Once again, a look at some of the comments that people try to leave here, but which for assorted reasons don’t get past the rigorous We Hunted the Mammoth screening process.
I kid; the process is not rigorous at all. You just need to pass a minimal standard of basic human decency. Here’s an assortment of comments from people who, well, fell short. In each instance, I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to guess why.
I’ll take “Protocols of the Elders of [BLANK]” for $400, Alex!
This fellow, like a lot of manospherians, seems really, really obsessed with cuckolding.
This fellow tried to post a number of comments on the same theme. This is is most succinct:
I’ll take “I don’t condone violence but you feminists totally deserve it for making jokes” for $200, Alex.
tl;dr: This guy, not really a big fan of women. (Spot the “we hunted the mammoth” for bonus points.)
You thought that last one was the worst it gets? Unfortunately not. Whoever sent this one — from a dubious IP address — is either a giant douchebag of a troll, or the next Elliot Rodger. (Please be the former.)
I’m going to just stop now. This post turned out a bit darker than I expected.
This goes so far back I’m not sure it matters anymore, but I don’t particularly consider a joke about asking me out *right after I made a joke about people asking me out* to be an inappropriate “boner update”. Honestly, I smiled at the comment that got criticized. No sexual interest was conveyed by the tone at all. I wasn’t thinking about strangers’ boners until commenter-to-the-rescue introduced the idea.
Unless people clearly insult me, I’d rather not see them upbraided on my behalf. I know y’all have words you prefer not to see and stuff, but good lord, let’s not always assume the worst about friendly interaction. The irony is that such strict policing of language can turn a “safe space” into its own type of hostile environment.
I mean, if we REALLY want to play language police, accusing somebody who made a nonsexual joke of giving a “boner update” could almost be sexually harassing language. It’s not that different from a manosphere guy accusing me of using “breast power” or whatever they officially call it after I tell an innocent story about a man doing me a favor.
Let’s save the snark for those who deserve it, yeah? That’s the danger of making anything a buzzword. Every time you use it, you tend to think less critically about its actual implications.
On bad words – often their use is a judgement call (e.g. One person might find a rape joke funny, another would be offended) so what I don’t entirely get is why some are deemed off-limits as it kind of implies there is a right or wrong way to react to something contentious, making a subjective response seem objective. I think I’m perhaps just not very reactive which probably affects how I see it but if someone says something that bugs or upsets me, I guess I’d assume the other person just had a different judgement on the situation and whilst obviously I think my view is right, I tend to think that it’s not for me to assume my response is universally morally correct and that the other person shouldn’t have said something contrary (though I may personally feel contempt for their perspective). So I don’t really understand why people say things like “xxx offends me” as it comes across (to me) that using “offends” rather than “angers /annoys” is kind of suggesting that the offender is wrong on some moral basis and projects a universal moral failing on them rather than just a different subjective response..and is kind of a silencing technique (“you are morally wrong so stop” instead of “you’re upsetting me so I would like you to stop and I’ll think you’re a dick if you don’t”).
Forgive me if this seems antagonistic (not my intention) – I genuinely can’t tell if I’m just insensitive so don’t understand what being offended really means so am being a dick..and this forum has people I know have words they dislike being used but I also have learnt loads from during my lurking years..so kinda hoping you could give me some wise perspective, if poss. Basically what is the intention of making some words offensive/bad? Is it to avoid upsetting people and if so, how do you decide what warrants being offensive and no-go, versus being a difference in judgement and whilst annoying or upsetting to some, still just a subjective thing?
Ah should have checked dates before posting on old (ish) thread. Damned drunken enthusiasm.
I’m going to have to stop you right there. Rape jokes are not bad because some people don’t think they are funny. They are bad because some people find them funny.
Rape jokes normalize rape. Somewhere around 10% of men are rapists (numbers for women are unknown). If you have more than 10 men in a room together, there is probably a rapist in the group. If the group starts telling rape jokes, and all the guys start laughing and participating, that tells the rapist in the room that he’s normal. That tells him that the guys in the group are on his team, and he’d be right. They are on his team. They aren’t rapists, but they are on Team Rapist and signaling as such through their joking.
Rape isn’t funny, and making a joke out of it is harmful. It’s harmful because it makes rape seem normal. It tells the rapists in the group that what they’ve done (and do) is A-OK.
