Anthony Bogaert - Understanding Asexuality

This tension or “psychic energy”—natural or neurotic in origin—may be diverted and used as the fuel that helps drive laughter and humor. When the best comedians, amateur and professional alike, tell a joke or an amusing story, they provide rich detail and aptly time their punch lines, because these devices aid in building and releasing tension for full comic effect. Sex is an easy subject matter through which comedians ply their trade. This is in part because the tension necessary for full comic effect is already there; it just needs the right details and some good timing to harness and release it in the right way.

Laughter is pleasurable for most people, and part of the pleasure has to do with a release of tension. The release of tension, whichever way it is achieved, is pleasurable. Interestingly, the physical mechanisms of tension relief involved with laughter are similar to that of an orgasm—spasmodic muscle contractions (myotonia). Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that energy created in one domain—sexuality—may be harnessed and effectively released through another—laughter/humor—with similar physical mechanisms. Or at least that is the theory behind tension-reduction models of humor. Indeed, some theorists have speculated that one of the adaptive functions of laughter in humans, the only species that laughs, [43] Some animals may have a form of rudimentary laughter (e.g., “proto-laughter” of chimps), or at least show some of the evolutionary physical precursors to laughter, such as excited and rhythmic physical behaviors (e.g., tail-wagging in dogs) (Eastman, 1936). There may also be some precursors of the often “rule-bending” element of humor in the play fighting of animals (Gervais & Wilson, 2005; see also later in this chapter). is that it allows for the release of all kinds of psychic tension, which may be unhealthy if pent up too long. If we weren’t able to laugh, so the theory goes, we would all eventually explode, at least psychically. [44] It is popularly believed and has often been stated—in the Bible, in the popular media, and so on—that laughter is “good medicine.” The implication of this widespread belief is that it must have evolved because of its physical health benefits. However, some theorists suggest that laughter’s direct health benefits are minimal, or at least not yet sufficiently demonstrated. Instead, humor evolved because it had “social” benefits, easing social tension and allowing for smooth navigation among our fellow humans (Provine, 2000), and any health benefits are indirect and work through these social benefits (e.g., social support).

A corollary of this type of tension-release theory of humor, at least of the classical Freudian version, is that once we laugh and tension is released, we should not only feel relieved but also have less of a need to release this energy in other ways, because the tension is, presumably, gone. Thus, a “catharsis” should occur, a temporary reduction of pent-up psychic energy and, importantly, a decreased tendency to engage in the tension-causing behavior. For example, if sex caused our tension, which has now been released in the form of a sexual joke, we should have a decreased need to have sex or a sexual outlet.

Is there modern scientific support for this tension-reduction model of humor, given that it is associated with some relatively ancient and oft-criticized theorists, such as Freud? There is, at least for some basic elements of the theory. Several relatively modern theorists of humor argue that some kind of tension is often important for and can enhance humor, particularly in humorous situations that evoke the act of laughter or other overtly mirthful reactions. For example, in a study by psychologists Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant (1980), the authors found that when tension is high, people laugh and express more mirth. More specific to sexuality, though, there is also evidence that people who report a high degree of sexual desire (sexual tension) seem to enjoy sexual humor more than those who report lower sexual desire (Prerost, 1995).

But is there evidence that sexual tension can be unconsciously channeled into sexual humor, or what might be construed as “humor-like” behavior? The evidence here is indirect. Two studies in the 1980s suggested that sexual titillation makes men susceptible to creating inadvertent sexual puns or double entendres (Motley & Camden, 1985). In both of these studies, men thought they were in a fairly mundane “language and dialect” research experiment. This was a guise to hide the true goal of the studies: the investigation of Freudian humor-like behavior. In the first study, the researchers found that men more likely to complete sentences with sexual charged-meanings if they had a sexy female experimenter conduct the study than men who had a male (and thus presumably not so sexy) experimenter. For example, in the presence of a sexy female experimenter, men often completed the sentence “The lid won’t stay on regardless of how much I” with the words screw it . This phrase has, of course, more sexual meaning than other ways of completing this sentence (e.g., tighten it , turn it ). In a second, related study, the men who had the most “repressed” sexual personalities were the most likely to be susceptible to these types of inadvertent sexual puns. Presumably, the erotic tension created by the sexy female experimenter was unconsciously channeled into a subtle form of sexual expression and hence partially released in the form of these sexual puns and double entendres.

So, in short, sexual tension (whether recognized by the person or not) may relate to the production and appreciation of sexual humor. [45] However, most modern theorists do not buy all of the elements of a classic tension-release model. Humor is not necessarily “cathartic” in the therapeutic sense; that is, it does not necessarily reduce the tendency to engage in future behaviors related to the tension (Ferguson & Ford, 2008; Martin, 2007). For example, research shows that sexist humor does not decrease the tendency to engage in sexist behavior soon afterward; sometimes the opposite occurs, and sexist humor may even lead to complex domineering behaviors (Hodson, Rush, & MacInnis, 2010). Thus, a straightforward catharsis model of humor based on sexual or other tension may not be correct. One alternative but related explanation for this kind of humor is that there may be a pleasantness associated with being able to release the tension of a repressed or suppressed impulse or motive, but such humor does not reduce our tendencies to engage in this impulse; it just releases us from the unpleasantness of not being able to express it. For example, modern social psychologists talk about disparagement humor of groups as releasing “negative intergroup motives” (Hodson, Rush, & MacInnis, 2010, p. 661). But why is any of this—interesting though it may be—relevant to asexuality? It is relevant because sexual humor and the way it functions may reveal something about asexuality and vice versa; that is, asexuality may reveal how sexual humor functions. For example, are asexual people immune to sexual humor, because they, presumably, have so little sexual tension? Or, to put it in another way, do asexual people “get” sexual humor on a deep level, or on any level? And does this present a sneaky way of finding out whether asexual people are truly sexual (deep down)—to see if they laugh at a sexual joke? If they do laugh, does this not imply that there is some sexual energy/motive being discharged or released? Got you! You laughed. You must be sexual!

Did you laugh at the Viagra joke at the beginning of this chapter? (Or, if you had heard it before, did you laugh the first time you read it, or the first time someone told it to you?) Let’s analyze the reasons why someone might or might not laugh at this joke. Of course, there are differences among people in how much they laugh in general, and so, of course, some of the individual differences in humor appreciation have to do with basic variations in personality and temperament (e.g., happiness, gregariousness, jolliness). But let’s take this out of the equation for now, and concentrate on the account of humor appreciation and susceptibility put forward by Freud and company—namely, that it often has to do with the release of, or is at least facilitated by, sexual tension. Given the sexual content of this joke, a straightforward interpretation driven by this theory would say that those who have tension about their sexuality are more likely to laugh at this joke.