Feminism

[Problem Machine]

Well, I've had some valuable interactions with you so that trumps my pet-peave. Where I come from, people rephrase jokes and repeat them to each other over and over again and enjoy the playfulness of the banter and mutual appreciation of the understanding of the joke so being demeaned by it is strange to me. To me, it's as if someone makes a joke and then gives the audience a grimmacing face of disapproval because they laughed at it while not being cool enough.

It's more like telling a joke and it bombing and then the next comedian tells the same joke with a wacky face and fart noises and it brings the house down. THEN comes the grimacing face of disapproval!

 

My habit is to either try to build on a joke or to acknowledge it. Just repeating it feels thoughtless to me. But, as Jennegatron points out, those tendencies are equally inappropriate when interacting with a distant stranger, so I mostly try to play it safe and stick to more straightforward discourse with people I don't know well -- or, more accurately, with people who don't know me well.

[Bjorn]

I'm more on board with Ninety-Three on this.  The line between "Kill all men" and the persecution and murder of black men in our society is at best tenuous to me.  I'm not going to say that there's nothing there, because I'm all to familiar with having discovered previously unknown blind spots in my own thinking before, but I struggle to follow the logic train that connects them. 

 

To some extent to me, it feels like the over-extension of trigger warnings.  TWs have a useful and valuable role to play, but they can also be extended to the point of ridiculousness.  I think the same kind of overextension can be applied to humor.  Being able to laugh is fucking valuable.  And sure, jokes can be worn out, in poor taste or pushed to hard, but we have to be able to find ways to laugh, and the ironic misandry has been a way for some people to do that. 

[Mawd]

Well I know I don't like it when my allegedly clever joke is stolen and reworked into a monstrosity; maybe the punchline is reworked so it's actually about someone's balls or it gets closer to some reddit/channer meme. Then it gets more exposure because of course every meme is funny no matter how many times you say it. 

Women have trouble as it is being heard so taking a joke and getting more attention for it without signal boosting is kinda rude. Moreso when the reworked joke is less effort intensive.

I dunno that's just how I feel anyway as someone that used to make small jokes between people/friends before having those 'friends' retell the joke word for word or just dumber to a larger audience (more inclined to listen to them) and getting the prestige for it.

I try harder to point out who did the real funny rather than solely take the kudos for the joke.

[Twig]

I understand that what I'm about to address has a lot more nuance to it than what I'm actually saying here, so please understand that I understand that! But here goes anyway:

I have a lot of trouble reconciling with myself that I need to treat women differently than I would treat men. I want to treat everyone the same way: as a fellow human being. It's sometimes really extremely aggravating dealing with this kind of double standard - that I need to walk on eggshells when it comes to very specific things, like this current topic of joking with a man you don't know versus joking with a lady you don't know and the implications of one versus the other - when I recognize, I KNOW, believe me I know, that there's a reason. Especially when the fight is ostensibly for equality, and I DO want to treat people equally, it just frustrates me.

This also goes for other marginalized groups, although I in general find that I have significantly less trouble mentally handling this issue with, for example, people of color. In no small part because it's just easier, because... Well I guess I don't really know why I find it easier.

So yeah I will just remind everyone now of the first paragraph on this post!!

[jennegatron]

I understand that what I'm about to address has a lot more nuance to it than what I'm actually saying here, so please understand that I understand that! But here goes anyway:

I have a lot of trouble reconciling with myself that I need to treat women differently than I would treat men. I want to treat everyone the same way: as a fellow human being. It's sometimes really extremely aggravating dealing with this kind of double standard - that I need to walk on eggshells when it comes to very specific things, like this current topic of joking with a man you don't know versus joking with a lady you don't know and the implications of one versus the other - when I recognize, I KNOW, believe me I know, that there's a reason. Especially when the fight is ostensibly for equality, and I DO want to treat people equally, it just frustrates me.

This also goes for other marginalized groups, although I in general find that I have significantly less trouble mentally handling this issue with, for example, people of color.

So yeah I will just remind everyone now of the first paragraph on this post!!

