Are you a film crew person looking for work in the UK? Multiple opportunities have opened up for the crew for a documentary!
A new Covent Garden-based film company seeks a producer of marketing and distribution, a researcher/presenter, a camera operator, a sound person, a runner, and an editor, for its first documentary, called Laughing with Women. Why are women, on average, slightly less funny than men? Does gold-digging in particular impair women’s joke-making ability? If women publicly reject gold-digging, do they become as funny, or funnier than men?
If the radical and revealing street-based social experiment at the centre of our documentary proves gold-digging does make women less funny (as pre-production research suggests) then our findings will make headlines around the world, our film’s two minute teaser trailer attached to all those news and blog articles. The full documentary will be shot to a broadcast-quality standard and format, giving mainstream television companies worldwide the opportunity to purchase broadcasting rights (if they’re feeling brave enough) whilst we maintain a virtually guaranteed revenue stream from our already established hardcore of supporters and fans around the world, who, along with everyone else we intrigue, will be able to enjoy Laughing with Women on newly launched pay-per-view channel, Vimeo on Demand (VoD) – where VoD itself takes a very modest 10% cut. The documentary has the potential to be translated into several languages – gold-digging a familiar if hidden story in every country, until now.
Positions available…
Producer of marketing and distribution
Researcher/presenter
Camera person
Sound person
Editor
All positions paid at the minimum national wage or above, to be negotiated.
Shooting dates…
The main shoot, testing the documentary’s key hypothesis, and the kind of fireworks it will generate, will take place from August 1st, for 10 days, in central London. Eight to ten other shooting days will be organized for soon after. If interested in getting involved, please email your show-reel and/or CV, along with a paragraph or two saying hello, explaining in a little detail why you are specifically interested in working on Laughing with Women – and what your individual take on it all might be – also outlining your availability. Interesting respondents will be contacted for a Covent Garden meeting soon, where the whole plan, and a closely linked follow-up project can be discussed.
That isn’t a documentary. They’re not building a story around an established science fact, they’re inventing a premise that they simply assume is true, and are then designing an “experiment” (more likely a contrived set of sight gags) to “prove” their claims on video. I can roughly predict what they’re going to do: they’re going to approach women, insult them by suggesting that they’re venal gold-diggers, and then demonstrate that angry women don’t have much of a sense of humor about sexist assmonkeys harassing them. Hypothesis proven! Of course, if women were actually funnier than the men in their sample, you know that wouldn’t get aired — they have a prejudice, and by god, they’re going to make it appear true.
And then they hope that people will be “brave enough” to make their video go viral when it confirms conventional bigotry. If their little dog-and-pony show doesn’t get picked up any broadcasters, it isn’t because they’re afraid to pander to stereotypes — turn on your TV and look, that’s never a problem — but because this “documentary” will be so patently slanted and dishonest that it is a slap in the face to real documentaries everywhere.
Wait a minute…they’re looking for a people to do camera and sound, a produce, a presenter, and an editor, for a show that is going to be a series of confrontations and requires almost no writing. So there is basically no crew at all right now, just a no-talent hack sitting on his ass in his office dreaming of putting together a show to prove to the world that women lack a sense of humor and are all gold-digging bitches. He sounds like every MRA in the world.
I called it. This is the dream of no-talent hack Tom Martin, who brings nothing to the project other than a resentment of women.
Doco? What a joke.
Well, actually its not funny.
But…but there isn’t that much gold in the UK. A bit in Scotland, but you don’t dig for it, it’s (if I remember) found in streams.
So not much scope there for them.
Maybe South Africa…?
@ ^ richardelguru : Or Australia – big goldfields in Victoria historically although I think they’re mined out now.
Minimum wage? Yeah, this will never be aired, even if by some infinite-monkey chance he manages to make it, except on YouTube.
Is this Tom “Whoriarchy” Martin’s documentary!? The last time he left his droppings on manboobz he was talking about a new project.
PNG is still full of diggable I propose filming close to the gold mine on Lihir, preferably in the crater of the active volcano that formed the island. I’m sure the local women will make it hilarious jokes about it.
Sounds like somebody’s just had a very messy divorce. I hope she took him to the cleaners.
Bahahaha! It is!
The initial proposal
@5 nepenthe
Kinda sounds like him, with the whole call for women to “publicly reject” something, but on the other hand not every other word is ‘whore’, and there’s nothing about penguins or uncomfy chairs.
Isn’t it extremely obvious that humour is subjective and not an objectively measureable realm anyhow?
Pretty sure this rubbish show won’t happen.
Not that we want to be equivocal about it or anything.
The rest of that nonsense, about “gold-digging” vs. “funniness” etc., may be taken as Mr. Martin’s attempt at humor. In which case he’s just made an argument for the case that men are, on the whole, all things considered and being equal, at the end of the day, not always very funny. Perhaps some deep fear of wimmenfolks is the cause, I’ll look into that as a possible subject for a documentary.
