Furthermore, why don’t women seem to find the act of farting as funny, and as competitive as men do?
Plug in fart on the search page of this board and I’d bet you’d get pages of results. Everything from what produces the worst smelling farts, to the possibilities of farts blowing holes in people’s underwear.
The one thing that always strikes me about these threads, or the topic of farts in general, is that is seems to be a strictly male thing.
Come to think of it, no woman I’ve ever dated has been amused by farts the way that I’ve been.
From the movie dumb and dumber all the way to the website devoted to fart sounds, none have been all that enthused.
Further still, I’ve never run across a woman who’s been proud that they could out-fart one of their friends, let alone take credit for passing a gas so noxious it cleared out a room.
But many a guy, including myself, have done so.
So, the question- Is men finding humor and/or competition in a thing so benign as a fart a cultural thing? A way of always trying to compete combined with the gross out factor i.e. like a brother likes to scare his sister with a worm or spider or something?
Sorry I don’t really have any insight on your question but I just wanted to point out an observation I’ve made. A really good joke might be funny 3 or 4 times, but you can fart 10 times a day for 80 years and you will still laugh every single time. Weird, huh?
Well, this one does. I don’t fart a lot (no, really, I don’t) but when I do I giggle. And when my boyfriend or son fart, I giggle. And when someone says “fart” or “poot”, I giggle. And when my mom farts, we both giggle.
Farts are funny. However, I am not competitive about farting, and don’t know anyone who is, not even guys.
Once upon a time, I had a boyfriend who was inordinately proud of his raunchy farts. He was a big fan of the “Dutch oven” manuever, and once after dropping some major ass while brushing his teeth, he called me over, then shoved me in the bathroom and held the door shut while I suffocated. We are no longer together - in spite of, not because of, this kind of thing. After I got out of the bathroom, I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.
I am, by the way, a very dainty and delicate 26-year-old female.
Less than an hour ago a female coworker very obviously cut one in front of me as a joke. Lifted her leg and everything. But she’s a rare gal, she also makes the most perverted jokes imaginable. As you can imagine, she’s great to work with.
Mrs. ShibbOleth thinks farts are funny. She tells me she and her brother and sister used to have farting and belching contests after dinner. If we are watching a video with fart jokes I usually have to pause the tape until she regains her composure.
I’d be a fool to miss that. I’ll see what I can do.
Except that she said it happened in the bathroom.
Now I can’t presume to know what kind of relationship they had between the two of them, but I’d venture to guess she didn’t have the boyfriend sleep in the bathroom.
So, the ‘Dutch Oven Technique’ obviously means something else to her than it does to you.
Who’s the doorknob now! -smile-
No they don’t. Don’t even say that.
Because there’s no way my Saint of a mother ever farted a day in her life!!
I remember when I was a teenager, my brothers thought it was extremely funny to cut “wolf-ass”, noxious, tear-inducing farts in the basement bathroom, lie in wait for me or one of my sisters, throw us in the bathroom and lock the door. They would laugh maniacally when we would pound on the door, screaming to be set free. This all stopped when my brothers didn’t know my Mom was in the next room, doing the laundry. She walked over, opened the door, and almost passed out. However, my mom was not above performing her “silent but deadly” routine on vacations. She would be sitting in the front seat with my dad driving. We always knew when she did the dirty deed by a sudden silence, her giggles, and a truly disgusting stench. My dad would ask her if she knew that gas warfare was outlawed by the Geneva Convention. Of course, that only served to send everyone gasping for breath between the explosions and the laughter.
I had a (female) mammalogist friend, who semi-seriously theorized that farting among human males was a form of assessing dominance and marking territory. Seems unlikely to me, because as you say, the usual response is laughter, not submission.
Still, the guy who can fart loudest often attains a sort of legendary status among a group of males. One of the worst weeks of my life was spent with four New Zealand Wildlife Service rangers in a small hut on desolate Stewart Island off the South coust of NZ. To amuse themselves, these guys had a highly competetive farting contest that went on the whole time we were there. Since it was pouring rain most of the time, there was no escape. I almost died. Those guys were world class.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos, humans in the far future have evolved into unintelligent seal-like creatures that spend most of their time lolling on the beach. The only thing they have in common with their ancient ancestors (us), is that when someone farts, everybody laughs.
I can’t believe the stuff I have shared with my Doper friends today. I have never farted on purpose in front of anyone except for my daughter. This includes my husband of over 16 years. I don’t know why but I would rather die than fart in front of him. I was raised in Texas and girls did not do it, talk about it or laught about it. My father was very strict and we could not even say the word fart when I was little. Sounds dumb now but it is still a hard habit to break. I have had times where I have been literally been doubled over in pain but would not pass gas until I could get to a bathroom by myself. My husband thinks this is hilarious. Once he woke up in the middle of the night to tell me I had farted in my sleep.