 

I totally get you Twig. I think that if you're thinking about Women as real human people, you're doing like 99% of the work, and this is not something you have to worry about as much. You'll still need to think how things will come across to women and how that may be different, but you might not make tasteless/boring/unoriginal jokes to dudes either, so there's less of a double standard there.

 

It's natural to feel frustrated. It's valid and healthy. It's just you're fighting against generations of dudes who weren't treating ladies as people (as you know) it sucks that we have to try and work to undo that damage.

[Problem Machine]

I think also part of what jennegatron was talking about earlier isn't even a gender issue too. Like, it's a very common thing now to end up following someone's work online, hearing their opinions in their voice, learning their body language, seeing them chum around with friends, and feel a sense of familiarity like with a friend when they're still essentially a stranger in terms of actual social interaction. So even aside from feminism stuff, it's important to remember that when you're talking to someone on twitter or whatever who doesn't really know you to try to be respectful of boundaries in the same way you would on meeting a complete stranger for the first time, no matter how well you feel you know them.

[SuperBiasedMan]

One thing that may or may not help you Twig.

You are already treating women differently whether you think about it or not. It's just good to actually consider how you're treating them like you're saying. (which IS an increased mental load, I know) I don't personally see it as not a walking on eggshells thing so much as an actually looking where I'm going thing.

[Apple Cider]

You know what? I used to do the "kill all men" joke a bit back in my more angry feminist days and I had several people of color tell me how it made them feel uncomfortable specifically because of the history of white supremacy and violence even among white women (as passive audiences or outright antagonists) and I decided that it wasn't that compelling of a joke and stopped. I don't know why we can't stop using jokes if they hurt people or have larger issues that rely on our understanding of nuance in discourse.

[JonCole]

On the "kill all men" topic, I think that we're (white people, to be clear, and not saying that you're all white people but I'm hoping to capture myself and other white people to whom this applies) doing a disservice to PoC in not giving them the benefit of the doubt in that the phrase could be offensive. I don't think anybody owes me a full explanation of why that might be offensive to them, because "kill all [something]" is broad enough that I can intellectually accept that someone might take that with a degree of seriousness that might cause offense. If all of the men in your life are black men and someone says "kill all men", then context could easily suggest that it's being translated internally to "kill all [black] men" without (edit: god that's a bad typo) much mental gymnastics.

[Apple Cider]

To me it basically just elides the ignorant airiness that White Feminism adopts sometimes. And therefore I have no problem dropping it. 

[Ninety-Three]

because "kill all [something]" is broad enough that I can intellectually accept that someone might take that with a degree of seriousness that might cause offense.

 

The joke is designed to be taken with a degree of seriousness that might cause offense to white men. No one seems to see that as a problem. It's internally inconsistent to disregard their offense, but immediately give nonwhite people the benefit of the doubt and stop the joke. If offense was a reason to stop the joke, it would never have been started in the first place.

[JonCole]

My inference from how you posed your response is that offense taken by white men is equal or comparable to offense taken by women PoC. Considering one of those two is a highly privileged class and the other is one of the least privileged classes, I definitely see offense taken by white men as an excruciatingly lesser problem than the other.

[Mangela Lansbury]

The joke is designed to be taken with a degree of seriousness that might cause offense to white men. No one seems to see that as a problem. It's internally inconsistent to disregard their offense, but immediately give nonwhite people the benefit of the doubt and stop the joke. If offense was a reason to stop the joke, it would never have been started in the first place.

It's not internally inconsistent. The joke mocks the in power who feel threatened by a nothing thing. But when you start to get feedback from people without power that hey, whoa, that's not cool, you can examine the situation, realize you're doing unintended collateral damage, and stop.

This is how I see it, anyway. I haven't read the article that prompted this, so someone who has might be able to say that better and in a different way.

[Argobot]

Whether or not you agree that "kill all men" has simmering race issues, I hope we can all agree that it is a pretty toothless form of protest. (Again, fully owning up to the fact that I overused the word misandry for a solid year back in 2013.)

