How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Let me explain why that REALLY isn't funny.

"It's just a joke" has always been one of the most irritating excuses for sexist tropes. But when a woman adopted that stance, it felt even worse... and got me thinking.

I grew up around jokes. Lots of jokes. Jokes, jokes, jokes.

Jokes about Dolly Parton’s chest size. Jokes about the ball and chain wife — like Rodney Dangerfield’s “Take my wife — please”. Jokes about how women can’t drive. Jokes about how women don’t have common sense and can’t balance checkbooks or handle money. Jokes about dumb blondes. Jokes about JAPS. And oral sex. Jokes I laughed at along with everyone else, even before I understood them. (Sometimes I even passed along the jokes myself. Once when I was around 11 years old, I made a Dolly Parton joke — I was a kid; what did I know? — and the men around the table thought it was a riot. If you’re ever looking for an example of Pavlovian positive reinforcement. What does a kid learn when they say something they don’t even understand and EVERYONE around them laughs? But that’s a different blog post.)

I laughed way before I knew what I was laughing at.

But then at some point, I started to understand the jokes. That’s when my laugh turned to a kind of forced hardy-har-har. Which morphed into a forced half-smile. That eventually became a muffled groan or an eye roll. Or folding of the arms.

The discovery that I couldn’t laugh when I was supposed to laugh caused me considerable shame. I didn’t want anyone to know that I was missing, like, some really important joke gene. It was humiliating. So I tried to keep it to myself. When I knew everyone else was laughing but I didn’t see the humor, I tried to hide it with other tactics. Like grinding teeth. Or stuffing more challah in my mouth, a Jewish version of chomping the bit. The way people used to drink a lot of schnapps when they had a tooth pulled, a Jewish woman’s way of drowning out the discomfort over warm bread. While hurting myself seemed like the rational thing to do at the time, it was probably not a good idea in the long run. I needed a functional jaw. Plus, all that bread was going to make me fat (again, the subject of a different blog post…). Nevertheless, these noiseless reactions enabled me to hide the fact that I lost my sense of humor.

I might have groaned a bit too loud. Or made a very unlaughing noise like a tsch. Or maybe I said, “Ooof.” During my weaker moments, perhaps when I came to fully understand the jokes, I may have even yelped something like, “How could you say such a thing?!”

People telling jokes did not like that reaction. I discovered that it is not an effective way to win friends and influence people. If you want people to like you, you need to laugh at their jokes.

I didn’t fully grasp that those were the rules. I mean, it wasn’t just that I lost my sense of humor. I also seemed to have lost my understanding of the rules of social situations.

“What?! It’s just a joke. Doesn’t anyone have a sense of humor around here?”

I suppose I didn’t. I was missing a sense of humor and becoming increasingly unpopular.

I tried getting it back, but it didn’t seem to work.

I tried watching sitcoms. Big Bang Theory, How I met your mother, Friends. It’s hard to watch these shows if you don’t have a sense of humor. It’s true. My kids will tell you. I am a very annoying person to watch sitcoms with because I don’t laugh at the jokes. I grumble at ditzy-blonde humor, I snap at token Smurfettes with zero character, and I may yell at the screen when I see a kind-of-rape scene disguised as romantic pursuit, which happens more than we would like to admit.

I think my kids love me, but they don’t really like watching television with me.

“Can’t we just enjoy our show?” I hear once in a while. Maybe more than once in a while.

I’m sure they love me anyway. I mean, you know, I’m pretty sure.

Anyway, that’s how I learned that women — especially feminists — have no sense of humor. Maybe if I had a sense of humor, I would be a happier person to watch movies with. And be funner at family get-togethers.

Maybe if I laughed at more jokes, I would have an easier life and wouldn’t upset people all the time and people would like hanging out with me more.

****

I was reminded this week that feminists have no sense of humor on my Facebook page.

(Of course, Facebook.) On a post I started asking for people’s ideas for feminist speakers, one woman — let’s call her Phyllis Schlafberg— suggested a speaker who other people on the thread did not like. The speaker whom Phyllis suggested — let’s call her Shayndel— tends to say things like, “Women alone are in charge of the home and of shalom bayit”, and “Women are the biggest complainers”, and gives women advice like, “Don’t hire attractive help in the house because your husbands will be tempted to cheat.” (Naturally, the attractive women on the thread found this offensive. They have every right to work as everyone else!)