Analysis of "Why Women Aren't Funny" by Christopher Hitchens

In my opinion, Christopher Hitchens wrote his overtly controversial article “Why Women Aren’t Funny” in order to bring to light the fact that, in general, the female sex is not immediately linked with the characteristic of humor. As Hitchens said in the beginning of his article, a male does not typically think of finding a female counterpart based off her natural ability to make him laugh. Because it is majorly aggressive, pre-emptive, and controversial, humor does not seem to set well with the publics’ consensus that the female sex is naturally thoughtful and nurturing. Undoubtedly, Vanity Fair is mainly known as a female magazine that stays faithful to traditional values of women. A feminine activist who rides a motorcycle to work and wears oversized t-shirts would most likely not be caught dead reading the latest issue of Vanity Fair. As a rhetor, Hitchens chose a great audience because they typically believe that there are intellectual, emotional, social, and cultural differences between men and women. The exigence of his article was to highlight that humor is more idealistic in men because of women’s values.
Hitchens effectively used a combination of logos, ethos, and pathos to support his claim that humor is not as socioculturally important to women as it is to men. He first appeals to logic and underlines his credibility by highlighting a Stanford University School of Medicine study that revealed that a woman’s brain is more stimulated by humor than a man’s. Secondly, Hitchens suggests that because humor is a sign of intelligence and aggressiveness, the delicate female race are arguably frowned upon for using it. Overall I believe Hitchens was trying to stress that, although equality is often the goal between sexes, it is a cold, hard fact that men and women have different socioculutral expectations. It is their roles as members of society of those expectations are acceptable or not.