[Bjorn]

I guess I've never seen it as any form of protest, just humor?  Not like the most refined or nuanced, but just something said for a laugh, not particularly better or worse than the aggregate of other shit that ends up on coffee mugs and t-shirts that get a chuckle out of people.  Maybe I totally missed the point of all the ironic misandry. 

 

I know that might tread close to the "can't y'all take a joke" type defense which is super gross when it's deployed in favor of rape jokes and whatnot, but it does sometimes feel like it's hard to find any jokes that someone can't take offense at with completely legitimate reasons. I guess I see some middle ground where it's okay to listen and acknowledge how people feel about humor, but also acknowledge that the joke works for a lot of people as well and shouldn't necessarily be done away with. 

[Zeusthecat]

I guess I've never seen it as any form of protest, just humor?  Not like the most refined or nuanced, but just something said for a laugh, not particularly better or worse than the aggregate of other shit that ends up on coffee mugs and t-shirts that get a chuckle out of people.  Maybe I totally missed the point of all the ironic misandry. 

 

I know that might tread close to the "can't y'all take a joke" type defense which is super gross when it's deployed in favor of rape jokes and whatnot, but it does sometimes feel like it's hard to find any jokes that someone can't take offense at with completely legitimate reasons. I guess I see some middle ground where it's okay to listen and acknowledge how people feel about humor, but also acknowledge that the joke works for a lot of people as well and shouldn't necessarily be done away with. 

 

I think that last part is the approach that works for me. For me, I think this is one of those cases where you see someone else's perspective on what you see as a harmless throw away joke and just have to decide whether or not their argument is convincing enough for you to change your behavior. From a very specific point of view, I guess I could see a line of reasoning where "kill all men" could have racist connotations. But it really does seem to take a little bit of reaching to get there and I don't think it's a convincing enough argument that I would expect anyone to expunge that joke from their vocabulary.

 

I also don't buy the notion that it's best for people to just stop saying a thing if it is brought to their attention that someone out there takes offense to it. People can take offense to all kinds of different things for all kinds of different reasons. Sometimes they are logical and sometimes they aren't. I think to some degree there is a balance to reach in the world where people should be compassionate enough to at least consider how their words are taken by others and refine their language where necessary but also where they shouldn't be expected to cater to every reaction out there. It would be a pretty damn boring world if our default position was to stop saying a joke every time someone somewhere said they were offended by it without taking some time to decide whether or not the offense taken has merit.

[Argobot]

I call it protest because it is commonly deployed by feminists, usually in connection with some political point that is being made. People who use it are protesting against the current gender imbalance, but again, aren't doing anything concrete or worthwhile to change that imbalance. Not that ever single action you take needs to create change, but it often feels like people arrive at the "kill all men" stage and progress no further. Actual people in power do not care or even notice when someone declares they want to #killallmen. Instead, the people actually harmed by that phrase are often other women and men who also suffer under our power imbalanced society. What's the actual benefit of "kill all men?"

 

I also agree that we shouldn't drop a joke every time some one says they find it offensive, but the overwhelming way that "kill all men" gets is used is both not funny and accomplishes nothing, so I don't really see the point in defending it. I'm genuinely interested to hear from the men who are defending it right now and what your take on its purpose or benefit might be. That's not a snide statement either; I'm honestly interested to hear why other people are not bothered by it because whenever I see "kill all men," I immediately roll my eyes.

[JonCole]

I just think that we have a responsibility to listen to PoC with less skepticism than any other person. Their voices aren't heard in normal circumstances, so why are we going out of our way to pick apart their sensitivity when it comes to jokes?

[Zeusthecat]

I call it protest because it is commonly deployed by feminists, usually in connection with some political point that is being made. People who use it are protesting against the current gender imbalance, but again, aren't doing anything concrete or worthwhile to change that imbalance. Not that ever single action you take needs to create change, but it often feels like people arrive at the "kill all men" stage and progress no further. Actual people in power do not care or even notice when someone declares they want to #killallmen. Instead, the people actually harmed by that phrase are often other women and men who also suffer under our power imbalanced society. What's the actual benefit of "kill all men?"

