I saw an article in the paper about the study that found that men listen with one side of the brain while women listen with both sides of the brain. The authors of the study were careful to point out that there was no evidence that women listened any better -- just that men and women do it differently. It must be obvious to everyone by now that men and women are wired differently from each other. Accepting these differences and giving them equal weight without attaching judgements to them is part of what makes men and women able to get along with each other.

There are a lot of stereotypes that can be drawn along gender lines. Only benighted idiots think that all women or all men fall into all the stereotypes all the time. It is clear, however, that most men and most women will exhibit some the stereotypical behaviour some of the time. Applying these stereotypes to various situations can be a source of humor. One of the uses of stereotypes in humor is that you can express a lengthy explanation in one word or phrase. "A husband and wife were getting ready to go a party" tells all of us which set of stereotypes this joke is going to employ. The difference between jokes is whether or not they are actually funny. Look at dirty jokes -- some are clever plays on words, or employ actual funny situations. And some are just lame excuses to say something dirty (and usually derogatory). The same is true of gender jokes. Is the joke acutally funny, in a way that understands and accepts the humerous side of the fact that we are all living out some stereotype a lot of the time, or is it just a chance to say something nasty about a group of people? Of course, different people are going to have different limits about what is funny and what is gender-bashing, but it is usually easy to tell the basic orientation of the person telling the joke. My wife and I often make jokes at each other about how one or both of us will, because of a gender-based stereotype, respond to a situation. Our actual expectations are that we will both remain conscious of our choices in every situation. And if that choice is to follow the stereotype, we try to accept that as being a valid choice to make.

John