(This is an article I wrote months ago in response to this article. I never posted it, because it seemed a little, well, whiny. But the issue comes up again and again, so I thought I'd post the article here. Oh, and the google part. Not quite true anymore. Score one for us.)

WHY MEN AREN’T FUNNY

Men, as a gender, are not funny.

Please don’t pretend not to know what I’m talking about.

They try, God-bless-‘em, but humor just isn’t their strong point. Every gender has its strengths. Men are good at chopping wood and peeing standing up, and women are good at telling jokes.

We can’t blame the men, though. There are biological reasons why men aren’t funny. Physiologically, the male mind is created with one purpose: to pursue sex to propagate the species. With all the time and energy that takes the male brain, it’s virtually impossible for it to pursue the sort of high-order thinking that true humor entails.

Thus men are forced to resort to “cheap” physical humor like fart jokes and Adam Sandler movies. Again, it’s not their fault; it’s just the way that men are built.

That’s certainly not to say that men are never funny. It’s just the exception, rather than the rule. Attend any comedy show at all and you are sure to see far more unfunny males than you will unfunny females. It’s....

We now interrupt this article for a word from our author:

Ok, friends, I give up. Do you know how EXHAUSTING it is to think and write in bad stereotypes? How much work it takes to find obscure reasons why one race or gender or religion is inherently less good at something than another?

Amazing how some people manage to do it regularly with hardly any effort at all.

Did you know that when you do a google search for “Why men aren’t funny,” there are zero results? Not a single one. You can type in "sheep jumping over fence on cake" and get at least ONE result. But, apparently, not a single person in the entire history of the interweb has ever said that men aren’t funny.

Ironically, if you remove the quotes from the google search, it gives you over one-million articles on why WOMEN aren’t funny.

Charming.

I’m a comedienne. I write and tell jokes for money and I aspire to be very very good at it.

Yet every single day in some subtle or not-at-all-subtle way, I get to hear about how women aren’t funny. Some days, it’s even in the form of a compliment: “You know, I don’t like female comics. But you? You’re funny.” Thank you, friend, for implying that I’m either not funny, or not female. Much appreciated.

Every other female comedian I know seems to be able to handle these slices-of-crappiness in an I’m-above-worrying-about-that-sort-of-thing way. They joke about it. They say something brilliantly funny that, in a terribly mature-and-insightful way, shows that women ARE funny. It’s splendidly grown-up and genius-like and not a bit like me.

Me? I just get upset. Horribly, awfully upset.

Why, you ask, do I let these things bother me so? Comedy is, after all, a tough business for everyone. What makes my problem so special?

Well, imagine this: What if there was this Thing that you wanted to do more than any other Thing in the whole world? Really, it was the Thing that made you happy. ‘Twas the Thing you dreamed about at night and the Thing you woke up thinking about in the morning.

Yet nearly every day a person that you may or may not know would approach you and inform you that you can never truly be good at this Thing. “What? Why can’t I be good at it again?” you’d ask. “Because of who you are.” “Oh yes, that’s right. Because of who I am. I keep forgetting.”

Could you see how that might start to wear down your soul just a teensy bit? Maybe not the first three-hundred times you hear it, but eventually, after months of tip-tapping their way at your heart, don’t you think the doubts might actually make it inside?

Yes. Well, that’s where I am at this moment. A giant ball of unfunny emotions, who’s just TIRED of hearing other people’s opinion about the humor capabilities of my gender So if people could give it a rest for a while, I’d be eternally grateful.

Thanks, chums.

Oh. And should you ever want to read this article again? Just google “Why men aren’t funny.” It’ll be the only one that comes up