Sex and Humor

[lesbiaphrodite]

There's a great quote from Woody Allen's Annie Hall. It's just after Woody and Annie have made love and he says:

"That's the most fun I've ever had without laughing."

I've always thought that everything in life is better if we have a sense of humor about ourselves and about the human condition in general.

Some of the most entertaining material that I have read about sex has been written with a sense of humor. For example, I see de Sade's work as hilarious. He is not serious about anything he does or says. Maybe it's because he lived in a time when he and his fellow citizens were being hanged and drawn & quartered on a daily basis that he learned to laugh at himself and others.

Yes, he had his perversions and he was fond of things that many of us don't appreciate. But, he is funny and his presentation of sex is funny.

I can also think of those hilarious romance novels that I used to read as a kid when the hero and the heroine did all that bodice-ripping and went on the dark journey through the love grotto. Those colorful prose works made me laugh. Sure, they were stupid and not very good, but somehow taking the seriousness out of sex made it more interesting to me.

I tend to think of what Henry Miller said about sex. He felt that sex was a natural, basic part of life. Not mysterious. Not poetic. Just a beautiful real thing to be loved and nurtured, not glorified or made too serious. He said that Americans are "obsessed with the idea of sex but lacking a full and natural experience of sex." He writes about sex with humor and even coarse language, and I value that.

What do ya think?

Is sex too elevated in American culture?

Is it still held up on some high ground and not realistic?

Do sex and humor and fun fit together?

 

[Safe_Bet]

Ya gotta face the facts that a LOT of sex is funny as hell!

Pussy farts, for example.

If you don't laugh after a pussy fart you need to get a life!

 

[Huckleman2000]

Ya gotta face the facts that a LOT of sex is funny as hell!

Pussy farts, for example.

If you don't laugh after a pussy fart you need to get a life!

eat. pray. queef.

 

[TE999]

Ya gotta face the facts that a LOT of sex is funny as hell!

Pussy farts, for example.

If you don't laugh after a pussy fart you need to get a life!

Y'know, my ol' tomcat used to pussyfart whenever we'd feed him Fancy Feast Mackerel and Cheese supper...the wallpaper would peel...overwhelming.

 

[Verdad]

Do sex and humor fit together? In some ways, definitely. Humor is at its best when nothing is sacred, and sex has as many components of the absurd as one can wish for. In dealing with sex, writing about sex, talking about sex, and sometimes even during sex, humor has its place.

On the other hand, arousal and hilarity are often mortal enemies. Humor is often a way of deflecting tension; it can also be a protection, a mask, a wall. Sex is a build up of tension and requires, ultimately, opening and nakedness. In that sense, they're antithetical. That emotional and physiological switch (if I'm laughing, I'm not getting off, and vice versa) is what makes the relationship of sex and humor so delicate.

In my opinion, erotic writing—not as in "writing about sex" but as in "writing with the purpose of arousing"—can work great with humor within a certain narrow, farcical range, but just a bit too much of the funny, or a wrong kind of the funny, and the erotic is gone.

 

[Safe_Bet]

Do sex and humor fit together? In some ways, definitely. Humor is at its best when nothing is sacred, and sex has as many components of the absurd as one can wish for. In dealing with sex, writing about sex, talking about sex, and sometimes even during sex, humor has its place.

On the other hand, arousal and hilarity are often mortal enemies. Humor is often a way of deflecting tension; it can also be a protection, a mask, a wall. Sex is a build up of tension and requires, ultimately, opening and nakedness. In that sense, they're antithetical. That emotional and physiological switch (if I'm laughing, I'm not getting off, and vice versa) is what makes the relationship of sex and humor so delicate.

In my opinion, erotic writing—not as in "writing about sex" but as in "writing with the purpose of arousing"—can work great with humor within a certain narrow, farcical range, but just a bit too much of the funny, or a wrong kind of the funny, and the erotic is gone.

Nononononononono! Not in our bedroom! We JOYFULLY make love to each other. We have a LOT of fun doing it as well! We laugh, we play and we giggle like crazy! Neither of us is ever embarassed or ashamed of our "nakedness". If you love and TRUST your partner you are never truely "naked" in front of them because you are surrounded by their love and admiration.

For us anyway, we get off because we laugh and play and I find that WAY erotic!

 

[Verdad]

Nononononononono! Not in our bedroom! We JOYFULLY make love to each other. We have a LOT of fun doing it as well! We laugh, we play and we giggle like crazy! Neither of us is ever embarassed or ashamed of our "nakedness". If you love and TRUST your partner you are never truely "naked" in front of them because you are surrounded by their love and admiration.

For us anyway, we get off because we laugh and play and I find that WAY erotic!

