Every Tuesday and Thursday, I come into class and take my seat, which is right in front of a group of boys. I refer to them as boys because that’s how they act. They don’t treat each other, let alone anyone else, with the courtesy that should be intrinsic to all our interactions with others. My tolerance for such behavior, already low, finally reached a snapping point about three weeks ago after they made one too many “woman jokes”. To be fair, I gave them a lot of chances to reform their behavior. The first time a joke was made about women belonging in the kitchen, I just said, “That’s not funny.” No impact. Over the next two weeks I tried different tactics. The infamous “death glare” had no effect; explanations in a genial tone about how I found these jokes offensive also had no impact. But as is always true in these situations, the proverbial “final straw” had to be placed on the camel’s back. (Or in this case, the final sexist joke that pissed off the feminist) I had turned around to make an observation about an assignment when one of the boys cut me off mid-sentence and said, “Please, don’t talk right now, MEN are talking.” Oh. No. He. Didn’t. Being rude is one thing, deliberately silencing a dissenting voice in a flippant manner, particularly MY dissenting voice, is a whole new UNIVERSE.
I gave him a “look” and said in a deadly serious tone, “No. You will NOT talk to me like that. Ever. It’s not funny, it’s not okay, and I have just as much a right to talk in this class as you. I find your jokes sexist and offensive and you will not make them in my presence anymore.” Dead silence… I win. As of writing this post, I haven’t heard one more sexist joke.
But it didn’t stop there. The next week I was walking with two of my guy friends. I was feeling sassy and being sarcastic, goofing around like I always do. It was all normal, until… one of my guy friends turned to the other and said, “Don’t you just want to hit her right now?” The two guys exchanged a laugh and some grins while I just stood there, shocked. What just happened? Did that really just happen? My comeback was eventually “Yeah, cause misogyny’s funny.” But the damage was already done. The pit in my stomach was there to stay for a while.
I have a friend who calls this sort of joking and casual exchange of sexist comments “nonchalant sexism”. The idea being that, it’s sexism in a pretty package that most people don’t A. recognize or B. think is okay and so go along with it. The problem with this sort of joking, or any other sexist assumptions cloaked in humor or casualness is that, it simply reifies sexism. Susan Douglas refers to this as “enlightened sexism”, which is particularly prevalent in the media. In her book of that same title, she argues that enlightened sexism frames the issue of sexism as one where “Because women are now “equal” and the battle is over and won, we are now free to embrace things we see as sexist… It’s silly to be sexist; therefore, it’s funny to be sexist.” (Enlightened Sexism pp. 20-22)
This is dangerous; it’s a resurrection of a new form of sexism that is even more subversive and difficult to pin down. But these jokes aren’t just harmless sexism sometimes. Oftentimes humor is used to mask more insidious things as well. I think this joke, and my experience above, are some of the best examples of this,
“What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?”
“Nothing. You already told her twice.”
This joke, which I hear at least every few weeks, is NOT funny. There is nothing funny about abuse and it is not okay to trivialize this issue into a joke. There are women for whom abuse is a reality and jokes such as this trivialize and make light of their struggle and, even in a sense, condone it by turning into something laughable. Jokes like this cloak the violence, the misogyny behind such statements. If we cloak it in humor or say it in an amused tone, does that make violence against women okay? Absolutely not. Honestly, I can think of few things that make me so angry and so sad all at once.
What’s even worse is that this same tactic is used to cloak other forms of hatred, such as “gay jokes” that make homosexuals, or bisexuals, or transgenders, or any other sexual orientation that differs from the norm, into something laughable and easy targets for ridicule. Again, cloaking homophobia in a joke turns it into something acceptable and easy to ignore, when in reality it is just masking violence and making these systems of oppression that much more difficult to remove.
I have friends who argue that they can make these jokes without reentrenching sexism, racism, whatever it might be. That internally, they aren’t actually sexist, racist, etc. 1. I find this hard to believe, since even saying a racist slur normalizes and entrenches it in your mind as part of your vocabulary and thought pattern and 2. Even if this is true for you, keep it to yourself. You have no idea the impact your words can have on others; how they feel, how they think, how they form thought beliefs.
