Unique Jokes.com, A funny blog…

While lesbian humor, like any type of humor, may help construct a sense of coherent community and identity, it is our contention that the jokes that lesbians share are, at the same time, inherently deconstructive, in the sense that they challenge the very idea of “lesbian” as a discreet identity and “lesbian community” as a coherent social formation. As Gever and Magnan (1991:67) say: “An enormous rift exists between how we are portrayed and portray ourselves as deviant women in patriarchal, heterosexist societies and how we function and represent ourselves within our own subculture.” The challenge to outsiders’ definitions of “lesbian” became especially apparent in the 1990s, as political and academic debates over the definition– and, indeed, even the existence of “lesbian identity”– led to the study of sexualities as multiple and “queer,” a move which produced a far more diverse notion of “lesbian community” (Rudy, 2000). Lesbian jokes began to challenge the images upon which straight society-and even some lesbians–based its assumptions of who lesbians are and what they do. Lesbian jokes became more visibly aimed at demonstrating that “lesbian” itself is an externally constructed category of identity, a fiction, that has been used by some in the interests of identity politics, and by others in the interests of demonizing and disenfranchising lesbians.

For example, lesbian humor often works to challenge the dominant culture’s negative sexualization of lesbians, or the dehumanizing reduction of the lesbian to sexual actor. Some lesbian jokes present a challenge to the homo/hetero divide by demonstrating the arbitrary and contradictory behaviors that make lesbians as a group impossible to define, to fix, and to recognize only in terms of a sex act. For example, almost all lesbians have heard this joke,

(1) Question: What does a lesbian bring on the second date?
Answer: A U-Haul.

When one of the authors told this joke to a group of self-identified heterosexual academics, nobody in the group “got” the joke, and when asked about how they interpreted it, one male reported that he assumed that the purpose of the U-haul was so that one of the women could leave her husband for a lesbian relationship. For him, clearly, the joke was mystifying rather than funny.

This joke is funny to lesbians, and to anyone who is familiar with complex emotional dynamics of lesbian courtship, because it challenges the tendency to reduce lesbianism to physiology, redefining it instead in terms of the emotional euphoria that often compels lesbian coupling. The joke plays on the idea that lesbians tend to disregard bourgeois courtship rituals and jump into “marriages” quickly and impulsively, acting on feeling rather than reason. The question that leads into the joke sets up an expectation: What does a lesbian bring on a second date? Listeners will very likely begin thinking about sex toys, sexual paraphernalia, or objects that carry sexual reference. However, what makes the joke funny is that it thwarts these expectations, establishing no frame of reference for what lesbians do in bed, but rather what they do at home. In other words, the joke defines lesbianism as ultimately domestic in its aims, geared toward the establishment of a household. This is what Raskin (1985:149) would call a “standard opposition of a non-sex-related script with a sex-related script.

The U-Haul joke also plays on the idea that lesbians are self-reliant. Lesbians don’t call movers; they rent U-Hauls and move themselves. Thus, what makes this joke funny for lesbians is that it undermines the externally imposed definition of lesbianism. It shows lesbians the extent to which they themselves are conditioned to expect certain kinds of responses based on homophobic or sexist stereotypes in a society that refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the families and partnerships that lesbians form with one another.

Because the humor in this joke comes from replacing a sexual script with a non-sexual one, like much of lesbian humor, this joke is the opposite of much of the sexual humor discussed in chapter 5 of Raskin (1985). A script switch is common for much of sexual humor, but in most cases, a non-sexual script is introduced, and a switch is made to a sexual script, as the following well-known joke discussed extensively in Raskin (1985:100ff).

(2) ?Is the doctor at home?? the patient asked in his bronchial whisper.
?No,? the doctor?s young and pretty wife whispered in reply. ?Come right in.?

By contrast, the humor in many lesbian jokes is just the opposite with the expectation of a sexual frame being replaced by a non-sexual frame, as in the light bulb joke and the U-Haul joke. One reason for this might because of the stereotyped expectation that a lesbian joke is about sex. For example, when speaking about jokes to a local chapter of the American Association of University Women, one of the authors discussed this joke by Kate Clinton. (3) “If women should have to be in the military service, they should only be lesbians who process. We would never get around to having a war. A war? You get the beaches wheelchair-accessible, then we’ll talk.”

Only one or two women in the fairly large audience laughed; the majority simply looked puzzled. One woman raised her hand and said, “I don’t get it. What does this joke have to do with sex?” A number of other women in the audience nodded agreement with the questioner. As with the U-haul joke, the frame or expectation for “lesbian” for many in this audience included an expectation of sex. For more savvy listeners, however, Kate Clinton’s use of the word ‘lesbian’ evokes a more complex set of values and preferences, values that include compassion for the disabled (”You get the beaches wheelchair-accessible) and a rejection of the importance placed on war by the military-industrial complex.

Another common belief about lesbians is that they possess “gay-dar,” or some secret, intuitive way of recognizing and zeroing in on each other. A number of lesbian humorists explore the question of how lesbians recognize each other. Lea Delaria (1995: 64) makes this observation:

(4) Q: I’ve seen this woman I really like, but I have no idea how to approach her.
A: This is THE perfect lesbian question. Lesbians have no idea how to approach each other. If lesbians had to procreate, there would be no people in this world.

However, Sara Cytron and Harriet Malinowitz (in Flowers 1995: 39-40) have this to offer:

(5) Sometimes you meet a woman and you ‘think’ she’s a lesbian, but you’re not really sure. So we have these little exchanges in code. Like you might casually say, “You know anybody driving to Provincetown this summer? With her cat?”……. But an easier way to find out is to go to someone’s apartment, look inside her kitchen cabinet, and count how many Celestial Seasonings herbal teas she has. If there are more than six, she’s probably a lesbian.”
Shelley Robert has similar advice for the same problem, including:
(6) Ask to see the prints in her wallet … should she produce prints of her pussycats, Hepsabah & Egregious, erase all scintilla of doubt from your mind. The more kitty color prints, the surer you can be. Don`t let pictures of tiny tykes or grandtykes fool you. Many dykes have tykes. Cat pictures … You want to know ask to see the feline photos. (Quoted at http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/ip/sigs/life/gay/dating/detect )
How are these ordinary domestic interests any different from those of heterosexuals? In fact, they aren’t, but if the heterosexual community accepted this similarity, it would be more difficult to categorize lesbians as “the other.”