So I ended up thinking more about the stream last night, and I guess in particular what came to me was toxic masculinity and ‘women aren’t funny’. Like the latter on paper isn’t remotely relevant to the stream or video, but thinking back it kind of is?

Like, okay, where does the sentiment stem from? Aside from general sexism, and a stigma against female comedians, well, considering the relation between gender and humor, men being perceived as more funny isn't really an accident (though obviously plenty of women can be funny).

In a reddit thread about ‘things girls might not know about guys’, one commenter mentioned guys sometimes use comedy as a shield. Aside from just being true to my experience, it also feeds into ‘women aren’t funny’. Girls are more allowed to show vulnerability...

while guys hide it (for example, through humor). If guys are on average trying to be funnier, then, yeah, the average women might not be ‘as funny’. That leaves ‘women aren’t funny’ as a wild hyperbole, but one with a foundation that comes from this cultural norm.

And that need to hide emotions behind humor? Yeah, it’s toxic masculinity. Humor is a way to shrug off difficulty and appear strong in the face of difficult things. If you can laugh at something, it isn’t dangerous or harmful, right?

Men have their struggles, and even when talking about an example on stream last night...well, I made jokes about it. I took a rather dark reality of the not uncommon experience of men in otaku/nerdy spaces being completely unfamiliar with affection of any kind

and in the moment made jokes about ‘mommy Rem’ and ‘sorry for fantasizing about being loved by a woman, my queen’. Like, that in some part is a coping mechanism to avoid being crushed under the weight of the harsh reality. https://twitter.com/stephenweirdy8/status/1383658829896769538

At worst it might become cyclical. Laugh off the crushing reality of toxic masculinity, which in turn becomes a symptom of toxic masculinity, and thus something to potentially laugh about and disregard, only enhancing the weight.

And to tie this back to the stream, a lot of the assumptions noralities makes are couched in assuming toxic masculinity as the unchallenged norm, which reduces or erases those who don’t share that experience, or wish to oppose it.

And while responding to it, I evoked an aspect of toxic masculinity that I’d never really considered until reflecting on it afterwards. At the end of the day I do like making people laugh, but reflecting on it more I can hopefully be more careful about what I’m making a joke of.