Matter of fact (or is it a matter of opinion?), even her domain name has a sense of humor 
That’s not true, from my experience. What’s true is that women and men find different things funny.
When I’m with a bunch of women, we laugh up a storm. We don’t sit and talk about emotional matters (which is a hilarious term…since we are talking about amusement, an emotion, not rocket science). We trade zingers, diss what people are wearing (ooh, honey, no you are NOT trying to put your big butt in those spandex!), share funny anecdotes, and engage in physical humor as well (I’m notorious for this, being both clumsy and a lover of dance).
What you won’t find is a lot of gross-out jokes. Fart/toliet humor, nasty sex stuff, or mean jokes. I work in a predominately male environment full of jokesters, and those guys generally go for these areas. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not.
I do think gender roles have a part to play in what people find funny and in who gets to be funny. Girls are conditioned from an early age to be quiet and good. Being a “young lady” means not acting up in class, not hamming it up in front of audiences, being polite, and not being direct in one’s quest for attention. Up to middle school, I always kept my “funny” inside, always afraid I would get in trouble if I said what was really on my mind. But when I reached teenagehood and I found my personality, I let loose. I think it was easy to do because I wasn’t concerned about getting a boyfriend or being goody-goody. (And yet I was still a goody-goody because the adults around me generally found me funny as well).
Being a comedian means being loud, impulsive, animated, and obstentatious. It means breaking the rules of decorum (how many times have girls been told it’s unlady-like to curse?) and do things that raise eyebrows. We forgive these behaviors in men much more readily than we do women. A woman who tells a joke or two is “loud”. A guy has to be screaming in a bullhorn, suspended from a chandilier, to get that kind of label.
I don’t think women comedians have a brand of humor that’s necessarily more exclusive than male humor. For every period joke (and really, what’s wrong with telling a period joke every now and again? Periods are an important facet of life for half the world’s population), there’s a penis joke, or a pussy joke, or a choke-a-bitch/whore joke. There’s the frat guy humor of folks like Dane Cook, and the stupid guy shtick of movies like Dumb and Dumber and Half Baked. Women find men funny, but it’s because we’re used to laughing at guys and the things guys find funny. On the other hand, men aren’t used to finding women funny or the things they talk about funny. The problem isn’t in the humor. It’s in the perception of the humor (oh, those girls! All they talk about is their FEELINGS!)
King of Soup stole mine. Yeah, women make jokes all the time. Of course the proper role of a woman is too laugh at the jokes a man makes, but sometimes there’s just not a “real” funny man around, and they have to make each other laugh. That doesn’t mean they’d rather make each other laugh. A woman would rather have a man around, ideally laughing at his jokes along with with her hot roommate.
Monstro:
Yeah, I admit “emotional matters” was not the best term. I was trying to be concise, and I failed.
I will try to explain my opinion better, while still remaining a generalising bastard. 
By emotional matters, I meant discussing your opinion of other people, and the characteristics of those people. Something women do much more. But of course this is not all you do.
And yes, women make jokes too, just not as often as guys do it. In my experience humour is only in center when there are, as you say, a bunch of women. For guys on the other hand, it always stays close to the center.
For example this situation:
2 women/2 guys are watching a tv series.
The womens comments will be about understanding the plot line, or saying that they agree disagree with a character, or otherwise comment on the choices they make.
The guys will ridicule the plot holes, make jokes about how you could misunderstand what the people say, etc.
And then there is a another point. When women are together in groups, and laughing, the stuff that is laughed at is most often not objectively funny. They will not bring an outside listener (me) to laugh. An excellent example is the one you made: “ooh, honey, no you are NOT trying to put your big butt in those spandex!” Now this sounds like a sentence that would get a big laugh in the group of women. But if you just tell it to me, there is nothing funny about it. Men tend to make more objectively funny remarks.
And of course I’m not saying that women are inferior because of this. There are a lot of things they are better at, such as not hurting people’s feelings.
and cooking and cleaning for the men.
Women have pussies. Also someone pointed out dick jokes. Women interact with dicks. Conversely, Not many men are all that involved with menstruation on any level.
One problem with woman-centric material is that women hide much of it from men in everyday life. Things like makeup, trying on clothes or bathing suits, tampons, dieting; generally these aspects of a woman’s life are shielded from the prying eyes of men.
Exclusionary topics that the bad male comics use are things like sports, tools, picking on / getting picked on by your brother as kids, working on cars; that kind of crap. Not hidden stuff, but rather just stuff that women aren’t particularly interested in. (How many women found Tim Allen funny?)
As a general rule, exclusionary material is the hallmark of the hack, regardless of gender. (Although it’s not nearly as pathetic as airline material: What is the deal with the black box? If it survives the crash, why not just make the whole plane out of whatever they use to make the black box? Ugh.)
Period jokes are about as accessible to men as a routine on fantasy football would be to women. And they hold the appeal that burp and fart jokes hold for women: basically none. On the other hand, either gender can do “gender wars” material and appeal to everybody, whether it be the woman joking about how the guy never calls or the guy joking about his nagging girlfriend. Same with sex jokes.
The most accessible good material is on religion, politics, money, or observational humor. Hacks will go straight for the ethnic or gender divide, which is at least still accessible, if not original or even funny. And women comics seem to shy away from religion and politics, limiting their potential well of accessible humor.
Just to clarify, when I say politics I’m not necessarily talking about ripping on the president or making fun of a political party.
A good example is one of Anthony Clark’s (Greg from the horrible show Yes, Dear; he does great standup) bits riffing on the Oklahoma license plate slogan “Oklahoma is OK.” It’s accessible to everyone, and it’s funny as shit.
Female comics, on the other hand, seem highly focused on interpersonal relationships to the exclusion of all else. While that is a good source for funny material, it is only one of many possible topics.
I agree with Ellis Dee, especially about this:
Argh! Shut up you morons! I can make stand up comedy too: Why don’t they make balloons out of lead, so they are not so easy to pop? And why don’t they make desks out of pure diamond, so they will hold longer?
Exactly. That stuff makes me crazy because it’s not just trite, it’s aggressively ignorant.
There are lots of good female stand-ups. There are few great ones, just as there are few great male stand-ups.
Can we re-define good as someone who can make a reasonably good living doing mostly stand-up, as opposed to someone the OP finds funny? I think the latter definition says more about an individual’s taste than the comedian’s sense of humor. Popularity is not the same as talent, but it’s the closest thing to a metric we have here.
Stand-up comedy is a pretty shitty profession, and very few comedians can make much of a living at it. Seinfeld made his money on his sitcom, as did Ray Romano, Ellen, Tim Allen, etc. Getting good at it is requires years of hard work under horrible conditions for not much money. Almost every working comedian is looking for a big break that will allow him/her to get off the road, off the stage, and into a regular gig as an actor, writer, etc.
If women are less successful, part of it can be attributed to the venues (nowadays, primarily the clubs and Comedy Central). These cater mostly to male acts, as club culture caters to the male audience (women go to the clubs, but often on dates – since we’re stereotyping here, men choose where to go, like they often choose the movie), and Comedy Central (generally) caters to the 18-49 male demographic. It’s economics…
Guys (as has been made clear in many posts here) want to hear jokes about stuff they relate to, like how unreasonable women are (c’mon ladies, you know it’s true!), and almost aggressively dislike jokes done from a women’s perspective, like how unreasonable men are. So the economics of the system make it more difficult for women to get a shot.
That said, most people who are funny at all tend to leave the profession for more lucrative, less stressful gigs.
Comedians who actually make (or made) a good living doing almost exclusively stand-up are pretty rare: start, I guess, with Carlin, Pryor, Chris Rock, Poundstone…
IMHO: Laura Kightlinger, who now works mostly as a writer, is incredibly funny:
Silverman’s act is pretty funny most of the time – she’s playing (and making fun of) a character, in much the same way that Andy Kaufman did, and the same way that lAndrew Dice Clay and Larry the Cable Guy are, but too many fans of the latter two did not (do not) get the joke (I’m not sure Larry does, either – he seems to think of himself as a prophet).
The same thing could be said about many, many male comedians.
There’s a saying (that I’m about to mangle) that boils down to with men people listen, first, and then decide if they like what they see. With women, people look first, and if they like what they see, they may listen.
A lot of white male comics also have one note, male centered jokes - “My girlfriend doesn’t understand me…blah blah blah.” Or they have other material exclusive to men. But women are willing to laugh at humor that isn’t about them. Why aren’t guys?
As I mentioned upthread, it might be a vulnerability issue — of course, that’s the kind of blather you can attach to anything and it sounds as if it means something.
In this case it might even be true. Men might not let their guard down as easily when a woman tries to make him laugh. I admitted that my not laughing at female comics might say as much about me as it does about them. On the other hand, it’s not as if I laugh at every male comic, either, so maybe gender is irrelevant.
I love a lot of female comic actresses, but that’s not quite the same — they’re delivering an interpretration of the lines composed by a writer.