It tells the people in the group who are most likely to be raped – the women – that they are not welcome. People who have been raped have undergone a traumatic, painful, and degrading experience, not a hilarious joke. The fear that many women experience every day as a result of the threat of rape is not a hilarious joke. Treating it like it is is alienating.
So rape jokes make rapists feel comfortable, and people who have been raped feel unwelcome. When an action causes criminals to be comforted and their victims to be discomforted, you have a moral problem with that action.
Not all rape jokes are the same. If the rapist is the butt of the joke, they can be darkly funny although not everyone is comfortable with them. The sketch about a Bill Cosby trial on the latest episode of Inside Amy Schumer was hilarious. But it was making fun of rape culture and how absurd it is.
Jokes that make fun of the victims or suggest that rape itself is funny, are never okay in my opinion. This includes prison rape jokes, which many people seem to deem acceptable for some reason.
Yeah that’s part of my worry, that in finding them funny it perpetuates a problem and I’m part of the problem. The other side of me thinks finding bad shit funny is fairly common and personally I think diminishing or making light can make something terrible less scary (for me, anyway) almost kind of reducing its power. That’s just personal though, as I dislike knowing there is a terrible crime that makes me a target because of my gender, and making it just another bad thing rather than special in some way is one way I feel less afraid and vulnerable. That’s just a theory and actually I just think some rape jokes do just amuse me because I have a crap sense of humour and in the context I assume they’re taken by the audience as a joke about a bad thing rather than that anyone watching would take it as “women being raped is funny and so raping isn’t that bad”, which I agree I should take into account.
@Drunklurker making rape seem like no big deal isn’t very reassuring to most women when the threat of sexual assault is common. If anything rape isn’t being taken seriously enough when rapists are RARELY ever convicted.
It does perpetuate a problem. Whether you are part of that problem depends on how you act when you realize you’ve just laughed at a rape joke.
There’s a difference between how something is intended and how it actually affects the world. There are also differences between how you react to something, and how, for instance, a rapist is going to react to that same thing.
You may think you’re just laughing at a funny joke, and maybe you are. The rapist is getting affirming messages by both the joke and the fact that you laughed at it. Some random bystander is getting the message that rape is actually no big deal. We’re laughing about it, aren’t we?
Laughter diminishes things, which I think you realize:
Laughing at something that is huge and scary is a good way to make it seem less huge and less scary. And gallows humor is legit.
However, there is a different dynamic at work in your typical rape joke. The typical rape joke isn’t laughing at the big scary rapist, it’s laughing at the victim. Rape victims don’t need to be diminished.
WWTH pointed out that there is more than one kind of rape joke, and that’s 100% true. There is a new(ish) type of humor that makes rapists the butt of the joke instead of the victim. I don’t know that I would call those “rape jokes” because they’re not what usually comes to mind when someone refers to rape jokes. Not sure what else to call them. Those are … something that makes me feel conflicted? But there is no moral problem with them. Making rapists feel uncomfortable and abnormal is perfectly fine.
Drunklurker–
Descriptive name. I love it.
I don’t want to wade into the ideological debate over “dark” or “inappropriate” humor. I know from experience that shit can go on for paaaagees with nobody changing their mind from what they want to believe.
Um, trigger warning?
I just want to share a personal thought that, I don’t know, you might find interesting, regarding jokes about suicide. I’ve never attempted suicide but I’ve written several notes, I’ve googled methods, and I’ve gotten stuck in obsessive cycles of visualizing it several times a minute for days. My reasons were basically that I’ve never had close friends, and for most of my life I’ve been seriously ill. “It gets better” type promises were never any good because I didn’t believe it. Still don’t, exactly.
Weirdly, jokes were the ONLY thing that ever made me feel better. Moe Syzlak and Squidward Tentacles told me that a) other “people” had felt like I did, and b) it wasn’t actually the end of the world. Even jokes that weren’t attached to a character played into my coping mechanism of ironic detachment. The only time I minded them was if they implied a real person ought to kill him or herself, because that’s obviously out of line and shows a disregard for actual life.
I do NOT believe that anyone is required to find the humor in bad things that happen, or that there always is any. But it can work in some situations. So you have to respect other people’s opinions but you shouldn’t think your personal one is messed up or wrong.
Disclaimer: I know suicide and rape are not the same thing. If anybody was presuming to lecture me about why they’re different situations, you don’t need to.
Punching up = Good
Punching down = Bad
Laughing at misogynists is probably the thing misogynists fear most.
