Is there a gender gap in humor?
Dec. 28th, 2006 12:40 pmIn his latest Vanity Fair article, Why Women Aren't Funny, Christopher Hitchens argues that one of the main purposes of humor is seducing women, which is why, he claims, men are better at it, and those women who are funny tend to be either overweight, lesbians, or Jewish (lesbians have the same motive as straight men to be funny, obesity makes women appear butch, and the self-deprecating nature of Jewish humor, Hitchens asserts, is a masculine strategy). He seems to view funny straight, thin, gentile women as exceptions that prove the rule.