I stand corrected! But I dunno, maybe we have different stages in mind? I have to have a lot of laughs with my men, that goes without saying, but when you're on the way to losing it, can it be funny??

 

[Handley_Page]

Laughter; the way to cover up our individual embarrassments and failings.
If sex wasn't intended to be funny, why do we have a sense of Humour ?

 

[Saucy_Sage]

Laughter; the way to cover up our individual embarrassments and failings.
If sex wasn't intended to be funny, why do we have a sense of Humour ?

A truly benevolent God would not have given us men and not given us a sense of humor. See, I just proved the existence of God. Next!

 

[Handley_Page]

A truly benevolent God would not have given us men and not given us a sense of humor. See, I just proved the existence of God. Next!

Sometimes men feel the same way. . . . .

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Most physiology has multiple functions. I use sex for a variety of tasks. And I can name six or so tasks, without thinking about it too hard.

What matters with sex, is that you know which hat youre wearing when youre in the saddle, because you can be awfully confused by the results you get.

 

[Noor]

On the other hand, arousal and hilarity are often mortal enemies. Humor is often a way of deflecting tension; it can also be a protection, a mask, a wall. Sex is a build up of tension and requires, ultimately, opening and nakedness. In that sense, they're antithetical. That emotional and physiological switch (if I'm laughing, I'm not getting off, and vice versa) is what makes the relationship of sex and humor so delicate.

Interesting, that is not true for me at all. I laugh when I am happy, comfortable and relaxed.
I laugh a lot during sex, and I once had a lover who used to laugh as he came.
The best sex is a mind/body/spirit experience. For me, sex is an intimate form of communication rather than "getting off."

 

[Verdad]

Possibly I'm humorless and weird. Although, I was thinking a bit in terms of experience, but more in terms of portrayals of sex. Somehow I still don't think stories, pictures, drawings, etc, in which ridiculousness prevails yield much of a sexual reaction, but I can speak only for myself.

 

[Saucy_Sage]

Possibly I'm humorless and weird. Although, I was thinking a bit in terms of experience, but more in terms of portrayals of sex. Somehow I still don't think stories, pictures, drawings, etc, in which ridiculousness prevails yield much of a sexual reaction, but I can speak only for myself.

I do think it's hard to "write funny" about sex and get a sexual reaction, but there's plenty of stories here that aren't designed to titillate. I've read some very good stuff on this site and elsewhere where the sex is funny. As long as the story is good, that's what counts for me.

 

[Verdad]

I do think it's hard to "write funny" about sex and get a sexual reaction, but there's plenty of stories here that aren't designed to titillate. I've read some very good stuff on this site and elsewhere where the sex is funny. As long as the story is good, that's what counts for me.

Agreed. That was my original point. I thought about the ways in which sex and humor go together and the ways in which they don't.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

I am intrigued by what I have read here so far.

It is not my view that performing a stand-up comedy routine whilst making love is a particularly good idea. But, I do think that sex and humor can be good bedfellows if the situation is right. Mostly, I am thinking of pre and post-coital circumstances when a good laugh is a way of bringing lovers closer together.

All in all, I simply believe that sex is a natural, wonderful way of expressing yourself and communicating with a lover. By making it the holy grail, I think we lose some of its natural beauty.

I don't think that comedic sexual writing is going to elicit sexual arousal, but I do find it jolly good sport to read something about one of my favorite subjects that looks at the humorous aspects of pursuing sex and the hilarities that often result from the act itself. Here is one of the colorful portions of de Sade's Justine that cracks me up (principally because it is written in such floral style; de Sade is knowingly using the same kind of decorous language of his peers who wrote traditional romance novels of the time):

The second had me kneel between his legs and while Dubois administered to him as she had to the other, two enterprises absorbed his entire attention: sometimes he slapped, powerfully but in a very nervous manner, either my cheeks or my breasts; sometimes his impure mouth fell to sucking mine. In an instant my face turned purple, my chest red.... I was in pain, I begged him to spare me, tears leapt from my eyes; they roused him, he accelerated his activities; he bit my tongue, and the two strawberries on my breasts were so bruised that I slipped backward, but was kept from falling. They thrust me toward him, I was everywhere more furiously harassed, and his ecstasy supervened....

The third bade me mount upon and straddle two somewhat separated chairs and, seating himself betwixt them, excited by Dubois, lying in his arms, he had me bend until his mouth was directly below the temple of Nature; never will you imagine, Madame, what this obscene mortal took it into his head to do; willy-nilly, I was obliged to satisfy his every need.... Just Heaven! what man, no matter how depraved, can taste an instant of pleasure in such things.... I did what he wished, inundated him, and my complete submission procured this foul man an intoxication of which he was incapable without this infamy.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

LEZ

It can be. But sex has sundry uses.