Yes, and you’d probably say that a lawsuit over hard chairs wouldn’t happen. But we are not talking about a person who operates within the reality that you and I are familiar with.
@suzysalaksartok
If you continue reading the comment thread that Nepenthe linked to, you’ll see that Tom Martin keeps on commenting, and, yes, every other word is indeed “whore.”
Apparently he stayed up til 1 am, at least, telling Manboobz commenters that they’re in denial about not being whores, the night before he was due to start shooting. Perhaps that’s why he had to delay the project after the initial announcement – too busy lecturing online feminists to stop pretending they’re not whores.
This sounds a lot like Monty Python..
All this miserable nobody’s energy was clearly completely exhausted in his “thinking” up this wunnerful idea-er – that no talent or creativity was there from the start is even more clear.
I’d enjoy hearing how he has come to his “hypothesis” about women being gold-diggers and therefore “on average slightly less funny” than men (no doubt white Englishmen like himself are, on average, slightly sexier, more virile AND more intelligent than other types of male humans, and he himself, on average, slightly more so than similar self-judged, admirably “fit” specimens of true manhood). No doubt it involves some unhappy women who dated this reeking turd-in-human-form and refused to simply split the check, forcing Man-with-no-dick Head to pay the entire cost of what he ordered and consumed (no doubt he stiffed the waitress as well.)
That was probably his one and only date, ever, as inflated dolls do NOT really count!
Oh, to meet this sort of shit in physical form someday – without being trapped with them through work or distant relation!
Spend too much time at Manboobz and you begin to hope that these people are doing some kind of Monty Python nonsense.
Tom Martin in the comments section:
After shooting my video experiment tomorrow to discover who is more sexist on the street, women or women, I will be shooting another short, investigating if there is a correlation between unfunny women and prostitution ethic. I believe women could be as funny as men on average if they tried, but instead, invest in whoring strategies
No prejudice there.
I’m sure he’ll have a bunch of seasoned TV industry professionals jumping at the chance to work on this brilliant project for minimum wage.
It sounds like part of a bad TV comedy show skit. The punchline would be the would be producer wearing a bunch of gold, or having job experience as a gigilo, or something.
I hope he spends himself bankrupt making this.
Is this the guy who defines “:whore” as “any woman who will not sleep with me when I demand it?” If so, does he think the willingness to sleep with him makes a woman funny?
@21 ChristineRose
No, hes the guy who defines ‘whore’ as any woman who has ever accepted anything ever from a man and then at some point either did or didn’t have sex with him. Also penguins, they’re whores too.
@22 suzysalaksartok
Female penguins only if I’m not mistaken… let’s keep it serious, not *all* penguins.
I suppose it’s just too bad Christopher Hitchens is no longer with us; this sort of thing would have been right up his alley. Perhaps that’s for the best. Much as I admired his thinking on some issues, the man was not rational where gender was concerned.
There’s just one question I would like to ask these people – even if I bend over backward to grant the possibility there could be some gender- or sex-based differences in senses of humour, why the fuck would something like that matter?
Dr. Marcus Hill @18:
Is he even going to pay them that? I assumed that the reason he goes on and on in the ad about the project and how much exposure it will get is that he’s looking for free labor.
re 22:
If so, he has it entirely backward. The common ‘trope’ is that any woman who requires a ‘date’ (dinner and/or dancing) before consenting to sex, must be a whore. There’s a long, long history of the ‘trope’ that man have to ‘pay’ for sex; either with money or actions or candy or flowers or poems, what-have-you. Always, boys are taught to *pay* for girls, that no girl will want to hangout with a boy for any other reason. Never read Men are from Mars, Women from Venus, just assumed it promoted the idea that men and women are totally different and incompatible. This ‘muvie’ is just more of the same old shit we were fed over and over. {oh no!}Maybe he’s just trying to parody that ‘trope’. {what a thought, can’t be true…}
There’s salary information at the very top of the ad:
Further down there’s an explanation that you’ll get an unspecified cut of the profits from pay-per-view showings…and we all know that there’s a vast number of people who want to pay money to watch funny videos on the internet.
Other than that, I’ve got to question the very premise of the video. Isn’t the ability to tell funny stories a useful gold-digging strategy? If I were paying someone for companionship I’d certainly expect them to be entertaining.
It might be better to look at things from the other side. My guess is that men who hire long-term courtesans aren’t as funny as men who don’t – because they get used to having someone who will laugh at their jokes whether they’re funny or not, and eventually they get lazy.
re 26:
ughh. No. The old ‘trope’ we were taught is that the only ‘real’ difference between a “whore” and a “lady” is that a “whore” will take cash before sex, but a “lady” requires dinner and dancing first, not cash directly. You still need cash to pay for dinner etc., but not to the lady directly. (and “sex” was also just being able to touch the lady’s bare skin, anywhere on her body)
This guy seems to be declaring that distinction was just a ‘bourgeois polite-ness thing, but “ladies” are really “whores” deep down.
