a giant difference between "dudes are funnier than chicks" and "chicks aren't funny"? Really? I agree completely with the first, and so do a lot of people. Meanwhile, the latter is the strawman being reported by a dishonest press, and pure bullshit.

I guess. At the same time, it's also true. Sometimes the truth hurts.

How can you tell his "tone" when you haven't even read the interview? Also, how do you tell "tone" from words on a page?

You're projecting heavily here, and ascribing all sorts of thoughts and meanings to Carolla's words that aren't there. You tend to do this a lot on these types of issues.

Except race makes no impact on someone's brains.

Meanwhile, men and women have significantly different brains. That is a basic anatomical and neurological fact. Thus, it would be pretty damn strange if men and women were exactly equal in everything mental. And indeed, they are not.

So yeah, that's a bad and dishonest analogy.

This might have been the case back in the 70s and 80s. Nowadays, though? Social standards have changed a lot. Women are allowed and even celebrated for being bitchy and mean. Moreso than men, in a lot of situations and topics.

So I don't think it applies anymore.

 

What are you talking about? I read the interview AND Tucker's piece. I honestly can't tell if you're fucking with me, because I've stated that point blank like twice.

Also, I'm not sure how you don't think that writing has a tone. This is particularly ironic considering that your writing has such a particular and unique tone that I can tell you've written a post even without looking at it, and there are hundreds of people on this messageboard.

Also, this is exactly how modern prejudice works, regardless of whether Adam happens to be indulging in it here. If you call a black person clean and articulate, or a woman mouthy, or a latino "fiesty", or an asian person "enigmatic", you are, whether consciously or not, invoking all sort of tropes of prejudice.

My point was, very simply, that because he was talking about women being less funny, women who thought they were more funny were likely to respond. If he were talking about hispanic people, hispanic bloggers would take umbrage. If he were said that Gleepers couldn't glorp as well as Glaxons, I bet Gleeper bloggers would get pretty up in arms.

And Gleepers getting up in arms about their glorping skills being impugned is emphatically NOT the same thing as Adam Carolla not being "allowed" to say what he likes.

Funnily enough, Adam gets this better than Tucker does. He said what he thought, people freaked out bit, he didn't care that they were freaking out (as is his prerogative), they made their arguments/jokes (as is theirs), and the internet kept spinning for another day.

In summation, don't trust Gleepers, they lie. Even if they are great at playing the Horshop.

 

I know you have. But you have also completely mischaracterized Adam's words in your first post, invoking the strawman that "all women aren't funny".

Which makes me think you read things with a very clear bias already in mind.

No one can say anything about anyone unless they're white and male. Got it, Captain of the PC Police.

I care, though. PC bullshit like this is part of why Adam doesn't have a major hit show on television, like he deserves, or a host of movie roles.

He would be incredible at either of these, but a number of Hollywood liberals disagree with his thoughts and views, and thus blackball him. He's hardly the only one to suffer this, but he is certainly one of the most talented.

 

This is the full text of my first post.

At no point did I mention women being funny. My second post was just a list of comedians, my third post was explaining why female comedians got annoyed...not once did I build the strawman you're implying.

 

That is not what I'm saying at all. I am simply saying that when you refer to certain groups in certain ways, there are loaded implications that have to do with the history of those phrases. For example, a Jeremy Lin headline that refers to a "Chink in his armor" is very different from a Rajon Rondo headline with the exact same phrasing, and it's not very hard to understand why, regardless of what the author originally meant.

 

I've never had a preference when it comes to working with men or women. From my experience, they both have their quirks.

With women, they are generally more pleasant to work with than men (especially in an environment where yuo deal with people face-to-face a lot), are usually friendlier and take a lot more shit in work environments but they never wear their hearts on their sleeve. They more often than not don't like direct confrontation in the workplace. So, I see lots of venom and backtalk instead of encountering the issue they have a problem with.

With men, when they have a problem they voice it, and try to deal with it quicker than women. However, we (dudes) have a NASTY, FUCKING IRRITATING HABIT of carrying ten million pound chips on our shoulder to work over personal reasons like a girlfriend squabble or losing a bet or any other private bullshit that we take out on undeserving co-workers. They also call in "sick" more often for stupid, lazy reasons like hangovers or simply sleeping in. Fuck that.

 

In the military, women are a nightmare to work with.

Of the 50 or so women I've interacted with on a regular basis, all SAVE ONE were either terrible workers, horrible manipulators, or backstabbers. I think it comes from some sort of defense mechanism, but it is crazy.