The bottom line on jokes such as these, or even just casually made sexist, racist, or homophobic comments is that they aren’t okay, and if youre one of those people who can do it without internalizing it (I’m a really big skeptic on this…) keep it your self, PLEASE. In my opinion, even just joking around with friends, these statements normalize hatred. And taking the sideline on this issue isn’t okay. It could be awkward sometimes, uncomfortable or even divisive, but saying something, anything is critical. The more that I stay silent on these issues, the more I shut up when someone makes a sexist joke around me, the more I am participating in a tacit acceptance of oppression. In my mind, it is better to speak up and have that awkward moment of silence when everyone looks at me like I grew horns, than to sit silent and know that I SHOULD have spoken. So here’s to speaking your mind and being that annoying opinionated person. Cheers.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 
I love that you posted about this! I hear so many offensive things all the time that people brush of because they’re just jokes and I don’t get it. But really jokes like this are just the acceptable way of rehashing your own sexist/racist/heterosexist/classist beliefs and trivializing the experiences of others when they “don’t get it.” It makes racism, sexism, and homophobia (I’m using these three because they’re the most common jokes I’ve heard) acceptable and funny, but if you have actually experienced these things you know it’s not funny at all.
Great post, I think you do a really good job of deconstructing the idea that jokes can’t be harmful, and I like that you offer solutions for this problem.
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Thanks for your support! It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one dealing with these sorts of jokes. I don’t know if it’s a college thing, but it seems to me that the go-to method of humor for guys in college who don’t know how to have a normal conversation or even start one, are offensive jokes. What is even more frustrating is the expectation that I and others will find it humorous. Again, maybe it’s just me but it seems to me that this displays a complete ignorance of the implications of words and the history that surrounds a lot of the subjects of joking. Really, every time I hear these jokes or comments, I’m just baffled.
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Spot on, thank you for sharing! Whether explicitly offensive or implicitly enlightened, you are right to say that one must object; one must not let such bigotry remain unchallenged.
Standing up is difficult, awkward and makes one vulnerable but it is a vulnerability that is productive. Those moments of interruption are important for everyone involved; the jokesters, you, those listening and even those not materially present.
An anecdote: “So I know this is going to be a weird email. But, I’ve had the need to tell you this for awhile. I’m pretty sure it was my freshman year of highschool. But on the bus one day you changed who I was as a person and my life from then on. Someone used “gay” as a derogatory term…not too you but in your ear shot. You leapt in and explained why this was wrong and insulting. I remember thinking how brave that was and how I thought it but didn’t have the courage to say something. From that day I knew thought if you could do it I could too. I want to thank you for making me more active in standing up for what I believe in. And thank you for not being afraid to do that yourself.”
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I have a couple of issues with this post and the comments above me. Let me first preface that I agree with the ethical principle of this post. I think on a daily basis sexism, racism, homophobia, etc should be fought and they are sad examples of human interaction that should be avoided. With that said, however, I have qualms with the principles of this post.
For this post in-and-of itself, should not be focused on the linguistic determinism of the jokes itself. I have heard these arguments that sexist, racist, etc jokes are what they make such a light deal about, but I cannot, with good logical conscious, accept this idea. I can agree that these jokes are terrible in terms of their ability to inflict pain and harm on other people. But I would argue that is is not at all because of the jokes or words themselves, but the context under which they are used. Every reason these jokes or terms would be considered offensive is either due to the viewpoint of the user or the people that hear the joke. Thus the qualm all of you have is not with the words or the jokes themselves, but with the context under which they are employed. I agree they should not be used, but to say that using them “normalizes racism” is such large quantum leaps in logic that I cannot seem to justify.
The issue here is racism or sexism, but for the sake of the post lets stick with sexism. The issue is sexism. Sexism is bad and should be fought. But the question we ask ourselves is where does sexism come from and how does it operate? The root of sexist thoughts comes from that very concept, thought. Sexism is rooted in the hierarchies we establish ourselves through our thought process and the way we think about people, not from the way we talk about them. I would say that language is only employed in as much as it relates to someone’s thought process, which means the issue here is not with the jokes or terms in a vacuum but how they represent an idea and the ideas of the users. They are not sexist because of what they say but they are sexist in the way they think. And I would say that it is impossible to make this issue reverse causal. Pepsi challenge: no one can show me how language, in a vacuum, can be something employed while the representations of that language are external to the person’s thought process and that external nature has its own ability to shape that person’s mind in a way that he/she had not originally existed. The point is using language does not ensure that the person using them is sexist or that they will become more sexist post-using that joke.
This allows me to look at the comments like, “using this rhetoric normalizes racism and makes it okay” and laugh at how audacious it is. It’s just as ignorant as the person you all attack in your posts. The only reason it doesn’t seem that way is because its a common agreement among people on this post that sexism is bad, so any thing that seems sexist, is sexist. But if someone stands in a room and says out loud, by themselves, the black eye joke listed in this post, that does not make beating women okay, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that person likes beating women, or wouldn’t be extremely upset if that beating happened. There is no connection here. I know people that have made these jokes as something meaningless and vacuous in and of themselves but at the sight of a women being beaten, they would be the very first to jump to her defense.
Ultimately my point is not that sexism is acceptable. My point is that I think people that call themselves “activists” and get extremely offended by these jokes can be offended but they are too quick to make assumptions about the nature of language and knowledge production. Racism is still bad, but me standing in my room saying the “N” word does not make me more racist, because the only reason that word is bad is the etymological and contextual violence attached to it, not because the verbal vibrations of that word leaves my mouth and hurts a person of another race. Just like using these jokes do not necessarily make a person racist, sexist, etc, but the way they think is what makes them racist, sexist, etc. Which is why the universal focus on language and how it’s employed misses the mark in terms of the understanding of the nature of the beast and how it’s employed. It creates enemies that were not there originally, and it misses subliminal sexism that could be otherwise fought. I don’t understand why me using that word in my room, means that I would not be terrified and amazingly angry and upset, if I saw someone employ blatant and violent racism against someone of another race. There is no connection between these two events because they are examples of different ways I would think about a situation. Language does not control my thought, and I have no reason to see as to why that’s true.
Now I have separate qualms with the comments above that are also symptoms of an issue that I’ve seen is very popular on this blog. The offensive nature in which people describe sexism. To assume someone is a “bigot” or to immediately become flabbergasted at the language people employ definitely builds up those offensive barriers that impede personal language and true dialogue. It makes enemies of those that weren’t before, and definitely replicates the binaries feminism should hope to fight. These terms are based upon the faulty and ultimately weak assumption that the person making that joke is a bigot. You have no idea what you’re talking about and saying that only spews the ignorance you hope to fight. It is a deduction where you stereotype and make blanket assumptions about the entirety of a person’s character based upon something you gathered by eavesdropping. Regardless of how “likely it may be that they may be racist, because they used the joke” it is not ensured and thus making that assumption risks making an enemy of someone who wasn’t before hand. I agree that these jokes should be fought publicly if they offend you because offending people is bad and should be fought. But these jokes are only as offensive as the people around them take it as. You are not affected if they use it alone in their room, but its the context and the environment through which these jokes are employed that matter, not the words. If this person has that weak of judgement to think it’s okay to employ that language then yes, tell them not to, but I would disagree that this automatically makes them a terrible person, nor does it make them more likely to beat a woman, or be okay with that. There is no connection, it makes no sense.
I hate having these lengthy debates online because I don’t think they accomplish much, but I thought I’d posit my two cents because I usually only see people agreeing with each other on these posts and that never benefits anyone.
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So first off, check this out: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#moreimportantly Because that’s essentially what you’re saying. That we’re whining about something that to you is unimportant and because it’s unimportant to you, it should be unimportant to everyone else.
Second, addressing this point: “The point is using language does not ensure that the person using them is sexist or that they will become more sexist post-using that joke.”
