“Are women not as funny as men?”

A READER WRITES: "Why is a GSOH important for men but not for women? It seems from observation it could even be a disadvantage for females in the mating game? What do your philosophers or evolutionary psychologists have to advise on this? Should women keep their ironic comments to themselves or at least confine them to their female friends? Perhaps they can give free rein if they are not on the
look-out for a rich authoritative handsome man with a GSOH?"

BB SAYS: Many men do find intelligent, funny women attractive - they especially look for intelligence and wit in prospective long-term partners, because spending your life with a boring simpleton is not much fun. However, there is a good deal of truth in what you say. Female comedians have often noted that their sense of humour does not give them quite the same sexual pull that their male equivalents seem to have. Why not?

From biological point of view, this difference is ultimately explained by our evolutionary history. DNA analysis tells us that today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced. Most men who ever lived did not have descendants who are alive today. Competition among men for sexual partners was stiffer. In short, in order to attract partners men needed to try and do more to stand out from the crowd. This explains why so many men engage in seemingly irrational, dumb behaviour. It explains why it was so rare for a hundred women to get together and build a ship and sail off to explore unknown regions where they will almost certainly die, whereas men have fairly regularly done such things. On average, men needed to do more showing off than women. Men go to extremes more than women. Being funny is one of numerous ways of trying to show off and saying "Look at me! Please consider having sex with me!"

Now, many men feel threatened by women who are their equal in intelligence and success. But women are, on average, at least as intelligent as men. So what should women do? There are essentially two strategies and most women deploy a combination of both. One strategy is to say "I am going to display my intelligence and wit – and if men don’t like it then that is their problem. I want a man who is strong enough to cope with the fact that I am intelligent and funny". The other strategy consists of women to some extent disguising their intelligence and wit, so as not to appear too threatening to men. The female sense of humour is often more subtle and understated – women often save the savage stuff for their female friends. Their humour often focuses more on witty self-deprecation. These strategies allow women to successfully manipulate men in order to get what they want from life. It’s not that difficult for women to do this because they generally have higher social and emotional intelligence than men.

Most women have a reasonable level of social and emotional intelligence. This is not the case with men. There are far fewer autistic women, for example. And even many men who are not technically autistic display quasi-autistic characteristics. Some people regard autism as simply an extreme version of the male brain. When a woman says she wants a man with a GSOH, she is really saying "I want a man with a reasonable level of social and emotional intelligence. I want a man who is not a social weirdo, because so many of the men I meet are weirdos". Because the vast majority of women have a reasonable level of social and emotional intelligence, there is less need for them to engage in competitive, overt displays of these skills, even if they have them. Put simply: there are far fewer female weirdos. Hence this demand for a GSOH in men – there is a demand for it because emotional and social intelligence is much more scare among men. If you think about it, very few men are in the slightest bit funny - it's just that we all notice the few that are.

In any event, you sound to me like a funny woman who is more than capable of finding a funny partner, with whom you will be able to enjoy sharing each other’s wit and humour.