Case in point: a few weeks ago, I was doing support for a training operation that another team was running. We were role players, and running occasional patrols along this road during the night. As the sun started coming up, PT began, and so people were running past our truck. I see this girl running and she's obviously hurting, but not in a pain way... in an out of shape way. Well, as she approaches our truck, she grabs her lower abdomen and starts screaming. One of her buddies runs over, throws her arm over his shoulder, and limps her to the truck. I turn to my buddy and say, "I hate to say this, but 10 bucks says she's faking."

The guy with me is a medic, and so he goes to look at her. She's on the ground, contorting into these weird positions, telling us that she had a miscarriage a month ago and she's having severe cramps. We tell her to drink water, and give her some. Then she starts saying that she's bleeding out of her vagina. She's wearing black nylon pants so none of us can confirm this, but she starts screaming that she needs to be taken to the hospital. So we load up the truck, throw her in the back, and take her. We have to wait about an hour before she is seen by the Docs. IMMEDIATELY once we got to the hospital, she started feeling "better." This whole escapade took about 2 hours, and 4 individuals (not including herself).

Turns out, she was faking the whole thing. She was in some school and they were giving her a PT test, which she was going to fail. So instead, she faked a medical incident, wasting at LEAST 8 man hours and a slot in the ER.

I have dozens of stories just like that one.

 

I'm in the Chair Force where PT waivers / physical profiles are handed out like candy. Honestly I know more women who are on waivers than not, most of them because of no other reason than that they are out of shape but claim some ridiculous obviously made up pain they get when running.

This brings up a something that I'm beginning to recognize, while females in the military are generally not as good at their jobs as their male counterparts, when it comes to other basic requirements of military life, they are fucking horrendous. Not being able to adhere to the ridiculously low physical standards is one example of this, not being able to keep chem gear on for long periods of time another, and don't even get me started on how terrible at shooting the majority of women are (which is weird because there are some infamous female snipers with a ridiculous amount of kills) and they get away with it because they are treated better for no other reason than they are a woman. The one area where women are generally better than men is they stay out of legal / financial trouble that plagues the military. Apparently they also have physical attributes that make them well suited to be pilots and there are a sizable amount of female pilots in the Air Force, but I can't speak as to how they measure up to their male counterparts. It's nice to have women around the workplace I guess, but in the military overall they don't pull their own weight, I think in part because of the ridiculous favoritism they know they'll receive regardless of their performance.

 

I work in enterprise IT. Specifically in tech operations. It's a complete fucking sausage fest.

Women in any kind of senior position my field tend to fall into one of two groups - utterly, utterly, utterly useless, or so very much better than anyone else that it's frightening.

Because IT geeks are the worst kind of misogynists (the kind who honestly believe that they're too smart to be misogynists) most women look at their career path in IT fairly early and decide that they could go do some other bullshit and make just as much money with far less bullshit from jerk coworkers. The exceptions to that rule tend to be either wildly incompetent at everything except getting guys to do their work for them and dodging accountability, or women who are so fucking talented that there's no other field for them. These women are usually rainman style savants who are so brutally talented that it's just unfucking believable. I've met maybe 5 or 6 of the awesome ones in almost 14 years of enterprise IT.

 

I generally find women less funny than men. But I do not think this is all about female talent for humour, part of the difference lie in the joke receiver as opposed to the joke giver.

Comedy almost always has a target. Sometimes it is some out-group (Mexicans, lawyers, the government) that is the victim or butt of the joke, in self-deprecating humour it is the comedian himself. This is a problem for female comedians, because men perceive women as nurturers and are uncomfortable with women being "mean" to others. Conversely, laughing at women professing weaknesses and insecurities goes against principles of chivalry.

When a male comedian makes a hilarious joke about being a fatass tub of lard, we laugh, because he is a guy so who gives a shit, and also we know that for men humour is an avenue for attaining social status so as long as we laugh he is not in fact demeaning himself.

But if a female comedian tells the exact same joke, we feel she must have low self-esteem and poor judgement to belittle herself in public, and that it would be mean and probably insensitive to laugh.

Men are shaped by biology and socialization to not be callous towards women's sensibilities, and sparing them from the knives and daggers of the male world. That is why we kill the cockroaches, check on noises at night and fight the wars. We also pick on our male friends when they gain weight or get a new hairstyle, but would never ever do that to our female friends.

Most modern women don't like excessive chivalry, but still like this arrangement to be the backdrop. Good for them, but bad for female comedians.

 

If you want to know if women can be funny then here is a flagship example that they can, and she does it by roasting all the women that think they're funny and but AREN'T. Hilarious.