Applying the humour principle

Gender be An article about how badly women drive upsets a loyal HT reader

From the content to the photos, I have liked HT’s editorial [offering] for the past eight years,” wrote Sharatee Ghosh. (HT has been in Mumbai for only seven years, but that’s a detail.) As a loyal reader, she said she was, however, upset about an article by Parul Khanna titled ‘Women Can’t Drive’ (June 22, page 19) which appeared in Brunch, HT’s Sunday magazine. “It undermines your brand,” she wrote.

HT Image

“While I’m all for [us women] laughing at ourselves…” she continued, “reinforcing negative stereotypes [in a section that] men are guaranteed to leaf through simply doesn’t cut it…In a world in which women have to try twice as hard to [be] counted and are battling stereotypes at home and the workplace, [this] article needs be debated [on] the editorial table.”
Ghosh raised several objections, which I’ll summarise here:

1. The article was not based on an empirical study.
2. It reinforced stereotypes about women, who have to try twice as hard to be counted at home and at the workplace.
3. It did so in front of men (because they also read Brunch).
4. It was a woman doing so, which made it worse.
5. The article was not funny.

As is only fair, I first called Poonam Saxena, the magazine’s editor, for her reaction to this viewpoint. Almost immediately, Saxena said she was, above all, sorry if the article had offended anyone. “But the article wasn’t meant to be taken seriously,” she added. “It was just an attempt at humour.”

As for me, I am not concerned about objections 1, 3 and 4. First, the article stated that it was not based on an empirical study; it stated very clearly that it was anecdotal. Many humorists and polemicists, from Dave Barry to Christopher Hitchens, have written about the differences between men and women using anecdotal information. Second, regarding points 3 and 4, the gender of the author and reader is secondary if not immaterial to the issue. The article needs to be judged on its merits alone.

I find some validity in point 2. My feeling is that you should think very, very carefully before trying to milk a stereotype about a disadvantaged group, especially if you have no scientific basis for what you are saying. If you do wade into this dangerous territory, then you had better be very funny.
I am willing to give a long rope to those who can pull off humour. There’s too little of it around.

Which brings me to point 5 — with which I agree. Humour is terribly hard to do, and according to the aforementioned Hitchens, women find the genre particularly difficult. But let me not wade into that dangerous territory.
What do readers think?