You juggled the beers, cradled to your chest,
And said, “Look, the breeze blew away the rest
Of the dandelion head I wanted to show you.
It’s silly, really, shall I put them on the hedge?”

I shook my head, smiling. Your breeze knocked out
The seeds of my soul.
They floated away,
Carried by air, settled on your head,
Planted themselves,
Stayed.

When I took the flowers, did our hands touch?
Perhaps you thought it would be easy
To hand them over the distance between us.
But you reached, so close, and held
Back a little –

I had to reach out and pull you forward.
So simple.

You walked awhile before the flowers
Presented themselves into your hand.
You’ll walk further still before you see
The seeds you blew, that I planted, those
Light
White
Forces
That rest in your chest and rock you to sleep.

The stage was filled for the best part of two hours by men, save a silent female ‘helper’ in one of the compere filler slots. I do not blame the organisers for this; I believe that they were actually very keen (some might say desperate) for women to get involved. But alas, women were having none of it. Women were simply not interested.

If asked to take part in a stand-up comedy competition, most people, male and female, will laugh and promptly decline. This is, in my opinion, a completely natural reaction, as standing in front of a crowded room and trying to make them laugh might be on list of most people’s Ten Least Favourite Things To Do. However, six men, in response to the question, said, “Alright, I’m funny, and I think I could be funny in front of a large audience and bollocks to the consequences.” Bravo.

Yet no women took the chance. This became particularly obvious when one of the contestants decided to fill his seven minutes on stage with jokes about rape and dumping his 12-year old girlfriend (yes mate, you were fucking hilarious). While the act itself was not particularly original, what set it apart from others of its ilk was the fact that no one was answering back to him. He himself demonstrated this perfectly, picking on a “cross-legged” woman at the front of the audience. Not getting a reaction from her, he asked,
“Are you gagged, love? Are you mute?”
Ironically, most of the audience couldn’t hear her reply,
“No, I just don’t have a microphone.”
His response was,
“Who cares? I can hear you.”
One couldn’t help but feel that wasn’t the point.

Looking at comedians like Dawn French and Victoria Wood, household names who have defined their own particular form of comedy successfully and quite brilliantly, it remains obvious that these women are “allowed” to be funny due to the fact that their comedy outweighs their feminine allure. This is not to say that either French or Wood are unattractive women, but rather if we were to imagine Rachel Weisz guzzling on a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, or Keira Knightley exploring the plight of a dinner lady, then the effect would have little in the way of the comic. Conventional female beauty simply cannot co-exist with comedy.

While I could postulate that this is because men cannot concentrate on more than one thing at any given time, as has been argued before, this would be unfair and quite untrue. It would be the easy way out to blame men for this, but in reality the fault is entirely feminine. One of the essential components for successful comedy is honesty, and women are not expected, or even allowed, to be honest. Women are gagged by the knowledge of our constant observers, who judge by their capacity to remain silent rather than by verbal skill. A woman may be intelligent if she is modest about it, confident as long as she does not give anything away. The audience she is observed by, however, is not the opposite sex, but her own.

It is our biological role, in terms of reproduction, to entice men, and women, in order to be deemed attractive must apparently remain behind a mystique of feminine allure. Yet is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Do we perpetuate as well as conform to this almost subliminal understanding that women must retain a façade of mystery? Men complain that they “do not understand women”, but do women truly desire to be understood? Or do we wish the internal reflection of ourselves to be appreciated? A great part of the heterosexual connection between the sexes is based on the chase, which must, inevitably, require a metaphorical “fleeing” on one part.

Hence, when a woman stands on a stage and attempts to enter an arena that the phrase “women just aren’t funny” has (in its social acceptance) restricted to men, they must be judged in a sexual manner. Men cannot, or are not allowed to, look at women as a-sexual beings. Women, on the other hand, view men without the context of sex on a daily basis. This is mainly due to the simple fact such an a-sexual view is demanded by the media. Men are everywhere, and where they cannot go (page 3 of the Sun, for example) makes little difference to anyone’s life.

In German, there is no distinguishing whether a woman is married or not by her title. ‘Frau’ applies to all women of all ages. However, professions are divided into genders; words are adapted into a feminine alternate. A woman cannot be a Arzt (doctor) in Germany, she must be an Arztin (literally, a female doctor). Although it is no longer PC to use jobs titles such as ‘actress’ and ‘authoress’ in the UK, there are certain fields into which women cannot enter without being defined by their gender. A woman cannot simply be a footballer, she must be part of a women’s football team. Politics, too, contains this self-consciousness with regard to gender. Only a decade ago Tony Blair was making a huge statement about the forward thinking of New Labour with his troop of female cabinet ministers. The tiptoeing around the issue of equal rights for women, however, only highlights the chasm between the male and female in the professional world. We live in society that thinks nothing of sexual harassment charges and law suits over maternity leave. The same chasm prevents women such as Dawn French and Victoria Wood from being seen as anything other than comediennes, novelties in their comedy, and exceptions to the rule.

There is a myth that men and women are inherently opposing forces. One particularly apt demonstration of such a myth was the recent Mail on Sunday advert which showed men kicking up footballs and women throwing handbags over a battlefield that resembled a scene out of Braveheart. A myth, however, is exactly what such a demonstration is. At the stand-up comedy night just as many women were laughing as men (save for the rape jokes act, although no one was really rolling in the aisles at that point). Men and women are not diametrically opposed, but two sides of the same coin. We share brains, limbs and a planet, despite John Gray’s analysis in “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”. The physical differences between us, both in terms of hormones and physicality, relate to sexuality and therefore reproduction. If sex were taken out of the equation, then women would have just as much right to be funny as men.

One comedian who appears to break through the barrier of gender is Catherine Tate. Here is an example of an attractive, witty, ruthless critic of modern Britain who also happens to be a woman. Yet ask most men about Catherine Tate in relation to other female comics and a great number will respond, “But her comedy is masculine.” By masculine, they mean honest. It is not that other women do not find Catherine Tate funny, but that they are more content to remain behind their veil of amused disdain than to attempt to enter into the arena of honesty.

A great deal of the discussion of whether or not women are funny comes down to what defines gender. It appears that in 21st century Britain, a woman can be socially accepted as being funny as long as she adheres to a masculine code of humour. In order to do so, she must deny her own femininity. There is a barrier between women and humour that, while possible to break through, demands a larger sacrifice than most women are willing to admit.