What? Hang on, you mean that’s actually serious? Someone is actually going to make that film? Are they going to get two women, one of whom is a gold digger and the other isn’t, and see which one does the better stand up act?
How on Earth did they decide on those two factors, of all things? Where did they dream this correlation up? By what mechanism does being a gold digger make you unfunny? Or are they just trying to prove a correlation, and aren’t going to bother elaborating? By what criteria will they decide which women are gold diggers and which aren’t? By what criteria will they decide which women are funny and which aren’t? How are they planning on proving any of their assertions? Have they thought this through at all? Assuming this is actually a serious hypothesis, are they fucking stupid?
My head hurts.
Impossible. According to Martin, there is no woman who is not a whore and a golddigger.
@RichardelGuru
If it’s in the streams, then it must have been washed out of the rock. If it’s in the rock, you have to dig to get it. If it is present but they’re not digging for it, it’s because it’s uneconomical to do so. Off the top of my head, Scotland has a lot of fault and thrust zones which can make mining difficult, which makes it more expensive, so it’s probably just not in great enough concentrations to make a profit.
Sorry, my thoughts ran off with me. If it’s in the streams then it’s in the rocks, was my point.
Tom Martin also won’t debate you until you renounce prostitution in all its forms.
What does that actually mean? Hell if I know.
And then, just in case you were laughing too hard to be properly horrified by him,
(um, trigger warning?)
Pedophiles who pay children for sex aren’t rapists, because the child understands the nature of the contract.
And, in fact, it’s the pedophiles who are the victims in this scenario.
He doubles down in the comments.
Tom Martin really, really, really wants to be important. I think he is deeply troubled by the fact that he considered to little more than a clownish irrelevance.
If his usage and frequency of use of the word whore is grotesquely idiosyncratic, then his thoughts on the child sex trade (as quoted on Manboobz) are so incredibly outlandish and seemingly deliberately provocative that I defy anyone to really take offence. He is laughably incoherent and incompetent.
The only people seemingly willing to take him seriously are those other pitifully deranged misogynists who populate
BedlamMRA websites. He is impotent rage, threat and ridiculousness all rolled up into one neat package.Surely he meant to call the documentary “Laughing at women”. Although it does sound like it should be called “Women laughing at me”.
Well, I assume is it because gold diggers are like female Mitt Romneys, or “real life” Scrooges. There is no time for humor when there is money to scheme after!
LeDouche’s Equation of Gold-diggery:
(Bling * Dead Exes^2 + Wealth of Current Beau * (Age of Male – Age of Female))/ Wealth of Parents
It’s just basic physics.
Rape jokes per minute aka The Daniel Tosh Ratio.
“Hey look, this woman we don’t like and actively demonize doesn’t match our sense of humor!”
“And look, this woman that we don’t actively demonize and don’t have as much prejudice against is better at entertaining us!”
“Well, I think we’ve gone and proven everything, ever, right now. Now time to get paid!”
“SCIENCE!”
IIRC, he once said that 98% of women are whores/prostitutes/gold diggers, so that does still leave some wiggle room to find some that aren’t.
Tom Martin is not a Poe or a satirist. He actually took some UK college ( was it the London School of Economics? On the iPad, too much trouble to search for and link) to court because hard chairs are MISANDRY! Because women have fatter asses, er, that is, moar padding, and so the hard chairs at the school library disproportionally affected men and so the school was discriminating based on gender, which is SEXISM, see?
Also, what Howard posted earlier about the child prostitution and what others said about the whores. He’s completely serious and sincere about that.
A voice for men disowned Tom Martin recently for being “too feminist”.
I wouldn’t trust the standards of funny given the information I’ve read so far. From the sound of it, I’d expect a lot of women would have their score reduced because their humor sailed over Tom Martin’s head. There is a lot of humor you have to be intelligent or knowledgeable about a particular subject in order to “get,” whether it’s the mundane trials of everyday life, looking at shared cultural conventions from a different perspective, or an in-joke relating to an obscure bit of literature. There’s also some level of sympathy and empathy involved in humor, since the audience needs to identify with the comic’s take on the frustrations and absurdities in life.
This is your regularly scheduled reminder that these are allegedly the “moderate center” of the Men’s Human Rights Movement.
@Gen
Is that actually true? That’s…incredible.
Now, an interesting documentary would be one that looked at how people develop the idea that women are less funny than men. I mean, humor is context based, and if a portion of humor by women depends on understanding how the world works for women, then of course guys like this jackass wouldn’t get it. (I see Bronze Dog said the same thing in #38.)
Also, someone should organize a group to give support to Martin’s targets on the days he says he’ll be filming, kind of like abortion clinic escorts.
As I live and breathe.
If he is approaching unsuspecting women, I’d image that Tom Martin may end up having to edit his material to produce a long documentary about Tom Martin being told to fuck off.
The pitch very much sounds as though he has recruited a self-described gold-digger to play patsy in his “documentary”.
