Gender has long been a curious topic for me. I wonder what really makes men and women different. Where's the line between the biology of sex and gender identity? In the back of my mind is the thought that if we understood true similarities and differences between people on the heterosexual male/female front, we'd be more ready to take an honest look at homosexuality and anything else that might fall under the heading of "other". The more we understand, the less we have to react with blind prejudice.

Wandering the Web recently, I stumbled upon Why Women Aren't Funny, a Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens. My immediate thought was, "But I know lots of women who are funny. And I know plenty of men who aren't." Still, I read on with a fairly open mind; after all, the author had a study to back him up.

It starts off making some sense, with his observation that (hetero) women, when discussing a new relationship with friends will often list how funny he is among the man's attributes. Meanwhile, men don't. There's an obvious answer for this, and I hoped that he'd eventually get to it. Not so! The article tells us instead that women have the male world at our feet, so men have to be funny.

"The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter-I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight-well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further.

Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift."

Sure, I catch your drift. Heterosexual women have no libidos to speak of and never spend any time trying to impress men. That's why you never catch any of us going to the gym, wearing make-up or clothes that inhance our figures while hiding flaws, or having personalities or something crazy like that. We walk aimlessly through the world, ruling it with our double X chromosomes, looking for the funniest man to make our own.

At least he's somewhat insulting to men there as well. Look out, Angelina! The drift I'm getting from Mr. Hitchens is that men are attracted to women in general. Forget that you're a talented actor and absolutely gorgeous with a deep love for and commitment to children everywhere. All I have to do is flash my tits and he's all mine. At least until some chick comes along who can top my triple Ds.

Yeah. Right.

But it doesn't end there. He kindly cited the study, twisting the findings to sound far more negative than they actually were. While I was listing off brilliant female comics in my head, I reached the point in the article where he admits to as much himself. Sort of. "Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three"

I could argue with that--I did go through a mental list of comediennes, some who were indeed hefty or dykey or Jewish, some who were none of the three--but I'd rather let that statement stand on its own.

He has other theories for why women aren't funny while men are. He notes that men say "Life's a bitch" while women "bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is." And humor is a sign of intelligence, so maybe women aren't funny because we fear we'll appear too bright if we were. Because we're all living in an '80's After School Special and haven't reached the end where the heroine decides that she'll be who she is and picks the guy who appreciates her for the strong, intelligent person she is rather than the bubble-headed beauty she pretended to be.

When your own theories aren't particularly brilliant, state them with conviction and maybe the reader will be convinced. Once you've twisted a study, what's left to do? Twist the words of an actual woman. He contacted author and funny woman Fran Lebowitz to ask about the subject. In the section on filthy humor, he quotes her: "Men obviously like gross stuff," says Fran Lebowitz. "Why? Because it's childish." And he adds, "Keep your eye on that last word."

This leads him into a spiel about reproduction, rather than paying attention to what she was actually saying. You see, for women, reproduction is either the only thing or at least the main thing. This leads to two important, and disturbingly stupid points:

1) Again-women have the power because we have vaginas, but this time, it's because men are overawed by the ability to give birth.

2) Women aren't funny because this motherhood thing is serious business."Humor, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle. Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can't afford to be too frivolous...One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman's universe is left in ashes and ruin."

And once more, the best I can say is that at least Hitchens is insulting men as well. For clearly, while women have to be serious to carry and raise children, and the loss of a child is horrific for us, fathers can go from the wake to immediately telling more jokes to rent more time inside of those precious vaginas.

Let's get real, people.

The study shows that men and women use much of the same brain functions in appreciating humor, but that women do activate more of the language and working memory parts of the brain than men do. That's a far cry from saying that women aren't funny! Studies like this are interesting for those of us who are truly curious about the difference between men and woman. I mean, with all the communication glitches and the whole "war of the sexes" concept, there's got to be more to it than where we keep our genitals, right?

But isn't it time that everyone got it through their heads that different doesn't mean bad? It says something (granted it maybe says more about him than the state of humanity at large) that this guy read a study that said we're mostly alike but have some differences, and turned it into that silliness?

Oh, and the obvious I mentioned before? Men don't list funny as an attribute for their new love interests while women do....Could it possibly, rather than that women aren't funny, that women value that more than men do? If I were to describe a rose and focus on its scent and its texture, would that mean that I had discovered a colorless rose? (Look at my sweet smelling, invisible flower!) It's a bit more likely that I was focused on scent and texture and didn't care so much if the rose were red, pink, or white. Maybe men value other things more highly, but that doesn't reflect upon our humor.

In my reality, women are often funny and so are men. And other women are often not funny, but then, neither are a lot of men. Damn. We're back to taking things on an individual basis. How are going to play a good game of Us vs Them if we keep getting back to treating people like individual human beings and not mass groups we can paint with the same brush?