Homosexuality in jokes (Theories of Humor)

Questioning problems with homosexuality and discussing them has been a taboo for centuries. Many texts dealing with such matter have been banned. But nowadays censorship over homosexual topics is being lifted, leaving people free to discuss, and create jokes about it. The following paper deals with homosexual jokes about lesbians and gay men. Some of the jokes may be considered as extremely vulgar but it depends on the reader’s intention and most of the jokes are ribald because of the sexual matter. About the explanation of “what is funny” in the jokes the Tripartite Classification of Victor Raskin (1985) will be used (Incongruity, Hostility and Release) as well as Alleen Nilsen’s Features of Humor (1999: 202-203) – exaggeration, irony, underestimation, ambiguity, etc. The paper is going to introduce a number of jokes, taking into consideration the function of their structure and distinguishing it from the everyday talk.

Five websites were used when assembling the corpus of jokes that are going to be discussed. They all contain jokes on homosexual matter in English. While for some a number of them might sound abusive and untrue, their purpose is not to offend, but to entertain while exaggerating rumors and speculations.
The incongruities in jokes are explained nowadays by The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) (Attardo and Raskin 1991) which is based on an earlier work partially dealing with the matter – the Semantic-script Theory of Humor (SSTH) (Raskin 1985). In accordance with these theories jokes consist mainly of two overlapping scripts which are in opposition – bona-fide (literal script) and non-bona-fide (figurative script). The punch line in a joke usually introduces this type of change. It is considered necessary in order for a joke to be funny (Raskin 1985). The joke in (1) is an example of the binary opposition expected vs. non-expected

(1) In a small cathedral a janitor was cleaning the pews between services when he was approached by the minister. The minister asked the janitor, "Could you go into the confessional and listen to confessions for me? I really have to go to the bathroom and the Widow McGee is coming. She tends to go on but never really does anything worthy of serious repentance, so when she's done just give her 10 Hail Mary's and I'll be right back."

Being the helpful sort, the janitor agreed. Just as expected the Widow McGee came into the booth and started her confession. "Oh Father, I fear I have done the unforgivable. I have given into carnal thoughts and have had oral sex."

Stunned, the janitor had no idea how to handle this situation. Surely 10 Hail Mary's would not do. So, in a moment of desperation the janitor peered his head out of the confessional and asked an altar boy, "Son, what does the minister give for oral sex?"

In reply the altar boy said, "Two Snickers bars and a Coke."

The funniness resides in both the unexpected answer as well as in an apparent misunderstanding. Whether the text is to be considered a joke depend on the reader/listener’s “global intention towards the text” (Genova 2002). The overlapping script in the punch line completely changes the meaning of the question in the set-up part – from "Son, what does the minister give for oral sex?" the question unintentionally, perhaps, becomes “How much do you pay for a blowjob?” . The funniness of the joke is reached exactly by the ambiguity in the set-up part question.
One more example can be given about the “unexpectedness” of a punch line.

(2) A faggot hadn't had any sex for quite some time. One night,
he happened to run into a wino just outside of a gay bar. He said to
him, "Look, I do not know you, and you don't know me, but if I can
have sex with you, I'll give you fifty bucks!" The wino considered
this proposition and said, "well---okay. But you ought to be
forewarned that I have crabs." "That's all right," said the faggot...
"I love seafood."

Although the joke is quite explicit, the humorous effect is not lost. The speaker relies on the ambiguous meaning of the phrase “crabs” , while the first person talks about crabs in meaning of lice, the other person takes his words literally, leaving the assumption that the ‘crabs’ are crawfishes in the sea. The GTVH gives an explanation on how this switch makes people laugh - “The punchline triggers the switch from the one script to the other by making the hearer backtrack and realize that a different interpretation [of the joke] was possible from the very beginning.” (Attardo and Raskin 1991: 308)

The punchline is a very critical aspect of the joke. It contains the funniness and is what initially makes people laugh. There are specific proven ways to get to the punchline. The one is to put the punch-word as far to the back of your joke as possible without adding more words. We can see one of these specific ways in the following example

(3) A man dies and goes to Hell. The devil greets him and says, "You may choose which room you wish to enter. Whichever you choose, the person in that room will switch with you. They'll go to Heaven and you'll take over until somebody switches with you. So go on, pick a room."
The devil leads him to the first room where someone is tied to a wall and is being whipped. The second room has someone being burned by a torch. The third has a man getting blown by a naked woman.
"I choose this room!" the man says.
"Very well," the devil says. He walks up to the woman and taps her on the shoulder.
"You can go now. I've found your replacement."

