Before I started reading “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” I was pretty sure that the author had used that title as a deceiving device, a kind of “click-bait,” and that the content of the article would actually be some sort of feminist manifesto. Surprisingly, there was nothing deceiving about it. Unfortunately, it could not be more straightforward. The article, written by Christopher Hitchens, was published in Vanity Fair in 2007. Hitchens’ purpose is to not merely tell the readers that women are not funny, which he assumes that they know already, but to provide evidence that proves it. But the rhetorical strategies that he uses throughout the piece are generally weak and unsuccessful.
Even though Christopher Hitchens did some stand up comedy, he was mostly recognized for being a radical liberal, and for writing controversial pieces about politics, religion and ideology. Therefore, you would probably expect his argument to be controversial, but you would not assume that he is an expert in humor. That is why his use of language is key to the way in which he develops his thesis. He writes in an informal and appealing manner, and he even addresses the reader directly. His very first words – “Be your gender what it may” – serve to invite all possible readers to sympathize with him. He also uses comedic remarks as a way of proving that he knows what he is talking about. He emphasizes some of these moments by adding parentheses as a way of pausing the flow of the text for a second in order to make a funny comment. We can see this when he is talking about a study that was done at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and he pauses for no reason, to share that Stanford is “(a place, as it happens, where I once underwent an absolutely hilarious procedure with a sigmoidoscope).”
Even though he is addressing people from all over the gender spectrum to read the article (or that’s what we could infer from his initial sentence), its content might only be appealing to a fragment of this population. The references that he makes throughout the article regarding male sexuality, experiences and sense of humor are most likely only going to appeal to male readers. Even when he talks about women having a sort of intelligence and intuition that men don’t have, he goes back to the male qualities and makes them sound as if they were superior.
Which is interesting, given the fact that the majority of the readers of Vanity Fair are women. According to adverator.com, 79% of the readers of Vanity Fair are female. Therefore, Hitchens’ is targeting the emotions of the readers in the wrong way. By talking about the male experience he will only make the readers who can identify with it laugh. And by talking about pregnancy, motherhood, or by saying that only women who are “hefty or dykey or Jewish” have a sense of humor, he is only being hurtful and losing the trust of the rest of the readers.
His use of sources can also be misleading. On the one hand he does include a variety of sources and examples, such as the Stanford University School of Medicine study, Fran Lebowitz, Nora Ephron and Rudyard Kipling, but none of them serve to prove that women are not funny. When he actually makes an argument about the absence of female humor, it is not supported by any outside material, which can make his claims seem like they are just products of his misogynist imagination. Therefore, Christopher Hitchens’ attempt to explain why women aren’t funny is weak and lacks credibility.
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