 

I also agree that we shouldn't drop a joke every time some one says they find it offensive, but the overwhelming way that "kill all men" gets is used is both not funny and accomplishes nothing, so I don't really see the point in defending it. I'm genuinely interested to hear from the men who are defending it right now and what your take on its purpose or benefit might be. That's not a snide statement either; I'm honestly interested to hear why other people are not bothered by it because whenever I see "kill all men," I immediately roll my eyes.

 

Personally, I don't think it is funny, I don't think it accomplishes anything, and I would probably also roll my eyes if I heard someone say it. But I'm also just not convinced that it is harmful and if it is a thing people want to say because it is cathartic for them or whatever, I don't see a problem with it.

 

 

I just think that we have a responsibility to listen to PoC with less skepticism than any other person. Their voices aren't heard in normal circumstances, so why are we going out of our way to pick apart their sensitivity when it comes to jokes?

 

Totally agreed. I don't mean to pick apart their sensitivity and I'm not even saying this person is wrong for feeling that way. I'm just saying that I don't feel it is a convincing enough argument that I would be offended if people didn't stop saying that particular thing. 

[Bjorn]

I just think that we have a responsibility to listen to PoC with less skepticism than any other person. Their voices aren't heard in normal circumstances, so why are we going out of our way to pick apart their sensitivity when it comes to jokes?

 

I'm just disclosing a personal frame of mind here.  In journalism, there's an old phrase, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."  Skepticism of basically everything and everyone is fairly deeply hardwired into my brain at this point.  I actually try to push against that in my own head, because I think it can make me more cynical than I like to be, but still, pretty much there all the time. 

 

Also, that's...kind of infantalizing to me, I think?  Like, PoC are not a monolith of single opinions, and with something like humor, you're likely to be able to find people with positive, neutral and negative reactions to most types of humor.  Below I link to some Misandrist Lullabies, and these were read out loud at a party awhile back.  The guy who lost his shit laughing the most was a black dude, he fucking loved them.  That's anecdote, but so are all the references in that article.  We're just dealing with anecdotes of people's reactions to humor, and usually anecdotes in the single or double digits.  If I'm listening to all of them with less skepticism than I do anyone else, and I'm hearing a variety of conflicting opinions and reactions, then what am I learning?  How do you decide what the line of acceptable skepticism is?  

 

Hmmm, I probably need to think about that some more before saying anything else. 

 

Also, are any of us here really engaging in a picking apart of the reactions?  I'm not saying that a reaction is somehow illegitimate or shouldn't be considered, just saying that a few people's reactions don't necessarily have to be the final say in what someone thinks is funny.

 

 

I also agree that we shouldn't drop a joke every time some one says they find it offensive, but the overwhelming way that "kill all men" gets is used is both not funny and accomplishes nothing, so I don't really see the point in defending it. I'm genuinely interested to hear from the men who are defending it right now and what your take on its purpose or benefit might be. That's not a snide statement either; I'm honestly interested to hear why other people are not bothered by it because whenever I see "kill all men," I immediately roll my eyes.

 

It sounds like you were pretty thoroughly immersed in this kind of talk for awhile, whereas I've only really encountered it on occasion.  There's still some novelty to some of the ironic misandry because it's not part of my daily, weekly or even monthly encounters.  And The Toast is probably responsible for 95 percent of the misandrist humor I encounter.  Misandrist Lullabies still make me giggle.  Maybe some day they won't, like how Cake/Lie jokes make me groan and roll my eyes now. 

[tberton]

I think the "people should be allowed to joke" line of argument is a bit of a strawman, at least in the context of the original article. The author goes out of her way to recognize the potential cathartic value of the joke. She's questioning its usefulness as a commentary, not as a joke.

[JonCole]

I'm just disclosing a personal frame of mind here.  In journalism, there's an old phrase, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."  Skepticism of basically everything and everyone is fairly deeply hardwired into my brain at this point.  I actually try to push against that in my own head, because I think it can make me more cynical than I like to be, but still, pretty much there all the time. 

