From Peek-a-boo to sarcasm: women's humor as a means of both connection and resistance.

There is a growing body of new research and literature on both women's psychological development and women's humor, but theorists in these two fields have not yet fully integrated their findings. Research on women's psychology has introduced new models of the identity-formation process and how women develop their identities in relation. Self-in-relation theorists focus on the early mother-infant relationship and how it serves as a model for development based on emotional and cognitive intersubjectivity. In contrast to earlier models that posit rigid individuation and separation from the mother as the major goal of psychological development, these feminist theorists point out that the early mother-infant bond facilitates identity based on empathy and mutual recognition of the other's subjectivity, as Janet Surrey explains:

They [mother and infant] both will proceed to become further defined as people as they change because of the relationship. Optimally, they both will grow toward more relatedness, not less; toward better relatedness, not separation. And better relatedness means more flexibility, scope, and choice for all individuals and for the relationship itself. (1)

In the instance of conflict, the healthy self-in-relation seeks to resolve the conflict with respect for the other's subjectivity and without rupture in the relationship.

These new theories also shed light on women's use of humor and help explain some of the discrepancies noted by humor theorists between men's and women's use of humor. Through these new models of female psychological development, we can see how women's humor follows the same patterns of communication used by women to address conflict, or in terms of humor theory, incongruity, without damaging interpersonal connections. Because earlier models of psychological development have largely overlooked these aspects of women's experience, we can expect weaknesses and inaccuracies in previous theories of women's use of humor.

Women's Lack of a Sense of Humor

Almost every woman who has theorized on women's humor has had to address the stereotypical assertion that women lack a sense of humor (among other things). Kate Sanborn, in the introduction to her 1885 anthology of female humorists, The Wit of Women, claims that her desire to challenge this assumption became the motivation for her work. In her introductory chapter, she does not theorize as to why women have been accused of lacking wit; rather, she discusses her predicament of having too many excellent writings to include in her collection. Sanborn introduces her collection with references to early joke tellers, including the Grecian woman who, when her host gave her a miserly amount of very old wine in a tiny glass, responded, "Isn't it very small for its age?" (2) Unfortunately, Sanborn's attempt did little to extinguish the popular conception that women (comparatively) lack a sense of humor. She came back to her subject in 1905 with an article entitled "New England Women Humorists," in which she admits that the stereotype of the humorless woman has persisted. Almost one hundred years later, Robin Lakoff, in her 1975 study on "women's language" (which she defines as speech deemed appropriate for women in American society), confirms the cultural perception that women lack a sense of humor: "[I]t is axiomatic in middle-class American society that, first, women can't tell jokes--they are bound to ruin the punchline, they mix up the order of things, and so on. Moreover, they don't 'get' jokes. In short, women have no sense of humor." (3)

Although the stereotype of the humorless female has stubbornly persisted, reinforced by studies concluding that women use humor less often than men, Sanborn's accomplishment remains important. She preserved anecdotes, jokes and humorous stories that contained the themes and ideas that comprise what current scholarship has come to recognize as "women's humor." Today there are several scholars and theorists dedicated to exploring, identifying, documenting and preserving women's humor. Nancy Walker, Regina Barreca, Zita Dresner, Emily Toth, Gloria Kaufman, Linda Morris, and June Sochen, among others, have compiled several anthologies among them and have developed a sophisticated body of theory dedicated to answering the questions: Why have women been accused of lacking a sense of humor? Are women less witty than men? Is there such a thing as "women's humor"? What are women more or less likely to laugh about? How do women use humor? What are the effects of women's humor?