Why So Serious: A Missing Sociological Approach to Questions of Gender, Humor and Power

• In Event: 308 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 03. Gender, Sexuality, and Identity: Session I

Abstract

Humor is a pervasive feature of interactional life and culture, and central to conversations about power in political, popular and interactional spaces, evidenced by both the ongoing debate about sexist and racist jokes in stand-up comedy, and the place of humor in the national conversation about microaggressions and political correctness on college campuses. However, a serious sociological perspective on humor connecting performance on the interactional level with the systematic distribution of power continues to be missing, especially in the study of gender and humor. This paper traces the theoretical and empirical development of the interdisciplinary study of gender and humor from its origins in a feminist confrontation with classical humor scholarship through to two dominant modern social scientific paradigms: an interactional approach looking at contextualized gendered humor and a focus on sexist humor within a disparagement humor approach. Although these two modern approaches conflict on the levels of methodology and theory, their common limitations point to the need for a sociological corrective in the study of gender, humor and power. Through an in-depth analysis of two central pieces from the sociology of gender, Pascoe’s (2005) “Dude, You’re a Fag’: Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse,” and Giuffre and William’s (2006) "BOUNDARY LINES Labeling Sexual Harassment in Restaurants”, this paper shows where humor has been present but analytically underdeveloped within the sociology of gender and argues for the strengths of an intersectional sociological approach to gender that takes humor seriously.

Author

• Brooke Dinsmore, University of Virginia