I was thinking about "dad jokes" yesterday - not the jokes themselves, but the phrase. I asked my SO about the origin of the phrase, and they confirmed what I thought: dad jokes aren't really funny, and people good-humoredly just chuckle at the jokes, or roll their eyes, or whatever.
Point is, it's good to be a dad, I guess. Because if you are, then people let you tell not-very-funny jokes, and they chuckle obligingly, or they're just like, "ugh, dad joke". They go along with it because dads have positional power.
But what the listeners don't do is dismiss men for not being funny. "Mom jokes" are literally not even a thing, and that's because women don't even get credit for telling unfunny jokes. I guess women just go back to the kitchen or dining room table, telling the stories that are really funny, and for which women get no credit from men at all.
Although it's annoying that the bar is so low for men, women don't actually need men to say we're funny. So that's an advantage, I guess?