This “Film company” seems to lack any of the basic elements of what might be accurately described as a company, let alone one which produces films. What is Tom Martin bringing to the party, other than a peculiar talent for espousing unconvincing bullshit?
“Ok, you glue the coins to the sidewalk; you hang the bucket of goo up there, and you hold the video camera. I’ll drive the getaway car.”
@ mcbender #24
I was disappointed by a number of things CH said, too, but one significant thing I think he got right about women: When you give women control over their reproductive choices, such as access to contraception and abortion, then the economy in that part of the world improves. When women’s economic situation rises above being incubators, then all the economic boats in the neighborhood rise.
Well, I think we have found the co-author of FATAL, as I can’t recall anyone ELSE being this obsessed with prostitutes.
@ Bernard Bumner #43
Now if the camera catches somebody giving him a snootful of pepper spray — that I would pay to see.
Gen @ 42,
Wow that’s surreal. There goes the old adage: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Tom Martin here.
Thanks for your interest in this documentary. I’ve had 300 crew applications so far, from people who seem to get it. Skeptics can apply too. If there are any humourously unrepentant gold-diggers reading this who’d like to co-host the experiment, that would be fun – or, if there are any gold-diggishness deniers – victim-feminist wets who simply don’t except women would ever gold dig, or who think that gold-digging exists because patriarchy – or who think that we should simply pretend gold-digging doesn’t exist – stand up now. Otherwise, sit down and watch the documentary without shooting the messenger too much – its very unbecoming.
PZ Myers, are you an expert on gender and humour? – because if you are, you can peer-review the experiment at the core of this documentary, along with the other expert in the field I ran it past who has already given it a thumbs up and expects my hypothesis to be supported.
You can follow developments with this documentary by subscribing, on youtube and twitter, @sexismbusters
This documentary will be stepping around the victim-feminist blockade, taking the experiments and the evidence to the people who count.
You can misrepresent my court case against LSE (The Times et al did) but you will not be able to interfere with gold-diggers digging their own holes, on camera, or with stand-up independent women who choose to reject gold-digging, making us laugh with them.
All those in favour of gold-digging?
Didn’t think so.
YAAAAY Tom Martin came! Quick, get the popcorn!
Yaaaaay! Get your own popcorn Sally.
I ain’t sayin she’s a gold digger. But she ain’t messin with no broke n*ggaz.
I expect to be paid for the time I’ve spent talking to you Tom. Simply go to Paypal and donate. Sally lichtenstein 303 at yahoo dot com. Suggested donation: $5 USD per minute.
Tom, what makes you think that being funny has a negative correlation with desiring money? Comics seem to want to make money; after all, they do charge for their performances.
From the people who brought you “They Took Our Jobs!”, “Reverse Racism”, and “Welfare Queens” comes the new great menace threatening our society if you squint really, really hard: Gold-Diggers! Coming to a theater owned by someone who listens to too much right-wing radio near you!
Oh look—an entitled shit weasel so dense and clumsy one wonders how he actually got into LSE in the first place!
Sally, I’m legit pissed I don’t have any popcorn in the house. I eat that shit almost every night with my euphemism.
@ maddog1129 #45:
Yes, that’s true; I agree with that statement also, and I always appreciated the force with which he said it. It just tends to fade into the background for me in light of his repeated boneheaded insistence that women were incapable of being funny on biological gender-essentialist grounds, among other things.
Now Tom, are we operating under your usual definition of whoria–pardon, “gold digging” or some new one? And will there be penguins featured in this “experiment” of yours? How about Saudi Arabian women? Trafficked childr–excuse me, exploitative teen prostitutes?
I might watch if there are penguins. And only penguins.
Carlie said: Tom, what makes you think that being funny has a negative correlation with desiring money? Comics seem to want to make money; after all, they do charge for their performances.
Yes Carlie, comics want money, for their comedy work – but not for sex.
I can’t think of any funny female stand up comedians who used to be hookers or gold-diggers. Can anyone?
There must be a few female comedians who tell jokes celebrating gold-digging – but I think they’re rare.
You forgot “whores.”
Douchebucket.
Way to not answer the question, shitbag. Why would gold-digging negatively correlate with humor?
But I thought any woman who makes money or doesn’t make money is a whore. I have a confuzed!
tommartin said:
I’m a bit unclear from your answers whether you wish to defend gold-digging or attack me.
tommartin:
From the OP:
Now, reading these two thing together, one might be tempted to – not so much jump as gently stroll – to the pretty obvious conclusion that the outcome of this ‘experiment’ has already been determined by the experimenter before it’s even been done.
But, ok, I’ll bite.
Given that one of your premises is that women are less funny than men, what do you base that on?
I assume you have some hard data here, right?
I mean, you’ve come up with a way to measure ‘funniness’ without cultural bias, and then have done double-blind testing of a large enough sample size to feel confident making a broad statement about men and women as world populations? Or that you know someone who has done this?
