Last winter, boozy British curmudgeon Christopher Hitchens wrote a humorous if not entirely accurate piece for Vanity Fair titled "Why Women Aren't Funny," the thrust of which is that men have a biological imperative to be funny in order to convince women to sleep with them, whereas women don't have to be funny because men want to sleep with them regardless of whether they're funny or not. (Okay, though he sort of lost us at the whole "a lady's sense of humor goes out with her uterus" thing at the end.) In the latest edition of VF, Carter has handed the reins over to error-prone New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley to defend her gender's good honor. The results are mixed.

Stanley's dry—and, let's be honest, long-winded, kinda boring, joke-free—essay, which makes the rather logical point that there are more funny ladies on prime-time and cable television than ever before because there are more career opportunities for attractive, funny females, is accompanied by a photo spread of 12 purportedly "funny ladies." It is unfortunate, however, that the ladies VF chose do not all buttress her argument. One is simply and inarguably unfunny (Chelsea Handler, who, the mag omitted, also happens to date the CEO of the network her show appears on). One isn't even the funniest person on her show (The Office's Jenna Fischer, who pales in comparison to writer/actress Mindy Kaling). A third long ago crossed into "irritating" territory (Sarah Silverman, "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" aside). Another hasn't actually been relevant in years (Sandra Bernhard).

We will admit to loving Tina Fey, Sussie Essman, Amy Poehler, Wanda Sykes, and Amy Sedaris, though Saturday Night Live isn't regularly watchable enough for us to pass judgment on Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig. We're similarly on board with Leslie Mann, but are rather perplexed by the claim that she insisted husband Judd Apatow give "equal attention to [Knocked Up's] female characters," thereby resulting in some of the "most three-dimensional characters to be found in comedy film in recent memory." (VF's version of Knocked Up must have differed from the one we saw.)

Hitchens, for his part, was given room for a Web-only rebuttal of Stanley's piece, in which he refers to the Times writer as the "molten, tawny Alessandra." Whether you think that's funny probably depends on whether you're a boy or a girl.