These Tired Jokes About Women Just Aren’t Funny Anymore

Male stand-up comedians, please take note

Images via Wikimedia.

Behold the spotlight, the microphone. The audience, hushed in anticipation. The badass music as he (usually he, sometimes she) walks to the empty stage.

Then, the opening joke. Funny, we hope, but like a child beholding a mound of Christmas presents, we know there is so much more to come. We don’t mind unwrapping them one by one. Savoring the set-up, the slow reveal.

I love me some good stand-up comedy. Because let’s face it — the world is shit these days. Stand-up won’t save us, but at least it can make us laugh.

Except when it’s not that funny.

And it seems to me that there are an increasing number of male stand-up comedians who make me cringe more than they make me laugh. They go around peddling the same old tired jokes about women that weren’t all that funny 20 years ago and are even less funny now.

When I watch stand-up comedy, I want to laugh. I am primed to laugh, I am there to laugh. I’m either buying two drinks and paying a cover for the explicit purpose of laughing, or I’ve bypassed whatever drama series everyone is talking about because I need a break from the travails of fucked-up rich people who take themselves too seriously, and I want to — yep, you guessed it — laugh.

Sometimes, jokes don’t land, and that’s okay. Sometimes I don’t connect with a comedian’s sense of humor, and that’s okay, too. Sometimes I cringe right up to a punchline, then explode into laughter because the joke went somewhere wholly unexpected. That’s not only okay — that’s brilliant.

Other times, I cringe right up to a punchline and don’t laugh at all. Usually, this is when a male comedian builds a whole bit out of the “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” premise. Usually, he is making one of the following points: