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Sexism dismissed as 'just a joke': an example
So this was circulating on Facebook:
And the majority of the commenters who found this entertaining were women. At first I thought maybe I did just need to get a sense of humour, but then I realised that I laugh all of the time at loads of things, including myself, so maybe there is something wrong with this.
What I learned from this meme:
1) Women are so different from men that men need guidance on how to ask them simple questions.
2) Hormones control women's minds and are responsible for all of their opinions, emotions and reactions. They can never have legitimate thoughts or responses - it's always, always hormones.
3) The 'Crazy Hormone' is the main kind of hormone. It is responsible for making women hysterical, irrational and overly emotional. If a woman gets upset, it's the hormone's fault. Men are immune from this problem. If they get upset, it's a woman's fault.
4) Women's minds are identical. They're all basically the same person. So if you say 'have some wine' they will all be pleased. Because they all love wine.
5) Women don't have jobs. They stay at home where they do nothing all day, then they want your paycheck.
6) Women's main concerns are their weight and their clothes. Complimenting them on either of these things will make everything better.
7) Interrogating a woman about her dietary choices is perfectly normal, but you'd better phrase it differently because...well you know what women are like, eh?
8) You can use memes to express your prejudices as long as you always claim that they're 'ironic'.
Yes, this IS a very trivial example but the mentality underlying it is not trivial. These mild instances of 'everday sexism' shape our society, feelings about gender and, ultimately, the way we interact with each other. A child growing up in this culture will absorb all of these small indicators of inequality many times a day and this inequality will be passed on to their children. Nothing will change if we dismiss these jokes and comments as 'banter'.
Opinions?
Reading down the "dangerous" column you find that women are selfish, ugly, emotional, fat and lazy.
"Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is." - A. Shakur
"There is nothing here, no oil, no strategic location. We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans."
- Rwanda, 1994
its just pathetic.
I'm the Laird of the land, I'm hot like Pol Pot.'A true white liberal.' - Sword and Shield (on me)
'i am a communism fer a long years.' - twenty percent tip
FKA Mahmoud Ahmerdinnerjacket
SWAG1
In my opinion, it cannot be dismissed as "just pathetic". This kind of sexism, which is made to appear as "just a joke", is actually very serious and it is deeply embedded in our society. There are so many examples of this kind of sexist "humor". Many people will laugh at it, and think this is indeed "just a joke", while ignoring how this is closely linked to oppression, exploitation, objectification, rape culture, etc.
☭ “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” - Karl Marx ☭
considering that Germany's most successful comedian fills a whole arena with 70k people that all just came to hear his "funny" stereotypes of women makes me think that there's a deeply engrained image of women that is that they are hysteric, stupid, simple-minded yet complicated (cause they never say what they mean) etc and the guy is always the smart one that suffers from their outbursts. I don't even nearly understand why anyone would think this is funny. Some time ago, I saw a shirt for girls in a very big mail order, they printed on it stuff like "In math I'm just decoration". wtf c'mon!! We put down girls from a very early stage, valuing them only for beauty instead of brains, putting them down by declaring there are "girl's subjects" and "boy's subjects", calling them *****y when they refuse to agree and have their own mind while such boys are "leaders". Society makes me sick.
Liberal Dudes are guys who will jump up and down to tell you that they’re all about equality and prosperity for everyone, but then tell you about the strip club they were at the night before or about the awesome anal porn site they last jerked off to. Liberal Dudes are ready to welcome us into the boardroom, provided we’re still willing to dance on the conference table at the employee party. Liberal Dudes love “sex-positive” “feminists” because Liberal Dudes support women’s freedom and “rights,” up to and including our “right” to strip and to suck dicks for money. Liberal Dudes love to see women embracing pornorific behavior like pole dancing, pube waxing, porn watching, thong wearing, chick kissing, and boob flashing as a means to “empowerment,” because that’s exactly the kind of power they want us to have: the power to give them boners.
My girlfriend sent me that, she loved it. But then again she has a sense of humor, loves stand up comedy and used to be a mechanic. So I would imagine most of the words that come out of her mouth would be deemed as something extremely reactionary to most here.
Comedy can not be judged by normal standards because they rely on absurdities and comical overplaying of situations and ideas in order to satirise things, otherwise they wouldn't be jokes, they would be meaningful observations.
The reason she sent me that was because a week or so before hand she had exploded at me for saying I didn't like the new dress she bought, it was multicoloured from the waist down and looked like pirate attire.
