Vanity Fair
April 2008
Christopher Hitchens: An Immodest Rebu*tal
In the April V.F., Alessandra Stanley joins forces with Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and other great female comics to prove that women are no slouches in the humor department
Christopher Hitchens, author of an infamous essay on the subject, begs to differ
Voiceover: In a world where 50% of the population is female, one man had the audacity to write an article titled 'Why Women Aren't Funny'. Now, Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and writer Alessandra Stanley are striking back in Vanity Fair. Think Christopher Hitchens is worried? Think again
Christopher Hitchens: There's only a dispute about what the answer is, there is no question that for women the need or ability to be funny is tremendously less than it is among men. Nobody has been found to deny that, Alessandra doesn't even try to deny it
Any second thoughts?
Christopher Hitchens: If you were to ask me has reading her article made me reconsider my view that women aren't as a gender funny, I would say very much to the contrary. She's been unable to write this piece without direct reference to the exceptions that I made as well as the examples I gave. She even at one point echoes what I think is my strongest point, namely that women don't need to be funny. That for most men if they can't make women laugh they are out of the evolutionary contest, they are never going to get laid. Most men are fantastically unattractive, what women see in them is mysterious to most men as well as most women. If you can't make them laugh you don't have a chance. With women, there's no need to be rendering yourself attractive to men in that way. We already find you attractive, thanks
A Criqitue of the Critique
Christopher Hitchens: I'm not saying that there aren't great female comedians, there are many many many. That's not the same as the female sense of humour. She makes the same distinction. I say the problem with female comedians up till now is they tend to be either dykes or Jews or butch. Roseanne Barr, Sarah Silverman, etc. etc. and these are all forms of emulating male humour - she says the same. What does she say is different? Welll, now there are some that are also pretty even if some of them are a bit butch and a bit Jewish. Well, okay, but she says, and I quote "By and large however stand up comedy is tougher and meaner and the women who do it play by men's rules." Well that's exactly, in so many words, what I said but now they're prettier and s**ier and they wear less and care less about the proprieties so what has been the achievement of my essay? It's been to make s**ier women try harder to amuse me. Well that was my whole plan to start off with
The Reaction
Christopher Hitchens: The salad of letters chosen by the magazines correspondence editors criticising me made me think I could write a sequel called "How Some Women Apparently Can't Even Read" because where I had said "Look I'm not saying there are no female comedians, I'm not saying they can't do stand up or a woman can't do it." You get a long boring letter saying "I challenge Mr. Hitchens to a stand up contest with this bull dyke I know in Portland, Oregon, who does a great stand-up routine." Well, that's not getting the point is it, dear? And its trying I find sometimes, irritating, time-consuming, annoying, when they don't listen
What's The Big Deal?
Christopher Hitchens: Intuitively, everybody thinks that sense of humour or wit is a sign of intelligence. So it can be if people aren't following you closely that an accusation that one lacks a sense of humour or isn't funny - which are two different things, either - is an insult. Now of course this isn't true. It would be a waste of the male effort to be funny, which is much more highly evolved and much more evolutionarily self-selected, if women didn't have a sense of humour and didn't have to be made to laugh. I won't try and do it for you on camera, but there's an attitude of the head thrown back and the mouth wide open and the horseshoe of lovely teeth and tongue on display and so forth that is well it's a bit of a surrender. It's worth it for it's own sake, and it's a simulacrum of something even more worth it. Now, women don't need to do that to men, okay? And with that, as people tend to say, I rest my case