Humorless feminism

Feminists are routinely lampooned as humorless creatures, as in the classic joke: Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: That's not funny! (that actually is kind of funny, at least to some feminists).

This stems from at least two responses to feminism:

One, the defensive reaction of anyone who feels they are being critiqued or criticized; it is a subtle attack. It works like this:

A says something sexist ("Women can't drive.").

B calls A on the sexist comment ("You know, that's really not true, and in fact is a sexist generalization.")

A responds by bringing up humorless feminism ("Geez, feminists have got no sense of humor.")

Here, A is attempting to rebuff B's critique by reframing the original comment as "merely" humorous, and suggesting that B is not on the ball and is missing the humor that was implicit. A's response minimizes both the original sexism (which really isn't funny), and attempts to stifle critical commentary (which also isn't very funny).

If A had a sense of humor, A would be able to hear a valid criticism and say, "Doh! My sexist upbringing strikes again. Sorry." or some other humorous rejoinder which acknowledges the truth of B's observation while indicating that A doesn't take offense at criticism and instead can humorously acknowledge criticism. B could humorously retort, "Yes, you really need reconditioning. As it is now, you'll be among the first up against the wall when the feminist revolution comes."

Instead, A reveals A's own lack of a sense of humor, or at least, a lack of a robust sense of humor; since it is so easily derailed by a response which doesn't look just at the putative humorous element of the first comment. A sense of humor ought to be able to be woven in and about with truthful and honest speech, and in fact, to many people the funniest things are the things that are true on some level. A sense of humor that only reveals itself in untruthful generalizations is a poor excuse for a sense of humor. "A", here, reveals either that A is (a) very defensive or (b) has a very defective sense of humor, that is either extremely fragile or extremely one-dimensional.

Men have no sense of humor. (ba-da-bump)

Two, this is also a response to the general characterization of women as humorless, about which much more could be written, but in general this is a misogynystic elaboration of the point one, above.