Any chance you could link to that no doubt fascinating piece of research?
Because otherwise the entire premise of your project appears to have sprung fully formed from your ass like a fecal Athena.
I’m sure that’s not the case, though, and that you can back up what you say.
Right?
…right?
tommartin doesn’t find women very funny. Some of his best friends agree with him. Gee, what a foolish fellow.
Yep, this. Given enough footage of vox pop and the ability to edit, you can ‘prove’ any and every weird-ass conclusion you fancy. Easy-peasy since there’s no shortage of folks who want to be on teh tee vee and kid’s computers can easily edit video.
Getting people to actually pay to watch is the tricky part; seems like hiring a PR company would be a better investment here.
I haz a disappoint. I guess Tom Martin has cottoned on to the fact that it’s utterly ridiculous (and, to some, insulting) to claim that 97% of women are whores. So, instead he has “gold-digging.” Which means the same thing in his mind. I guess he thinks people are as dumb–no, dumber!–than he is. If he just says “gold-digger” instead of “whore” they won’t notice that it’s the same silly sexist premise, right? Right? A guy can hope.
Since “gold-digging” is an irrelevance, a boogeyman, something only significant to you as an excuse to be a sexist asshole, and that you aren’t even attempting to prove that it is something we should be concerned about and simply assuming that it is common and significant and going off from there…we’re “attacking” you, precious. The fact that you think we are “defending” gold-digging is just an illustration of what a profound idiot you are. You’re mommy lied to you: you aren’t that special. You aren’t as smart as you think you are. You are a braying dumbass who can only spout assertions over and over and are incapable of changing those assertions in light of new information, thus being incapable of argument, incapable of even conversation, and incredibly incapable of doing actual science. Best of luck with your project. I hope that if you plan to actually have speaking parts in the film that you hire someone skilled with audio, because it is often hard to hear someone who has their head so far up their own asshole.
(Above: should be “Your”)
Granted, he gives the game away here by comparing “gold-diggers” with “hookers”. Whoops!
I can’t think of any female comedians who used to be pirates either, so clearly, this means that female comedians are directly responsible for global warming. Tom Martin Science!
On the other hand, I’ve never met an MRA who was intentionally funny (as opposed to sad, pathetic and tragically funny like Tommyboy here), so that must mean, by Tom Martin logic that all MRAs are whores.
Uh oh. You have a point.
Hypothesis: MRAs are less funny than the average non-MRA.
And unlike Thomas of Martin’s pet hypothesis, it makes sense that MRAs would be less funny. Because they are right-wing leaning, defined by their obsession with fighting feminism, endlessly painting themselves as victims despite being quite privileged. They are too bitter and detached from reality to be funny. You must only be one of the two to really be funny. Their only humor is spiteful, punching down, a means of catharsis and bullying.
Hey Tom!
Please do inform us, because curious minds and whatnot, but what do we need to do, step by step, to “repeal” our whorish/gold digging approving ways? Don’t just say “renounce”. What does it MEAN to “renounce” these things? What does “renouncing” these things mean?
Sally Strange said: I guess Tom Martin has cottoned on to the fact that it’s utterly ridiculous (and, to some, insulting) to claim that 97% of women are whores.
Sally, at least you are insulted to be likened to a prostitute. Legitimate, effective political comedy sometimes involves exaggeration. Example: “100% of domestic violence is initiated by women.” (Dick Masterson)
Sally, I made the claim that 97% of women are whores, on comedy blog, manboobz (but I wasn’t joking – in that I would estimate that as few as 3% of women have renounced prostitution in all its forms – and, as we’re all born takers, if we haven’t renounced it, we are therefore, still psychologically prepared to be whores, as and when).
For the record, I predict that 10 to 20% of women in our documentary experiment will measure zero or close to zero on the gold-diggerometer (the highest score available, ground level, human, -10 being the lowest score, for the lowest, largest gold-diggers, in the deepest holes).
I actually do want to celebrate the (hopefully funnier) humour from those women who aren’t gold-diggers.
Also, I want to investigate why higher testosterone men tend to be the quickest witted, men with 14 to 20 times more testosterone than women, yet women only slightly less funny than men on average. Do women have other physiological advantages over men in humour-generating potential, currently under utilized, like more white brain matter, currently clogged up with cup-cake recipes and patriarchy theory?
I will be impartial, and have a track record of being impartial. I made a documentary at university, called The Greener Gender, where I hypothesized that women desired more environmentally unfriendly partners than men, and I was proven wrong by my own experiment, across a range of issues – most women wanting men to make the environmentally friendlier life style choices, with the exception of vehicle choice, most women preferring men to drive more environmentally unfriendly cars.
For Laughing with Women, I would like to make a distinction between gold-digging, prostitution, and sex work. Sex work is a distinct category, and merits a documentary of its own.