 

[Verdad]

"Sex" is of course much broader than just feeling superhot and "humor" is much broader than laughing. There's no reason in the world they shouldn't mix in a thousand different ways, and really, they do. Sex has forever been the bread and butter of comedy, funny moments are one of the intimacies lovers share, etc, etc.

In the particular sense I approached them in the part of my post, however—equating "sex and humor" with "arousal and laughter"—I still say they can't occupy the same phenomenological space. They can be as interlaced as one wants, but not experienced at the same time.

To go pseudo scientific, I suspect there's a sort of sympathetic/parasympathetic 'switch' at work, though the exact mechanism must be awfully complex. I'm also reminded of experiments that show the difficulty of holding on to incongruous emotions, or an emotion of one kind and a facial expression of another.

Rather than speculate in terms on which I'm not up to date, though, I thought the relation would be obvious in everyday situations of, say, seduction.

Humor is sexy; smiling is sexy. A lot of both go on in the flirting phase, yet it's precisely dropping the smile that demarcates the beginning of the real deal.

The moment of intrusion in another's world, the moment of recognizing, allowing, inviting, surrendering to that intrusion, is not a giggly moment, a cute moment, or a hilarious moment—at least, not to those experiencing it. Conversely, if such a moment isn't wanted, humor is the most likely tool for deflecting it.

Since it is such moments I think of as the peaks of the erotic, no matter how much fun goes on before or after, and no matter through which lens we choose to portray them from a spatial or a temporal 'outside', at that heart of experiencing the erotic, simultaneity with funny strikes me as impossible.

As for Sade, he is indeed tongue in cheek. His chief obsession is relationship of flesh and consciousness, subject and object. He's a man whose fantasies are so dark they practically necessitate the barrier of funny so he could approach them, and a man who's chronically self-aware, chronically trapped inside his skin, forever trying to bridge the chasm through the contrivance and outrageousness of his scenes.

The humor in his writing reflects the divide, with Sade the observer poking fun at Sade who whacks off at the scene/in the scene, even as the scene unfolds. His humor has that farcical quality which I think works well with the erotic, serving as a device for sneaking up to something that's too powerful to look at directly, but it conveys also a profound sadness.

 

[NoJo]

I find that making a woman shriek with laughter is a good way to make her pee herself. I like it when they do that.

 

[Verdad]

I find that making a woman shriek with laughter is a good way to make her pee herself. I like it when they do that.

The shrieking part sounds alarming.

 

[TE999]

The shrieking part sounds alarming.

The pissing herself part isn't exactly a laugh riot.

 

[Boota]

I've got a couple sex scenes in my new novel (non-erotic) that are really funny. I probably wouldn't have added them to the story unless they came out humorous, being a comic novel. I don't think there's anything in the way of titillation in the scenes, it's all for laughs.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm not a man who likes farce with his sex. I like it intense, and I like getting so aroused that it hurts, so I don't like giggling and snorking during foreplay. For me it should be hot and breathless, and I don't laugh with with joy when I come. I don't believe sex should be wholesome. It should be hot and nasty; violational and transgressive. It should make you gasp, not chuckle.

As far as I'm concerned, humor and that kind of heat are antithetical, and I still challenge anyone to write a story that's both laugh-out-loud funny and searingly erotic at the same time. It can't be done, because eroticism is tension-producing and humor is tension-releasing. You can't have both.

For me, sex is too important and profound to be just fun.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

The humor in his writing reflects the divide, with Sade the observer poking fun at Sade who whacks off at the scene/in the scene, even as the scene unfolds. His humor has that farcical quality which I think works well with the erotic, serving as a device for sneaking up to something that's too powerful to look at directly, but it conveys also a profound sadness.

Very nicely said. I agree with you that Sade's humor is in some ways a device that he uses to approach subject matter that otherwise he would have difficulty apporaching. I also always sense beneath his words a deep sadness, as you rightly point out.

In the French film 'Sade,' you get a better idea, I think, of what Sade was really about as a person. He was far more complex, far sadder than his writing reflects. I often think that anyone who has been through a hedonistic period in their lives, or for that matter, whose whole lives have been hedonistic, feel the sadness and brevity of life probably more intensely than less experienced people feel. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but I think it's true.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DOC

I can do it. You can make it steamy and funny, simultaneously.

Twenty-five years ago I saw a porn film that did it. An unfaithful guy, who fucks anything, is killed and goes to Heaven...he thinks...the place is overrun with gorgeous bodies and faces, and everyone was willing. But no one gets an orgasm for eternity. IT AINT NEVER GONNA HAPPEN.

Its all a matter of where you reveal the punchline.