Slowly, mainstream pop science is beginning to catch up with evolutionary theory. This time, it’s a Vanity Fair article entitled “Why Women Aren’t Funny.”

Gasp! Something based in scientific study suggesting the genders aren’t equal?! How dare they!

Of course, most of us are blind to the inequalities of the genders because said inequalities are instilled in our brains from Aladdin to Finding Nemo to…anything else you can buy or has commercials.

In other words, why haven’t you ever noticed that women really aren’t that funny? Boldness added by me:

Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: “He’s really quite cute, and he’s kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he’s so funny … “ (If you yourself are a guy, and you know the man in question, you will often have said to yourself, “Funny? He wouldn’t know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce béarnaise.“) However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: “She’s a real honey, has a life of her own … [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] … and, man, does she ever make ‘em laugh.”

We already know that women care about humor way more than men do. A woman named Fran Lebowitz weighs in:

“The cultural values are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty.”

Interesting, if a little 2D, comparison.

Now, is there any evidence to back this up? Yup. Turns out that, since male wit and funniness plays into females selecting their mate (wit = intelligence), women have more advanced reception systems in their brains to figure out what’s funny. Again, bold added:

To annex for a moment the fall-about language of the report as it was summarized in Biotech Week:

The researchers found that men and women share much of the same humor-response system; both use to a similar degree the part of the brain responsible for semantic knowledge and juxtaposition and the part involved in language processing. But they also found that some brain regions were activated more in women. These included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a greater emphasis on language and executive processing in women, and the nucleus accumbens … which is part of the mesolimbic reward center.

This has all the charm and address of the learned Professor Scully’s attempt to define a smile, as cited by Richard Usborne in his treatise on P. G. Wodehouse: “the drawing back and slight lifting of the corners of the mouth, which partially uncover the teeth; the curving of the naso-labial furrows … ” But have no fear—it gets worse:

“Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon,” said the report’s author, Dr. Allan Reiss. “So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it.” The report also found that “women were quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny.”

What possible reason would women have to weeding out the funny from unfunny? It serves no real survival purpose. But it does serve a procreative purpose.

Of course, many women reading this are saying “Hey, jerk! What about Ellen DeGeneres and other funny female comedians?”

Well, I consulted Comedy Central’s top 100 stand-ups of all time. In the top ten, there are nine men and one woman (Rosanne Barr). In the top twenty, there are two females (Rosanne and DeGeneres). Women that funny are the exception to the rule rather than the rule.

To the woman reading this: this doesn’t mean you’re not funny. You very well could be. But feel good about it if you’re not:  men don’t really expect you to be.

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