Thanks Twincats, for recommending I should hire a PR person. I am looking for a producer of marketing and distribution (PMD) to nurture this project from an early stage, in a business partner capacity, working on commission (like me). If you know what a PMD is and does, and think you can do it, email me!
The great thing about this project though is, we will shoot the experiment from August the 1st on, for a few grand – and if the rushes are as explosive as expected, cast around for executive producers and PR companies after that.
In the meantime, you can subscribe to sexismbusters on twitter and youtube for updates, for free – and as ever, you can renounce prostitution in all its forms for free also.
tommartin (#75)
You should do a documentary, starring yourself, on how it’s possible to be a man with negative testosterone levels, then.
Hey, do I win something? Because I asked my question before Tom wrote this. I can haz psykik prize nao?
Tom, HOW? How, exactly, step by step explanation, do you envision people renouncing prostitution?
Let’s not go there, thanks.
Yes, insinuating that someone you don’t agree with must not be “a real man” tee em. Really solid, helpful in breaking down the gender binary and gender roles… oh wait.
*sighs*
I’m not questioning his manhood, only his quickness of wit.
Haha, nope. I don’t believe there’s anything morally wrong about trading sex for money, so long as nobody’s forced into it and all interactions are 100% consensual. I actually went out of my way to note in my comment at 68 to say that being compared to a prostitute is insulting “to some”, i.e., not to me. I recognize that some people feel that way – I don’t think those feelings are warranted, though.
Reading comprehension, Tom does not haz it.
A. Noyd said: I’m not questioning his manhood, only his quickness of wit.
A. Noyd, I will be questioning my quickness of wit too, participating in the same comedy tests as the volunteers of the experiment, along with my co-presenter. The comedy tests will be blind to us, set by another crew member.
The viewers will be able to take part in the same comedy tests at home, and get a score back from our independent panel.
Sally said: Reading comprehension, Tom does not haz it.
Sally, deliberately misspelling words is not usually all that humourous. Prostitution is always funny though, so, well done.
Gen asks:
Tom, HOW? How, exactly, step by step explanation, do you envision people renouncing prostitution?
Gen, it’s a one step deal really.
Raise your hand (preferably on national television) and say “I, [say your name], renounce prostitution in all its forms.”
We don’t know what will happen then, but hopefully something awesome.
A lot of women just don’t get that expecting men to pay for stuff is reprehensible, because they just did not get the memo, (most feminisms forgetting to write the memo, whilst most religions recommending men pay for women, because God says “Oom shaka laka, and repeat”), so we’ll be delicately explaining the basic dynamic of being a giver rather than a taker, adulthood and self-worth through independence, versus perpetual childhood and self-loathing through gold-digging. It will be done conscientiously – like on Jeremy Kyle.
Most women renounce prostitution with no problem, because they do not have a grizzly dog in the fight like most internet feminists.
Some women will go mental though, and that’s what everyone’s going to be tuning in to see.
So “renouncing prostitution” is kinda like being saved by a Jack Chick tract.
And just as meaningful.
So, in addition to being a whore, you’re an attention whore. My goodness tom, that’s a lot of whoring for one boy to do!
Naturally, your approval is very meaningful to me, so well done.
Prostitution is always funny, huh? Does that mean that “prostitution” the word functions like the numbers in that old joke about numbered jokes? I.e.,
I dunno, I guess I’m a bit skeptical about the claim that prostitution is ALWAYS funny.
I thought your thesis was the opposite, though. Is it too much to ask for consistency?
What, exactly, does that mean, though?
But prostitution is not being a “taker”. It’s providing a service for some sort of fee; a standard type of economic transaction.
And it looks like your ultimate goal is to turn men into “takers”. Is that supposed to be better?
Are you basically advocating for universal chastity and/or homosexuality?
Come to think if it, will your study include nuns and lesbians?
Sounds like you’re just trolling for lulz.
tommartin (#82)
As a first test of your no doubt amazing wits, why don’t you see how fast you can learn to use blockquotes. Even all the humorless, mental gold diggers seem to manage.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Owlmirror (#86)
Reactionary dipshits really don’t get how business transactions work. When I questioned Brother Jed (the evangelist who goes around to college campuses and who also has a thing about prostitutes) about how come he has lots of rich republican friends if he’s so against greed, he told me that his pals are super generous because they “give” people jobs. Like they’re not getting anything in return.
Hey, there, tommartin, I wanted to compliment you on your clean and succinct description of how you would be objectively determining funniness – and the half-dozen citations of actual experimental evidence to back it up.
Ok, you haven’t gotten around to it, yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time, right?
I mean, you being super-quick-witted with all that excess testosterone.
Don’t let the Brotherhood down, Tom! Present your findings!
You’ve got to have a way to measure funniness in an objective sense, or your entire concept is just so much self-confirmatory bullshit.
And we all agree, don’t we, that that’s unpossible.
Thomas Mansplain Martin, Humor Expert and Comedy Mastermind.
I shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t, but here are some of the best and most famous jokes ever made by women comedians / humorists:
“I’m a great housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.” – Zsa Zsa Gabor
“How do girls get minks? The same way minks get minks.” – Mae West
“Ducking for apples? Change a letter and it’s the story of my life.” – Dorothy Parker
“I was raped by a doctor. That’s so bitter-sweet for a Jewish girl.” – Sarah Silverman
There are dozens more where they came from.
Now, without getting into the rights and wrongs of the politics behind those jokes, don’t they kind of blow a hole in the theory that it is alleged gold-digging tendencies that prevent women being funny?
It rather looks to me like if you’re a woman and you want to get laughs at your own expense, playing up to the gold-digger stereotype is a pretty effective tactic.
Oh shit, no, forget all that. I’ve just realized where I’m going wrong. I’m actually taking this seriously
My bad.
Ally Fogg:
It must have escaped your notice that three of your examples are quite distant from the present time (I heard those sort of jokes as a child, I’m 55), and Sarah Silverman is not liked across the board by all people, and a lot of people have a serious problem with her attempts at rape jokes.
Things change as time goes by, I’m sure you must have noted that much. What passed as accepted humor in the ’60s doesn’t pass anymore. As stated by Lieutenant General David Morrison, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Yes, there are people, such as yourself, who cling to the notion that jokes about all women being gold digging, wallet clinging uppity bitches are hilarious. Those people are obliviously living in the past.
Slow clap, Ally. That’s how to show up sexism. Yessirree.
There are a lot of things you appear to think you “get,” but you don’t actually.
How about some funny quotes from women who don’t need to play into those stereotypes in order to even have a career?
“Women and our right to choose were going to be challenged with Ashcroft around. When Bush appointed Ashcroft, I went out and got me four abortions. I stocked up. The doctor was like, “Listen, you’re not pregnant.” I said, “Hey, just shut up and do your job. I’m exercising my right while I can, dammit.” – Wanda Sykes
“white criminals commit the biggest crimes.a brother might rob a bank. a white man will rob a pension fund. the brother is going to get ten to fifteen years because he had a gun. the white guy is going to get a congressional hearing because he had a job and a nice suit.” – Wanda Sykes
Caine
Perhaps you missed the bit where I said “without getting into the rights and wrongs of the politics behind those jokes,”
there’s plenty wrong with the politics behind those jokes. There’s also plenty wrong with the politics behind a lot of jokes told by Joan Rivers, Jo Brand, Tina Fey and countless others. If you really want to get into the politics of it, I do think there is a difference between jokes told by comedians against themselves and about stereotypes of their gender / race / sexuality / whatever, and jokes told by comedians against the stereotypes of someone else’s race / gender / sexuality. But that’s probably rather more intricate than we need here.
I was attempting to point out that even the initial premise behind this ridiculous “documentary” would appear to be deeply flawed. But as I also said, it was probably a mistake to even engage with the idea at any intellectual level, and this exchange has given me a whole new reason why.
Now, Wanda Sykes, that’s a funny-ass woman right there.
yes Josh. Let’s pretend that sexist jokes (whether told by men or women) don’t exist.
Because then they’ll go away. Obviously.
I don’t think Caine “missed” it. Disclaimers can’t disclaim obviously inapt and unwise choices of example.
“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it’s such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.” – Ellen DeGeneres
“In the beginning there was nothing. God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better. ” – Ellen DeGeneres
“I don’t need a baby growing inside me for nine months. If I’m going to feel nauseous and achy when I wake up, I want to achieve that state the old-fashioned way: getting good and drunk the night before.” – Ellen DeGeneres
What in the world? That doesn’t make any sense.
I’d respectfully suggest that it would make perfect sense had you made any effort to understand the point I was originally making.
“It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.” – Tina Fey
“To say I’m an overrated troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair.” – Tina Fey
“Gay people don’t actually go out and try to convert people. That’s Jehovah’s Witnesses you’re thinking of.” – Tina Fey
Ally Fogg:
I didn’t miss a thing, and I expect you well know that. I am a 55 year old mixed race, bisexual woman. I don’t get the luxury of ignoring the rights, wrongs, sexism, bigotry and reflections of current political thought and happenings.
Well, you are a bit of an idiot, aren’t you? Tsk. Yes, sexist jokes exist. Yes, racist jokes exist. Yes, rape jokes exist.*, Yes, all kinds of nasty “jokes” exist, and yes, both men and women tell them. Hardly a revelation, your Cupcakeness. Our society is steeped in centuries old systemic sexism. It takes work to be aware of it, and commitment to changing it, in yourself first, then others. That’s how societal change works. This is hardly a revelation, either.
Oh, Christ. Do us all a favour and run back to your blog and attempt to drive up traffic over there, so you’ll be too busy to come here and repeat the slymer/mra mantra over and over. We don’t ignore such things, we call them out , and for doing so, we get the joy of dealing with the likes of you, who will sit and twist every single thing said in a sneering attempt to prove you’re “oh so superior, look at my pose of cynicism, and it is only I who know the reality of life.”