The punchline in the joke is the last word. Every other word in the joke is a setup for a surprise at the end. We can notice how after the punchline, there are no words. The reason for this is that if you have the audience laughing and you begin to talk again, they’ll stop laughing in order to hear what you have to say. It’s called stepping on your laughs. It is like a rule in telling jokes and something that you should never do because it will condition the audience not to laugh. The surprise is left to the very end of the joke so that you have the attention of the audience which waits for this end of the joke with great tension. This is something that is definitely useful to know if considering stand-up comedy.

Some features of humor like irony, superiority, ambiguity, hostility, understatement, wordplay, etc are listed by Alleen Nilsen in “Living Language” (1999: 202-203). The following several examples in the paper show these features. One of the ways to achieve the wordplay in the joke which triggers the homor is by polisemy. Polysemes are words or phrases which have multiple meanings. Polysemy appears when a preexisting word (or phrase) is applied to a new situation, thus gaining a new meaning. Sometimes even etymology – the study of the history of the words – finds it difficult to establish a connection between different meanings (mostly because it has been lost during the centuries). Polysemy can be employed in humor in order to create yet another kind of wordplay and in this way – a funny situation. We can find a polyseme in the following joke

(4) What did the gay man say in the Chinese restaurant?
"May I please have the cream of sum yung gai?"

The humorous effect in this joke is achieved by the background. In this case the gay man is in a Chinese restaurant and he orders “the cream of sum yung gai”. The literal meaning of the phrase is a traditional Chinese cream, but in this situation the gay uses the phrase figuratively which changes the meaning of the phrase. Although the gay is in a Chinese restaurant he uses the phrase to say that he wants the semen of a young Chinese man. The polysemic character of the phrase is what makes the joke funny –the phrase is used figuratively rather than literally. We can see another example of a misinterpretation of a word in (5)

(5) What's the worst thing a straight guy can say in a gay bar?
Can you push my stool in please?!

The joke is quite explicit, the funniness comes from the unexpectedness of the answer in the punch line and again from the background. The words of the straight guy in a normal bar sound normally and in this case “stool” means a chair. The change of the meaning of the word ‘stool’ is what causes the opposition of the two scripts. However in a gay bar the word “stool” takes a different meaning - this of faeces. Thus the words of the straight man turn into a request for homosexual sex act between men.

Another way of achieving a wordplay which triggers humor is by homonymy. Homonyms are words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but have different meanings. Based on incongruity, the jokes which employ homonymy present situations in which misunderstanding leads to funny situations.

(6) Did you hear about the two queers who had an argument in a gay bar?
They went outside and exchanged blows!

The funniness in the joke come from the misinterpreting the meaning of the word “blow”. It is considered to be a reference to hit in a fight, instead it denotes an act of French love between two gay men. We laugh at the way of thinking of two gay men in a situation of struggle between them who are shared stereotypes. Stereotypes play an important role in humor. They are beliefs about certain social groups or groups of individuals based only on assumptions. Like prejudices, stereotypes are mostly subjective and untrue, relying on false premises. We may observe different examples of stereotypes in homosexuality – these of sentimental gay men, of horny gay men always taking certain situation sexually (see (6)), of masculine lesbians (the so-called butches), etc.

It is known that the gay men and the lesbians are engaged in a peculiar ‘homosexual war. There has always been tension between these groups of homosexual people. It's not uncommon for gay men to make jokes about their female counterparts or the opposite. There are different arguments about this but their rivalry has given birth to jokes such as this one

(7) There were two gay men and two lesbians moving from California to New York. Which ones got there first?

A: The lesbians, they got there lickity split, while the gay guys were still packin' their shit!'