[/QUOTE]
I think you make a good point, but I also think that plain out sexism is involved with this. Guys still downplay or denigrate women’s issues. When the conversation turns to periods (which involves vaginas…you know those organs ya’ll like to play with every now and again), you suddenly go deaf and start crying. Is it because it’s gross? (It can’t be, since ya’ll love toliet humor). Or is it because it’s considered “manly” to act this way?
I think men make women’s lives separate from their own intentionally. I can’t have a conversation with another female co-worker without the guy’s giggling about our “girl talk”. If a woman talks about a soap opera or going to the mall, the guys will laugh and belittle her interests (it has happened to me before plenty of times). But women do not generally treat men the same way when it comes to, say, sports. Why? Is it because sports are more universal? Or is it because men get to decide what are interesting endeavors? I guess my point is that you view women as excluding their lives from men. I see men excluding themselves a lot of times because they think if they show an interest in unmanly things, they will be called a “pussy” or a “sissy”.
To whit: the guys around me constantly talk about sports. Sometimes I find myself curious about whatever it is they are talking about, even though I have absolutely no interest in sports, and I will ask them questions. But if the roles were reversed and I was talking about what was happening on a soap opera (which wouldn’t happen, since I don’t watch them) or Oprah, I reeeeally don’t think the guys would ask me questions. They would laugh and point their fingers at me. Look at monstro. She’s such a girl!. That’s just how it is in a male-dominated world (or at least my male-dominated world). I don’t think women are to blame for this.
I make a distinction between vagina humor and period humor. Sarah Silverman does a lot of the former, and (generally speaking) guys don’t find it exclusionary.
I’ve tried multiple times to articulate exactly how and why I personally find period jokes to be exclusionary, but can’t quite get it right, so deleted the attempts and will ruminate on it for a bit. Perhaps I’ll address this later.
I think you are mistaken. The amount of scorn women pile onto sports is far in excess of the scorn men pile onto soap operas.
Oprah? Yeah, she probably draws the same amount of scorn. Even worse is Dr. Phil, but I digress. As far as soap operas, huge numbers of men have watched them at one point in their life. (Usually college.) The scorn may be coming from a place of shame.
I do see some merit in what you’re saying; men are certainly complicit in maintaining the “mystery of women.” And most men (and women, I fervently hope) find much of the crap targeted at women to be spectacularly bad. I’m thinking of things like Lifetime Original movies. Men have a similar amount of crap targeted to them, but I think most people can recognize the crappiness without having to resort to a sexist basis.
A good summary. She’s crude and has no style. As for Cho, she’s just marginally funnier. I don’t like either of them.
Lisa Lampanelli has more style than Silverman, but although I give her credit for her angry style, I don’t like it in women or men.
Elayne Boosler was big in the 80s, but she’s faded somewhat.
I always liked Rita Rudner.
I still think Judy Tenuta is very funny. “WORSHIP ME, PIGS!” 
Nobody’s mentione Rosie O’Donnell yet? Her comedy is good. Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers were trailblazers and at the top for a long time.
Like I said before, I think male comedians are less prone to center their acts around manly topics than women are around the feminine. I also think women are more prone to “battle of the sexes”-type humor that is akin to bashing members of the opposite sex. Sure, some male comedians get raunchy when discussing women, but it’s usually not women-bashing.
Male comedian: “My girlfriend’s tits are so big …”
Female comedian: “My boyfriend is so stupid …”
The context of women in male humor is often objectification, while in female humor the context of men is usually disparagement. There’s a big difference between the two concepts.
Has anyone seen Shazia Mirza? I’ve never seen her, but apparently she’s very popular. I have to admit, I’m intrigued with the concept.
Well, I went to Maria Bamford’s show tonight at the UCB Theater in L.A.
She was in a line up with 4 or 5 other male comedians, none of which were very funny at all.
And although I can’t give her my official seal of approval, she at least made me laugh a few times and I liked her more than any of the other comedians tonight, including the guy who was supposedly the “headliner” (they said he has also been on Comedy Central). Name was Andy Kettle or Keitel or something like that, and he was really terrible. He kept forgetting his jokes and looking at his notes, then studdering through every bit. He also did a terrible impersonation of Dane Cook, which only served to remind me of why Dane Cook is actually funny, and he wasn’t.
More than anything tonight reminded me of one thing: comedy is hard. For anyone, male or female. I’ve tried it myself at an open mic, and while I got some laughs, it was very tough! I’m working on refining my act for the next time.