Weak, aren’t they?
Generally the rule of thumb is that if the joke normalizes and encourages existing oppressive and harmful social norms (see: rape jokes, racist jokes, etc) then they are not okay. It’s not a matter of being “offensive”, it’s a matter of actual harm being perpetuated by those sentiments.
If the joke mocks existing oppressive and harmful social norms, then generally it’s all good. It’s a coping mechanism, something helpful, not harmful. Kind of like this blog; it shines a light on some really fucked up, terrible shit, and proceeds to make fun of a lot of it, because sometimes all you can do is laugh about how utterly awful and pitiful these bozos are.
Yeah totally agree that diminishing it doesn’t comfort most victims. I’ve been raped and think my logic is I don’t want to see myself as having suffered a terrible thing that is imbued with such special horror that I might be specially and horribly changed. More like “bad thing happened but he’s not allowed to impact my life so it’s just something that happened, no biggie..”. Definitely not saying that’s how others should deal with it!
Sorry – being painful (drunk) – the point around intent vs how it actually affects people- yes v true but I think I see it that I can control my intent, but not how others react, so you can try to accommodate the full range of possible reactions to something to avoid anyone being negatively affected, or you can just accept that people’s reactions are their responsibility. Hmm sounds selfish now I’ve written it. Hope it’s just drunk me that’s an asshole. Sober me is hopefully nicer and less “waaah I don’t want to miss out on LOLs”
@catalpa – yeah that makes sense. So how would I know if a joke is normalising or mocking though? Like say white frat boy stand-up comedian jokes about rape victims deserving it – I’d assume no one could mean it other than in a mocking way but that’s probably my life experience as I don’t meet people in real life that would say it as anything other than ridiculous so I’d laugh. But a rapey frat boy in the audience might be all “yeah damned right”.
This isn’t about people having negative reactions. It’s about societal structures. Rape jokes reinforce societal structures that make rape easy to commit. If it were just about what goes on in the privacy of (let’s say) my mind, there would be no problem. My reaction to anything in the world is definitely my own responsibility. I don’t object to rape jokes because they personally offend me. I object to them because of the effects they have on the social structures in which I live. That happens to also be the basis upon which they offend me, but if that weren’t the case and my being offended was the only problem, there would be no problem.
That is 100% legit, and you are allowed to deal with this in whatever way works best for you. I hope you’re doing well, and if you aren’t, I hope you have access to help.
Well, you gave an example of you thinking a rape joke is just a joke, but a rapey frat boy in the audience thinks it’s life affirmation. So I think you have an idea already.
@PoM. Appreciate your patience! Yes, agreed. I’ve got to think wider picture.
And I’m totally fine – but thank you.
Here’s the Bill Cosby sketch if anyone is inclined to watch it. I found it really funny.
https://youtu.be/1sq4gVZ4cBc
@Drunklurker
No problem. Never actually got around to talking about ableism, did I? And I’m about to hit the hay. Sorry about that. Hit me up some other time and I’ll go into why calling misogynists crazy is harmful.
@PoM
I’ve got it.
@Drunklurker
We do not call people “crazy”, “insane”, “mad”, whatever as an insult. That shit don’t fly. People’s mental illnesses are not an insult and many of our fine commentators have mental problems themselves, from autism to depression to borderline personality. We also don’t do computer chair diagnosis – that is, we don’t speculate on whether or not someone has a mental illness, especially if they are in an article and happen to kill someone, shoot something up, crash a plane on purpose, etc. That demonizes mental illnesses and makes it seems like this shit can only be perpetrated by people who aren’t “normal”, which is not true.
This place is a safe place for people with mental illnesses and handicaps. You are free to speak about your experiences here if you happen to have any yourself, although I suggest you do that in the personal threads; David posts a new one every so often and I’ve never seen a troll in one, so you will be free from any persecution or judgement of your mental state.
Please note that we also do not deal with gendered slurs, which includes pussy and technically dick, although we’re more lenient on male gendered slurs. This is because society favors men, particularly those who have dicks.
At the very least, none of the men on the forums mind if we call someone a dick, I don’t think. I’ve never had anyone complain about when I call someone a dick when they deserve it.
We also do not use slurs against transgendered people or do we use slurs against people’s sexual orientation because we have a veritable rainbow of sexualities and genders here. This is a safe place for everyone of every gender and orientation. Your experiences may be talked about here freely, just the same as your mental state.
Swearing and insults that have not been talked about above are okay. Shit, fuck, asshole, hell – we are not shy in our usage of the colorful language. You are free to insult any MRA or troll here as much as you want for this site is about mocking those impacted turds of a hemorrhoid.
You do not need to stay on topic in the forums as often trolls derail.
You may post cute pictures, .gifs, videos, Tumblr posts, whatever. Comment system on this blog uses common HTML formatting. You can bold, italicize and
strikethrough. You can evenand
. You can hyperlink as well. If you do not know these codes, a simple search for HTML codes will tell you them. Or anyone one of us will explain them to you. We do it very often.
Any formatting that goes awry is blamed on the blockquote mammoth because sometimes you don’t close a bracket or it just happens. It’s just a mistake, so it’s alright. Pobody’s nerfect.
We also have a feminist friend named Katie. She is a meme around here. Anytime an MRA or troll mentions all feminists, we acknowledge our feminist overlord Katie, keeper of the hive mind which all feminists everywhere share and you are now apart of.
One of us, one of us, gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble.
Otherwise, be kind to your fellow commenters and try not to be an ass to anyone other than trolls or MRAs. Your complimentary SCENTED MOTHERFUCKING CANDLE is to the right.
And welcome aboard. *salutes*
Also insults about weight and race. We don’t do that shit either.
Also, religion: Extremist fundamentalist Christians, atheists, Muslims etc can be bad – whoo understatements! – but regular Christians, atheists, Muslims etc are not (just to add in my own editorial, I find that every faith and non-faith has something to teach us). Again, we have a bit of everything here. ^^
Of course, even if everyone one of us was white and straight with no mental problems and shit, we still wouldn’t allow ableism, racism, transphobia, etc. because only assholes do that shit, alright?
Everyone from every background who aren’t assholes are welcome here with open arms. Well, i guess even the assholes are allowed here too (like me) but only if you’re only being an asshole to the right people, like racist, misogynistic trolls.
Drunklurker:
You’ve kind of answered your own question here. Rapey frat boy in the audience also sees you laughing and thinks to himself NOT “that guy is mocking people like me” but “that guy is a kindred spirit!” Victims of assault in the audience are shamed and horrified that so many people apparently think it’s OK to poke fun at people like them. Some past and/or future rape victims have just gained another reason to never tell anyone about their rape: nobody will take them seriously. And so on.
Drunklurker:
Firstly, let me echo Pandapool’s welcome aboard speech.
Secondly, as a white straight man myself (I am playing on the easiest of easy modes that there is; I have only a few things off from having the perfect scratchcard of privilege) your question about how to know whether a joke is appropriate or inappropriate struck a chord because that’s something I’ve had to learn. Here’s my answer. It may not be the same answer that everyone else has.
If a casual bystander who’s not reallt paying attention could mistake it for a serious statement, it’s a normalising joke.
For example, suppose I go up to a podium and say “I think votes for women was a bad idea” sarcastically. There are people who look just like me who could say that line absolutely seriously. As a result, a casual bystander would not be able to tell whether I was being serious or not. This has two bad effects.
Firstly, women in the audience may feel that the numbers against them are higher than they in fact are. This may make it harder for them to speak out and may even lead to some of them abandoning the cause as apparently hopeless. This is bad.
Secondly, anti-vote men in the audience may see me say it and think, “Right on, brother! My beliefs must be more widespread than I thought they were.” As a result these people now become emboldened to organise or even to act directly in ways they would not do otherwise. This is also bad.
On the other hand, suppose the great Rebecca Watson were to go up to the podium and say the same thing in her deadpan sarcasm voice. To a casual viewer she would not be easily mistakable for the sort of person who believes in depriving women of the vote; therefore rather than thinking “great, the ranks of my enemies are one larger” or “right on, brother!” they’ll actually have to listen to what she has to say. This is good.
This is why Sarah Silverman is able to make rape jokes and Chris Rock is able to make racism jokes, and both are very funny; but as soon as Sarah Silverman starts making race jokes or Chris Rock starts making rape jokes it becomes horribly uncomfortable. Likewise, Jo Brand could deliver a sarcastic speech about why fat people are bad, but if Katherine Ryan did it then people might get uncomfortable.
Teal dear: If someone is more likely to mistake you for the perpetrator than the victim, it’s normalising.