Christopher Hithens
Jan. 1st, 2007 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackKaty 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."
"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."
no subject
Date: 2007-01-02 01:07 pm (UTC)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.