Women Aren’t Funny; Neither is Christopher Hitchens

In last month’s Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens wrote a “Provocation” piece called “Why Women Aren’t Funny.”  His investigation of “the humor gap” is just about as insightful as it sounds.  Get excited, because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the drawing of incredibly broad generalizations about personality and gender always make for excellent journalism! 

I was pleased to find that the essay opened with some horrible writing and obtuse observations.  Why is it that women always cite their boyfriends’ humor as a top quality – right up there with intelligence – while men never mention humor as a trait in their mates, Hitchens wonders.  He concludes that it is because men are funny and women aren’t, not even pausing to consider that there might be some social constructs at play here.  Excellent; if he’s this stupid, I don’t even have to bother to get offended, and everyone wins. 

I was stopped in my skeptical tracks in the fourth paragraph of the article, when Hitchens cited a study from Stanford Medical School, which he used as evidence that women are not funny.  Here’s what the study said:

“Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon,” said the report’s author, Dr. Allan Reiss. “So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it.” The report also found that “women were quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny.”

I am a person who believes in scientific studies, so I was dismayed to see this being presented as evidence.  Then I actually read the citation above, which is more than Hitchens could be bothered to do.  Here is Hitchens’ interpretation of that study:

“Slower to get it, more pleased when they do, and swift to locate the unfunny—for this we need the Stanford University School of Medicine?”

Take a second to actually read the quote from the study, and you’ll notice that the first item in Hitchens’ triad – “slower to get it” – is not a conclusion from the study.  How he is able to extrapolate from “less expectation of a reward” to “slower to get it,” is beyond me.  But then let’s give Christopher the benefit of the doubt on this one, because after all I am a woman, and lest you forget, we are not just unfunny, we also suck at science.

After some really stupid paragraphs about how Jewish humor is inherently male and how poop jokes really are hilarious, there is a glimmer of intelligent analysis:

 ”Precisely because humor is a sign of intelligence (and many women believe, or were taught by their mothers, that they become threatening to men if they appear too bright), it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny. They want them as an audience, not as rivals.”

Imagine that!  A difference between the sexes that is attributable to societal expectations and mores, not to inherent gender differences!  Golly!  Maybe I am being overly sarcastic here (make that bitchy, come to think of it, me being a lady and all), but you must forgive me if this is all just a little bit too obvious.  Hitchens comes so close to making a valid point that you just want to reach out and shake his big, fat, hilarious joke-writing, male head.  He devotes a few sentences to the fact that men think that penis jokes and prostate cancer jokes are just great, and then writes,

“This is funny only in male company. For some reason, women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing.”

Anyone with an ounce of analytical talent would at least try to isolate the variables here.  Men think that jokes about their bodies are hilarious, but only in male company.  Women, apparently, do not joke about their bodies at all.  Does Hitchens wonder if perhaps women do have analogous humor, but that – like men saving prostate jokes for other dudes - they prefer not to tell menstruation jokes in mixed company?  Or, use the concept a little more broadly – men and women behave differently when they are surrounded by members of their own gender.  Hitchens himself introduces this idea.  Is it so unreasonable to think that, in a society where (Hitchens also introduced this himself, at the start of the piece) women’s primary role, traditionally, is as a visually pleasing sexual object to be impressed by male humor, we ladies might be funnier around each other than in the presence of lugs like Hitchens?  In science, we call this the “uncertainty principle” or the “observer effect” – the idea that by watching something you may very well change it. 

But Hitchens is clearly not a scientist, he’s a wonderful comedian!

The article, which by the way is speckled with such horrible attempts at humor as “wouldn’t know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce bearnaise,” leaves one with the impression that, women could be telling hilarious jokes to Hitchens all day long, but the old blowhard he wouldn’t shut up long enough to notice.