The teller of the joke is probably a lesbian, because the joke is focused on the fact that the gay men are slower than the lesbians. In this situation the lesbians reach first California and start making love while the gay men are “still packin’their shit”. The word “shit” may refer to baggage as well as to faeces which makes this word in the joke a homonymy. The ridiculousness of the situation is a result of the intolerance between the gays and the lesbians.

Last, I would like to discuss a few question-answer jokes on homosexual matter. The structure of a question-answer joke is quite simple – it consists of two parts which, as the name suggests, ask a question and receive an answer. Unlike everyday talk, when we use questions in order to receive the information we require, this type of jokes relies on wit and the unexpectedness of the answer. They are usually quite implicit and brief. Let’s have a look at such jokes

(8) Q: What do you call a homosexual dentist?
A: Tooth fairy

(9) Q: What does a homo say to another gay going on vacation?
A: Can I help you pack your shit?

(10) Q: What do you call a ship full of fags?
A: The navy!

(11) Q: How do you get a nun pregnant?
A: Dress her up as an alter boy.

(12) Q. Did you hear about the two homosexual judges?
A. They tried each other.


When telling such a joke, the one who does the telling usually waits for a negative answer to the question and then gives his or her clever interpretation. If you can take your set-up and whittle it down by three words and still get the same or better response, you should do it. Sure, it means the joke will take up less time, but it will also allow for a quicker route to the punchline, which will set up a quicker response. The question-answer jokes rely on different strategies for achieving funniness, such as blending, polysemy, homonymy, homophony, etc.

(13) What do you call a homo Jew?
A Heblew


The explanation of this joke is quite simple; we have handy used word play. “Heblew” is a word made up of two combined words - a blend of words; (blending in linguistics) and the effect is stunning. The two words that are mixed into “Heblew” are “blew” (referring to the verb blow (in sexual aspect)) and “Hebrew” (referring to Jew). Imagine what Hebrew would be a lesbian, it sounds absurd, but this makes the joke funny. Due to the nature of the wordplay, the joke in (13) may produce greater impact if told verbally, rather than if simply read. In joke (14) we can see another example of blending in question-answer jokes

(14) Q: What do you call a lesbian eskimo?
A: A klondyke.

In this joke the blending word is “klondyke” which is a combination of dyke (a lesbian) and klondyker (East European factory ship,often used for fishing). The blending again sounds absurd, but the reader/listener should find the funniness between the two words and how they are combined. Joke (15) is an example of question-answer joke in which we can see a polysemy.

(15) Did you hear about the two queers who were in a telephone box?
They were trying to ring each other!

The funniness in the joke above is achieved by the polysemy “ring”. The wordplay is in the different usage of the word “ring”, which is due to the background and the situation. The literal meaning of the word is to call somebody, as we can consider because of the mentioned telephone box. However, the meaning of the word changes and it becomes figurative. This figurative meaning of the word “ring” makes it to be considered in a sexual aspect.
The strategy used in question-answer jokes is very simple. The teller of the joke has to try to tell the joke in a way so that the listener won’t be able to predict the final result. The punch line is the key for the funniness of the joke because this is the part where the fun is hidden. While in the first part, the set up, there we have the basal information, the part that makes us anxious to look forward to the very funny end. As they say in literature, the dénouement is in the punch line.

Baring the previous aspects and examples in mind, when it comes to explaining humor and naming the techniques used, we fully comprehend the complexity of the matter. Humor is part of our daily life. We tell jokes to our friends, and our friends tell us jokes, we read them in newspapers in books, we watch comedians on TV. Briefly we are surrounded by jokes. The telling of joke seems to be easy, but actually it is very difficult. There are people who are born with talent for doing this and the telling of jokes is not for everybody. Exploring the cultural and social factors and shared stereotypes regarding homosexual people makes us understand homosexuality in jokes better. But it also helps us to find the real purpose of those jokes, which is to entertain and heal social differences.









Work cited

Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin (1991) Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke Representation Model. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4.3-4: 293-347
Genova, Dafina. (2002). “American and Bulgarian Political Humor: Similarities or Differences”. In: America across Cultures: Europe and beyond. International Conference, Veliko Turnovo University, April 7-9, 2002 (in press).

Nilsen, Alleen Pace (1999) Living Language. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon
Raskin, Victor (1985) Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel