Christopher Hithens

[jack]

Katy linked to this, and I responded there, but as always someone, in this case Gene Weingarten, said what I said better and funnier.

"Have you read Christopher Hitchens's essay in Vanity Fair, where he claims that women aren't funny? Actually, he doesn't argue that point so much as he accepts it as an immutable and incontestable fact, then examines how this tragic state of affairs has come about.

The first thing I noticed about this piece was that it wasn't remotely funny, though not for lack of trying. Hitchens's efforts to inject humor into his essay were heavy-handed and painful, like a gorilla's efforts to inject Novocain into your jaw. ... his case boils down to this: Women aren't funny because they are, y'know, ladylike."

"This is obviously a man who does not know women to any real depth. If you see what I am saying."

Comments

[bouteillebleu.livejournal.com]

It took me a little while, but I found the article online. And wow, what an arse Christopher Hitchens is.

"Whereas women, bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is."

I can't really come up with a better response to this than the link you posted, because my immediate response is along the lines of "Oh, fuck off" to the writer of the article.

If it helps, I spent most of my time at secondary school trying to be funny as a way of fitting in. Do girls tell each other really bad jokes that the writer of the article would probably describe as male-only? Well, of course we do. We were teenagers.

And the Treasure Trap crowd I've fallen in with are even worse for terrible and often smutty jokes. :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

Of course, the thing is, I don't know that the generalisation is false. It might even be true that in general women don't enjoy being funny as much as men, but it's certainly not a universal constant (and my friends may be atypical). It's the fact that he presents it as a fait acompli, implying that everyone fits this little mould, rather than being people first and statistical correlations with various genes second.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

They pulled that article to bits most wonderfully on the Language Log a while ago.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not surprised. Except that I can't remember it :) It hardly seems worth it, like fish in a barrel, except that someone has to make the obvious points until/unless one day they're no longer necessary.