Die kann man hier natürlich nicht nehmen, das ist nur die Verkürzung einer Definition, die ich mal in der Sekundärliteratur gelesen habe. Die kann man anwenden, wenn man Dickens liest, nicht, wenn man einer Frau zuhört.
Humor meine ich als Überbegriff all dieser aufgezählten Dinge. Es lohnt sich mal, das anzusehen, um zu verstehen, was überhaupt "Humor" bedeutet. Vor allem für Leute interessant, die meinen, das wäre ihnen wichtig in einer Beziehung. Sind Ironie, Sarkasmus, Travestie, Parodie, Satire, Untertreibung wirklich wichtig in einer Beziehung!?
Beispiel:
Wie sich meine Tina über die neue Abgabenordnung der kurdischen Regierung lustig gemacht hat, klasse, ohne das wäre unsere Beziehung so fade... oder ihre Bemerkung, George Orwell sei ein T.S. Eliot für Zurechnungfähige, ach, herrlich...
Mal ehrlich: FRAUEN REDEN NICHT SO!
Schauen wir uns also Hitchens Essay mal näher an:
However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: "She's a real honey, has a life of her own … [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] … and, man, does she ever make 'em laugh."
Kann ich mir auch nicht vorstellen.
"Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon," said the report's author, Dr. Allan Reiss. "So when they got to the joke's punch line, they were more pleased about it." The report also found that "women were quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny."
Slower to get it, more pleased when they do, and swift to locate the unfunny—for this we need the Stanford University School of Medicine? And remember, this is women when confronted with humor.
Frauen verstehen zwar Humor, aber langsamer und weniger zuverlässig als Männer.
"The cultural values are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what's more male than that?" Ms. Ephron did not disagree.
Humor ist überwiegend aggressiv.
For some reason, women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing, which is why we admire Lucille Ball and Helen Fielding, who do see the funny side of it. But this is so rare as to be like Dr. Johnson's comparison of a woman preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs: the surprise is that it is done at all.
Männer machen Witze über ihre Unvollkommenheit und über Sex. Machen Frauen das auch?
For women, reproduction is, if not the only thing, certainly the main thing. Apart from giving them a very different attitude to filth and embarrassment, it also imbues them with the kind of seriousness and solemnity at which men can only goggle.
Eher nicht.
In other words, for women the question of funniness is essentially a secondary one. They are innately aware of a higher calling that is no laughing matter. Whereas with a man you may freely say of him that he is lousy in the sack, or a bad driver, or an inefficient worker, and still wound him less deeply than you would if you accused him of being deficient in the humor department.
Deckt sich vollkommen mit meinen Beobachtungen.
If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates. This is the unspoken compromise. H. L. Mencken described as "the greatest single discovery ever made by man" the realization "that babies have human fathers, and are not put into their mother's bodies by the gods."
Männer müssen so tun, als hätten sie das Sagen. Bei den Siux standen die Frauen bei Beratungen hinter den Männern und durften nichts sagen. Nach dem Palaver nickten sie entweder oder schüttelten den Kopf. Wenn sie den Kopf schüttelten, mussten die Männer neu beraten. Obwohl Männer so tun, als wären Frauen hier vom Entscheidungsprozess ausgeschlossen, entscheiden sie tatsächlich alles alleine.
Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can't afford to be too frivolous. (And there just aren't that many episiotomy jokes, even in the male repertoire.) I am certain that this is also partly why, in all cultures, it is females who are the rank-and-file mainstay of religion, which in turn is the official enemy of all humor. One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman's universe is left in ashes and ruin.
And because fear is the mother of superstition, and because they are partly ruled in any case by the moon and the tides, women also fall more heavily for dreams, for supposedly significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries, for romantic love, crystals and stones, lockets and relics, and other things that men know are fit mainly for mockery and limericks.
No comment.