Actually, it does. Why would you say a joke that’s sexist unless you believed the main message of the joke? Why would you say something you don’t believe? Language is a social structure around which our society is built, and the meanings of words go further than you think. For example the connotations of the words white and black in the English language. White is pure, well intentioned, like white lie (a lie is always bad, unless it’s white), white wash (to improve something by painting it white), white flag (peaceful surrender). And then you have black, construed in our language as dark and shameful, black list, blackhearted, blackmail, black sheep, black market, pot calling the kettle black, and so on. This is the same in terms of the words light and dark — light is always good, dark is always bad.
Clearly language means a lot, and racist patterns within language are magnified when applied to society in general — white is good, in our society, white people are more valued, have more access to resources and goods and services, and black is not. Historically, but also presently.
When we speak, and we use phrases like these, or say “harmless” sexist jokes about beating women up, we are participating in this linguistic system of privilege, whether intentionally or unintentionally. When I say “oh, it’s just a little white lie” I’m reinforcing, through these words, that a little white lie is okay because it is white. And when I say someone is black mailing me, it is not the word mail that is bad in that context, but the word black which modifies it, reinforcing the societally imposed idea that black is bad.
So when you make a joke about domestic violence or rape, you’re trivializing these issues. You’re saying these things and saying because, to you, language doesn’t matter, these jokes are harmless. It’s harmless to say that you raped a test because you did well. But actually that recodes the word rape as a good thing, a way of beating down something that obstructed you, that you dominated it. To me? To a sexual assault survivor? You are making light of a painful and horrifying experience and contextualizing it as a good thing. Jokes are good, they’re funny, and that is the context we are intended to see them in. So a joke about a woman with two black eyes is making her experience as a domestic violence survivor into a funny silly joke so you and your friends can sit around and laugh at an experience that is foreign to you. But to someone who has experienced that? You are making light of an institutional problem, the problem of men’s violence against women. And you are perpetuating that problem by devaluing it as a legitimate experience. If you don’t believe me that it is an issue for people to delegitimize domestic violence, look no further than a recent law passed in Topeka, Kansas, that decriminalized it because it was too expensive to prosecute (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/topeka-moves-to-decriminalize-domestic-violence.html?_r=3). I’m not saying that this was done because of one joke, but saying that the one joke contributes to a culture that clearly doesn’t care about women or children who are the subjects of interpersonal violence.
So I don’t really care if you’re just sitting in your room saying that joke of the N word to yourself, because you’re still part of this problem, where things like that are acceptable to say. The N word doesn’t solely mean what it means because of culture, it was created to mean that. This was a word designed to hatefully and violently oppress African Americans. That’s the context of the word, the pure meaning of the word, and the reason that that word is a harmful and bad thing to say.
To my original point, I’m not sure if I care if I make an enemy of someone for calling them out on saying something harmful. Rape jokes are harmful. I am personally harmed when I hear them, and harmed by a society that thinks they’re funny and that rape’s not a problem. 1 in 4 women ON THIS CAMPUS will be raped in their four years here, and that’s a problem, and it’s a problem perpetuated by the fact that rape is not taken seriously. And to joke about it makes it even less serious.
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all participating parties please look to the comment i have on the bottom of this discussion
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“Me standing in my room saying the ‘N’ word does not make me more racist” … Except it probably does. If you can’t wrap your head around the reasons why millions of people in this country and around the world detest that word and its usage, and if you continue to use it anyway, you’re probably racist.Your use of the word – even in the privacy of your own room – still exists in a cultural context. Just because your door is closed doesn’t mean you can shut out hundreds of years of discrimination, disenfranchisement and oppression. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, it still makes a sound.
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also what if you make a racist joke and you “aren’t racist”, but a person who is racist hears it and thinks that means that you agree with their racist views, and then the next time they go out they’ll be more likely to say OR DO something racist? look what you did. you contributed to racism in our society. seriously, if you are that desperate to be the funny guy just make a different goddamn joke.
