"Plight of the Funny Female"

"For decades, this response stumped psychologists. When they would ask men and women what they looked for in their long-term partners, both genders would say they wanted someone “with a good sense of humor.” It was only when researchers pressed their subjects on what they meant, specifically, by “sense of humor,” that the sex difference became clear. Women want men who will tell jokes; men want women who will laugh at theirs.

In 2006, psychologists Eric Bressler and Sigal Balshine showed 210 college students images of two equally attractive members of the opposite sex. Underneath each photo, they pasted either funny or not-funny statements supposedly authored by the person. Female participants said they wanted the funny man, rather than the unfunny one, as a boyfriend, even when they thought the funnier man was less trustworthy. The men did not care about the women’s funniness either way...

It’s possible that men are indifferent to their partners’ funniness precisely because funny women are smarter. There’s some evidence that men are less attracted to women who are smarter than they are. In a study out this month inPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin, when men were introduced to women they were told had outperformed them on an intelligence test, they rated the woman as less attractive and were less likely to say they wanted to date her.

These biases have a chilling effect on women. The idea that women aren’t supposed to make jokes can trigger stereotype threat, a phenomenon in which simply telling someone that their “group” tends to be bad at something hinders that individual’s performance. Told that their humor isn’t wanted, many women don’t bother...

If funniness is an implement of power, women deserve access to it, too."

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/plight-of-the-funny-female/416559/

I mean, I have a super irreverent sense of humor (that you might see in some of my posts) and I am constantly saying silly and absurd things because, tbh, I find a lot of the connections I make in my head really amusing. But I definitely feel that being a jokester decreases the degree to which people perceive me as feminine/attractive. It's very similar to being openly clever or intellectual or knowledgeable; these are not sexy things to be if you are also a woman.