 

Also, that's...kind of infantalizing to me, I think?  Like, PoC are not a monolith of single opinions, and with something like humor, you're likely to be able to find people with positive, neutral and negative reactions to most types of humor.  Below I link to some Misandrist Lullabies, and these were read out loud at a party awhile back.  The guy who lost his shit laughing the most was a black dude, he fucking loved them.  That's anecdote, but so are all the references in that article.  We're just dealing with anecdotes of people's reactions to humor, and usually anecdotes in the single or double digits.  If I'm listening to all of them with less skepticism than I do anyone else, and I'm hearing a variety of conflicting opinions and reactions, then what am I learning?  How do you decide what the line of acceptable skepticism is?  

 

Hmmm, I probably need to think about that some more before saying anything else. 

 

Also, are any of us here really engaging in a picking apart of the reactions?  I'm not saying that a reaction is somehow illegitimate or shouldn't be considered, just saying that a few people's reactions don't necessarily have to be the final say in what someone thinks is funny.

 

I feel like some degree of your reaction of my statement is because I use PoC to mean "people" and "person" of color interchangeably. Also, I don't mean to say that people of color are unified on this issue, I just think that it's an easy trap to fall into the idea that certain thoughts are held by only a few people on the internet when those few people are part of a class that is underrepresented in almost every context. Like, there are less spokespeople for race issues because society inherently discourages them from speaking.

 

This is not to say that there should be some set multiplier with which we regard these people's opinions, like if this particular PoC says something then we can presume 100 people hold the same belief. I'm just saying that it's worth considering that white people are privileged to an extent where 1000 white men might say that "kill all men" offends them because they are men but only 10 women PoC might say that "kill all men" offends them because the men in their life are persecuted and are at risk of being killed on a daily basis.

 

I think that saying "this is just a joke, don't take it seriously" to people for whom this is reasonably a real-life concern is picking apart their sensitivity. My read on that is that you're saying that they're being overly sensitive and if they were instead reasonable, they could detect that this is a joke and that they shouldn't worry about it. "This is just a joke" is inherently devaluing any serious reaction to something because we're all joking and you just can't take a joke.

[Argobot]

It sounds like you were pretty thoroughly immersed in this kind of talk for awhile, whereas I've only really encountered it on occasion.  There's still some novelty to some of the ironic misandry because it's not part of my daily, weekly or even monthly encounters.  And The Toast is probably responsible for 95 percent of the misandrist humor I encounter.  Misandrist Lullabies still make me giggle.  Maybe some day they won't, like how Cake/Lie jokes make me groan and roll my eyes now. 

 

My problem with The Toast (and by extension "kill all men") is really well summarized in the second part of this post: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/05/13/maybe-time-for-change/

[Twig]

After airing my grievances last page I felt a little better and then this entire page so far has just renewed my frustration with an entirely new level of intensity. It honestly just makes me want to leave the internet behind. It's probably healthier for me to do so anyway.

I am all for not saying something because some people find it offensive. I regularly trim my daily vocabulary, so it's not a big deal for me to do it again. But the phrase "kill all men" having racist connotations? I just don't buy it at all. I won't say it anymore because I respect that people are bothered by it (and in fact I haven't said it since like the first the times I said it because it stopped being amusing, and was never really outright funny), but I don't buy into this argument. It is literally all-inclusive. Literally literally!

I'll just go be a hermit in the woods.

[Apple Cider]

It's not that it has racist connotations, it's that, given everything contextually, it comes off callous to those things. It's ignorant. In our attempts to really talk about our ire with predominantly white men, we've made a joke that disregards that a lot of non-white men actually are killed on a regular basis. This is a problem a lot with white-lead feminism, much like how there's a ton of backlash against being seen as delicate, which is different from the experiences of say, black women, who are hypervisibly stereotyped as rough and angry. It's not fixating on a monolithic experience as women that dominates feminist discourse and yes, even jokes.