Why arent many female comedians funny ?

riclad

Theres plenty of funny female comedian,s , chelsea peretti,sarah silverman,
sharon horgan, tina fey, tiffany haddish,whitney cummings,Aisling Bea etc
yes if you watch tv there are more male comedian,s than female .
in terms of population we are well represented in term,s of actors ,comedian,s vs the uk or america.

biko

Dog Murphy wrote: »

They have about 12 times our population might have something to do with it.

So if we bring it back to the premise of the thread - if we had many more women than men then they would be funnier.

It's about quantity.

riclad

There,s probably loads of mediocre male comedians out there ,
only the good ones get to be on tv.
Maybe its like pop music, for every taylor swift,or adele, there,s 10,000 female singers who will never get into the charts or even have a video on mtv.

Quantum Erasure

faceman wrote: »

There has been much research done on the topic and there is very little difference in quality of comedy output..

from the link I posted yesterday...

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

The studies are in, and the results are.....

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/humor-sapiens/201910/are-men-really-funnier-women

found that men were, overall, rated as funnier than women. How big was the difference? In statistical technical terms, the effect size was 0.32, or roughly one-third of the standard deviation. In plain English, this means that 63 percent of men score above the mean humor ability of women.

Dyr

faceman wrote: »

Yes it is. The suggestion that gender influences how funny someone is down right offensive

Spoken like someone who passed the rigorous selection test for Cmod with flying colours

Rubberchikken

joan rivers - very funny.

the rest, absolutely bloidy useless.

and the feminist period-joking blah blah ones should be - god i cant think.of anything bad enough to do to these cripplingly dreary ones.

Wibbs

faceman wrote: »

Completely agree with this. However gender isn't a characteristic of the quality of comedy

In specific individual cases I would broadly agree with you, overall I wouldn't. As you noted from one study "Even more interested was that both male and female participants missattributed". Men are generally seen as being more likely to be funny.

But isn't many opinions in the discussion hypocritical. Would those who make a generalisation that women aren't as funny as men, agree then that all male comedians are funny? Obviously not. So why then is there a stigma with female comedians. If men are the funnier sex, would that not mean they are the funnier on a consistent basis?

They seem to be going by the number who get into comedy and the number of those successful at it to 50/50 gender split audiences. Of course all men aren't funny, only a small percentage are and an even smaller percentage have what it takes consistently to do stand up, comedic acting and the like. However it's a far higher percentage of men at that level. Again being viewed and paid for by men and women. Though I would say the gender difference in comedic acting is much narrower. If you look at a show like Friends, IMHO the best two comedy actors in that ensemble with the best timing are Perry and Aniston. Comedic writing would be another area where the differences would be lesser. It seems the stand up arena is where the differences are most marked and there are more men who do it and more men who are better at doing it.

On a tangent... Storytelling. There are a lot of bloody good to genius level women writers and going way back in history and across cultures too, however as one on one or to an audience storytellers not nearly so much. Now many men and women couldn't spin a yarn to save their lives and a goodly chunk of men and women would be good alternatives to sleeping tablets, but again the better storytellers tend to be men. Have I been bored to tears by men telling me a tale of their day or an event? Hell yes, but I've been bored to a near coma by more women trying to do so. The payoff, the punchline seems to the stumbling block for a start and unfunny/uninteresting rambling and tangents.

Another study took pictures of attractive men and women and put funny and funny statements under each picture. Participants were asked which was more desirable. Women were drawn to the images where the statement was deemed funnier but men didn't care if the female statements were funny or not. The study also showed women were more attracted to men who could make them laugh while men were more interested in women who would laugh at their jokes.

Which strongly suggests selection going on which makes it reproductively advantageous for men to be funnier than women and of not a clear advantage for women.

Rubberchikken wrote: »

joan rivers - very funny.

the rest, absolutely bloidy useless.

and the feminist period-joking blah blah ones should be - god i cant think.of anything bad enough to do to these cripplingly dreary ones.

Phyllis Diller was another old style comedian who had it. Similar vibe to Rivers.