Two classes of jokes—about women as whores and women as avengers—are analyzed in terms of conscious and unconscious intrapsychic and intergender conflicts. Interrelated issues of power, mutual exploitation, self-esteem, and material interests are given special consideration. The effectiveness of these and other such jokes is related to the theory of the comic put forth by Ernst Kris, according to which the jokes allow a temporary remastery of incompletely mastered anxieties. In this context, these anxieties pertain especially to gender identity and relations between the sexes.