Women aren't funny because:

1. Men need to find new ways to appeal to women more than women need to find new ways to appeal to men.

2. From a brain perspective, women's humour-processing faculties do not appear to be as nimble as men's according to a Stanford University study.

3. Women are often wittier than men; that is, more discerning in what they laugh at. Corollary: Men are stupid.

4. "Humour is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what's more male than that?"

5. "(W)omen, bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is."

6. Men reward women for being an audience, not for being rivals.

7. The reproductive function gives women a very different and more mature attitude toward questions of filth and embarrassment.

8. More importantly, it also gives them a seriousness and solemnity at which men can only goggle. Their higher calling is no laughing matter.

I mean, it's all obviously so spurious, and we could leave it at "Why is men's humour so much stupider than women's" and walk away fairly edified. But Hitchens likes to reduce and generalize. Anyway, this, um, intermittently amusing essay appeared in Vanity Fair of January 2009. ( )