*Just in case, because you’re that kind of special, men get raped too.
tommartin:
Any chance you will answer Anri’s question @65?
You are starting this pseudo-documentary with some massive assumptions that you have not demonstrated to be true. In fact, given that people have different ideas of what constitutes ‘funny’, I think you would be hard pressed to scientifically determine whether one gender is less funny than another.
Also: You are a sexist asshole.
Oh don’t worry, I fully intend to.
But before I do, I’d be really curious to know what exactly you think you’re calling out.
Because from my POV, the only point I’ve made here is that many female comedians past and present have got a lot of laughs and even built entire careers on playing up to the sexist gold-digger stereotype.
I thought it was a rather uncontroversial point, as it happens, but you live and learn.
How is Sarah Silverman’s rape joke a gold digger joke?
Mythbri:
The rapist was a doctor. The old stereotype of Jewish women wanting to marry a doctor because fat wallet.
Of course, men have been known to marry for money. How about a list of all those “jokes”?
I can’t think of any off the top of my head, which I presume is your point, and it’s a point I agree with. Men and women are indeed judged very differently on such matters within our culture.
But since nobody is proposing a “documentary” about how gold-digging tendencies prevent men from being funny, I’m not entirely sure of the relevance of it?
Since I was last here, this video appeared on youtube discussing my film project, Laughing with Women:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSXA2u0qW5g&lcor=1&feature=em-comment_reply_received&lch=email_reply&lc=KBSEOaRnbKHfrbUK433dbdI2pPf5NQ-HFFra41z_D4g
Also, this link gives an overview of the impact my documentary has been having so far:
http://news.mensactivism.org/node/21643
Ally said “It rather looks to me like if you’re a woman and you want to get laughs at your own expense, playing up to the gold-digger stereotype is a pretty effective tactic.”
We will see! I think gold-diggers will make less jokes, some of them funny ones, but they will be more demanding, sexist, and hegemonic – the easier, baser laughs to get. Jokes with a victim – men – but while the comedy panel assessing the humour levels of the women will not know this context, just asked to rate how funny the women are, we will be monitoring the audible laughs, nods, and smiles made by the panel, to see if their body language matches the perhaps more politically correct scoring they give publicly.
No, at this stage, I do not plan to measure the effects gold-digging has on male joke-making ability, because, from the research I’ve seen and heard of, I don’t think it’s anywhere near as big of a problem. Female gold-digging is supported by laws and traditions and religions and their mother – so a lot more to work with there. Gold-giving on the part of men will be looked at, as it is a massive part of the problem.
Drat, total trackball fumble.
Let’s try that again…
tommartin:
(emphasis added)
How will you determine the panel are correctly assessing objective humor levels and not their own personal tastes in jokes? For example, how are you weighting similar cultural backgrounds in terms of humor preference between your subjects and judges?
What calibration tools/methods are you planning on using to ensure correct data? What units are you planning on using to compare objective humor levels? What are you using as a control?
In other words, please either describe the experimental procedure, or stop calling it an experiment.
I ask because what you’ve described so far doesn’t sound like an experiment, it sounds like a reality TV show. Please clarify your procedure.
Thanks!
Panels judging the funnyness levels of people’s jokes are used frequently in humour research – that’s the easy bit.
I’m not going to clarify the whole procedure now. You can subscribe to sexismbusters on youtube and twitter for updates – but I will say, that we will be measuring women’s joke-making ability in neutral non gold-diging mode, to measure their true joke-making capability, then measuring their joke-making levels as we shift them into a situation that gives them the apparent opportunity to secretly gold-dig, their gold-digging score now apparent to us, fluctuating on the gold-diggerometer, along with their humour score, then ruse them into a situation where they have the opportunity to in effect publicly recommend gold-digging if they choose (although by another more culturally acceptable name), then tell them we’ve been measuring their gold-digging but that we don’t know what their score is yet, and giving them the opportunity to renounce gold-digging in all its forms, if they choose, or to condone gold-digging, or to deny it, then, potentially gold-digging free for a minute, give them a chance to improvise whatever they like within the as yet unspecified situation (all the while surreptitiously measuring their humour levels).
It’s hard to follow that, but when you find out what the set up is, it will all make sense –
@sexismbusters
tommartin:
Oh?
Um, ok, not that I’m doubting you per se, but can you link to an example? Ideally the list of studies supporting your premise – that men are funnier than women?
I’m assuming there are such studies, of course, because otherwise your entire concept is based on nothing other than stereotypes.
Thanks!
Wow, the entire time I was reading this I was utterly convinced this was a parody. The entire premise sounds so incredibly ridiculous that it can’t possibly be true. And yet it apparently is. Oh, humanity…
P.S.: Is there even a name for mistaking the real thing for a parody? Inverse Poe’s Law maybe? If there isn’t, I call dibs on naming rights. :-)