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You should actually make an argument next post instead of rambling off a bunch of ad hocs and assumptions about me and my character. You have no idea who I am, and you have no idea what you’re talking about. The only thing more ignorant then the character attacks you spewed out were the blanket assumptions you made. You literally just talked about, in a very poor way, etymological roots of a word and why things might be offensive and belittling, but you literally made no connection to those words and how they actually shape thought processes. You also said I was making light of things but had no actual reason why that’s true. Make an argument next time with warrants instead of wasting space. Sorry if I hurt your feelings, because it honestly sounds like you just threw a pitch fit.
P.s. I’m pretty sure women getting raped isn’t because of some sexist joke someone said, and to blame some random prick for a terrible act like rape seems to delegitimize the act itself. Try not to belittle rape on a feminism blog, thanks.
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Before we continue the dialogue on this post, I would like to make some explanations. Any delay in approving comments was rooted in a genuine desire to ensure that everyone was making actual arguments about the issues raised in the post and comments, not personal attacks or name-calling.
I am approving “Mack’s” comments because he raises valid critiques of the hypothetical example forwarded by “anonymous”. The comment on racism is not, I believe, directed at “anonymous” but, again, at the example.
In the response from “anonymous” to “Katie O” I have a few comments. Firstly, I would like both parties from now on to just do a double check before they submit comments and make sure that no belittling of opinions is occurring and that both parties are responding directly to arguments made and not assuming any character traits or flaws of the other party.
I am approving the response from “anonymous” to “Katie O” but with great hesitancy and only because I believe it illustrates a few things that I would like to address. I would like “anonymous” to please remember that this is a space for genuine discourse to occur, and that being overtly hostile or aggressive does not forward this dialogue and opens up the possibility for hostile replies, the end result being a downward spiral of unproductive attacks and hostility. In the substance of the comment itself…
1. The use of terms such as “sorry I hurt your feelings” and “it sounds like you just threw a pitch fit” are examples of gendered belittlement that are used to dismiss any relevancy of her claims to the argument. There is no evidence of hysteria in her comments, no evidence of her feelings being in any way hurt. This is a very sexist rhetorical device that tries to equate her argument as the antithesis of logic and reason when in reality this simply isn’t true. I suspect you were unaware of this but please in the future try to avoid such gendered assumptions as grounds for dismissal of arguments.
2. Both sides are guiltyof assumptions about the other but “anonymous”, lot of the terms that you use are also rather unwarranted. There is also no explanation from your side as to the etymological roots of specific words and also no solid connection as to how these words either do or do not shape thought processes (or if there was an explanation it was similar in depth to the arguments forwarded by Katie O. In terms of “blanket assumptions” being made- I would argue that while yes, there are some assumptions being made, they are also true on your side of the argument as well, examples of such being the gendered arguments I isolated above.
A final note here: I will not be approving any further hostile comments or arguments and the ones that I have approved today I do so with reluctance but with a clear desire to illustrate where my qualms originated and to show the sort of discourse that I have such high hopes for in this blog.
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Anonymous, I wanted to take my time to make a very careful response to a few of your comments, specifically relating to your views on the blog as a whole and the way many writers have discussed language and bigotry. This is especially important to me, because it is a topic that I’ve obviously dealt with a few times in the few posts I’ve made.
I think, firstly, it is unfair to suggest that we call anyone who makes a single racist or sexist comment a bigot. This is a frighteningly obvious straw man, similar to much of what you’ve said about our arguments. Seeing as I specifically made the comment about people being bigots, I’ll reiterate what I already have said about that post: there is a massive difference between some one who does not understand the ramifications of what they are saying and some one who gets into a First Amendment brawl over being called out on the offensive things they say.
You suggest that there is no correlation between the words people use or the things they say and how they actually think or what they believe. I have trouble seeing how there isn’t a connection though. I don’t make jokes about giving my girlfriend two black eyes and call it listening or however the joke goes. You say that words are only as offensive as people take them, but I am inclined to disagree. Your words are one of the few ways that you can express the thoughts you have in your head to those around you. Words are an expression and representation of what you think on the inside. You seem bothered by the idea that some one would make an assumption about the type of person some one is, just because they overheard a racist joke. Yet, I fail to see the issue in this. If I find that sort of humor offensive and derogatory, then I am going to make a judgment about that person. It is not my responsibility to investigate that person’s true beliefs. If you choose to make offensive comments or jokes, then you have to own those ideas. How is it my fault if I hear you using racial slurs and then make a judgment about you based on that? If you don’t want to be called a bigot, then don’t use the language of bigotry.
Imagine some one calls some one else a faggot, without intending any of the homosexual connotations of the word or without even meaning to denigrate homosexuals. However, for a homosexual man or woman who has had that shouted at them, there is no joke in what you’re saying. You’re attempting to use words that exist to inflict pain, and you think it is appropriate to use those words for humor. Maybe for you there is humor, if you’ve never experienced the pain that accompanies the words and jokes in question, but for many others, homophobic, sexist, and racist remarks are a reminder of the sort of traumatizing events that a white, straight male like myself doesn’t have to deal with.
I don’t claim to know who you are, but you seem intent on hiding behind anonymity so that you can throw it back in people’s faces when they try to confront you. No one knows who you are, but you can’t place that blame on us. You’ve left us with no opportunity to know who you are or where you stand in the situation. Instead, you force people to make assumptions and take shots at the intelligence of writers. Simply dismissing another person’s arguments because they aren’t up to “your standards” seems more indicative of a your desire to stir up drama than to have a meaningful discussion on the subject at hand. Perhaps you should put a person behind the arguments you make, so we have a way to relate you to them and place you in them.
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Since I have to reply to commend this instead of clicking a “like” button, here it is.
Applause.
I commend this.
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This is my last post on this blog because I honestly don’t feel like this is the most appropriate place to have a conversation that has turned so personal, but I wanted to say something to at least clear a lot of the smog on what my argument was.
I was in no way defending these jokes. I think that was a huge mischaracterization of my argument. I was not saying these things are good and the public condemnation of them should not be done, it absolutely should be.
The reason I came under the name “anonymous” is exactly because I knew immediately replies would be littered with direct insults at my character because people misunderstand my argument when I first introduce it.
My only argument was that language has no power in and of itself, but all language in its power is merely contextual, thus needs to be treated as such. And the issue of sexism is not rooted in linguistic determinism but rooted in the screwed up people set up hierarchies in their mind, thus the focus of these jokes should not be limited and focused on the words used but on the mindset behind it. All examples of the “n” word were examples of how words have impact only by how they are employed. Yes, I agree these words are bad and should never be used publically, my only argument was that the reason that word is bad is because of the social meaning attached to it, the etymology of that word, and the method through which it can be employed.
My statements about you all making “assumptions” were merely premised off of the fact that I still haven’t seen one person give me a reason why language externally changes the user’s thought. I’m saying that if a person is going to say something racist its because, before that person said anything, they thought racist thoughts, and their language is an example of that type of thinking. However I will also defend that because the relationship between thinking and language does not go both ways that it is POSSIBLE for someone to say something racist and that not to externally change their thinking about people that wasn’t there beforehand, however likely it may be.
I’m really sorry if I offended anyone on this post because that was never my intent. I wasn’t trying to just “stir controversy” because this is something I really believe and I wanted to at least have some sort of disagreement on this blog because I never see any, and no education is ever garnered by everyone agreeing with each other.
Also to comment on my claim that I used “sexist language” because I talked about hurting feelings and a pitch fit. That’s rediculous. I have no idea what gender that person is, nor did that have anything to do with why I said those things. Assuming that when someone talks about hurt feelings or pitching fits they are talking about a woman and using sexist rhetoric, re-establishes the original assumption by of women being attributed to those identities by creating yourself in opposition to an assumption that was never there. You created the idea that women can or have been assumed to be a part of those identities, when no one else thoguht that. That was never introduced by me or never defended by me but your rush to cry sexism led the discussion to that victimizing binary. Never would I think that only women pitch fits or getting their feelings hurt, everyone gets their feelings hurt and pitching a fit it more toward the idea of a child getting upset. I agree that it may not have been an appropriate way to describe my feelings toward that person’s post, but it was IN NO WAY sexist or rooted in sexist language, but merely descriptive of a person’s maturity.
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