She was on her period at the time and later on I brought her one of those I <3 Merlot bottles from the coop and some galaxy chocolate that she liked and snuggled with her and she laughed about it and called me a pleb.
So while someone might choose to get outraged and offended at it, to us it was hillarious because of what had played out a week before.
Now if there is any truth to the joke, even if it is blown up and turned into a stereotypical characature, then why not attempt to make humor with it? Like all other subjects? Surely the intent is paramount.
Alternatively, it's an image showing how men need to stop making rude suggestions about women's dietary choices and offer to cook dinner rather than expecting her to make it. That's probably why the women are finding it funny - because it's showing comments they do hear and rightly saying they are "dangerous" (ie. that it pisses them off). And, of course, the far-right row is just "haha, yeah just shut up and give me some wine". It's not the funniest thing in the world but it doesn't strike me as particularly offensive so much as just a generic cultural representation of a society in which we have gender roles and relationships (platonic or otherwise) that include both men and women.
How any guy who can't or refuses to cook ever gets laid is beyond me. In general though I don't think the whole woman doing the cooking and cleaning and man watching the footy is anywhere near as prevelant as it used to be.
When my dad was working aswell as my mum they split cooking and cleaning and when my dad was unemployed he did both while my mother worked.
I cook most of the time because my girlfriend is hopeless in the kitchen and she fixes my motorbike while I bring her cups of tea, having a girlfriend as a mechanic definitely comes with perks
She once called me her wife infront of my entire family because I was cooking baked zitti while she installed my new clutch. Patriachy musn't hold much sway in our family and i might of just been lucky to be raised by an awesome take no shit Irish London mum and a Union factory man dad, but the only stereotypical gender roles I experienced were at my grandparent house and I thought they were wierd and abnormal, not my dad steam cleaning the floor while my mum watched Holby City.
I can't think of a single family on my street where one parent stays at home, all of them work, maybe being poor means there is no economic ability to have the sexist model of making the wife stay at home with the kids?
I know some better off kids who went my school had mums who never worked, When I went round after school it seemed like such a novelty to have a parent there waiting on me hand and foot. I felt like a Rockstar. I would go home and whinge to my mum that Adam ******'s mum made us pizza and why she never made me and my mates any cool stuff. She just told me to shut my gob
My mum rules.
At one point she was so poor before she met my dad and she had my brothers already, she made some horrible meal made of rice and crappyt old bits and pieces of whatever she had, to make my brothers feel special and not feel shit about themselves as the poor kids in school she told them it was a really posh dish called jeweled rice and none of their mates at school would of had it, she said they gobbled it down faster than anything. It is now the families favourite story to tell at christmas.
Sorry my post is slightly gone off topic. I just like bragging about how epic my Mum is.
In my experience, what people who write discrimination up as "just a joke" mean by that expression is "I don't want to be criticized for being consciously discriminatory".
Example: Back when I was in Sunday school, one of my Sunday school teachers told us a joke about a guy who got in a car accident. The accident victim is saved, but has to get half his brain removed in the process. The punch line is that, when he awakens, the doctors ask him if he's feeling okay and he answers "Si". My Sunday school teacher then promptly insisted "Sorry, it was just a joke!" You see what I mean? He was just being consciously racist and didn't want to be held accountable for said attitude. Same basic principle applies here vis-a-vis sex discrimination. The joke here is on people who honestly believe that the circulating box in the OP is merely a joke.
Another example: People say that blonde jokes are just jokes. You know how many people I've met before who honestly believe that blonde women are naturally stupid and will say as much right to my face? The joke is on those who think the author is just kidding.
This is my blog. It's mostly a theoretical journal.
Was the image created by a man? Looking at it, I very seriously doubt it.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
- Hanlon's Razor
it is "just pathetic". the fact that its so prevelant means that society is just pathetic too, on a general scale. its not funny and the people who laugh at it are also pathetic. don't make sexism out to be anything other than pathetic. i get that its incredibly historically, culturally, politically, socially and economically deep-rooted and that shows how pathetic our history has largely been too. just pathetic.
I'm the Laird of the land, I'm hot like Pol Pot.'A true white liberal.' - Sword and Shield (on me)
'i am a communism fer a long years.' - twenty percent tip
FKA Mahmoud Ahmerdinnerjacket
SWAG
It kind of makes sense as many jokes are based on awkwardness/shame and discrimination is assumes that there is something awkward or shameful about not being a white man in a rich country.
Since many of the other mainstays of comedy, ie racism and general bigotry against minorities such as gays and so on has become unseemly, attitudes towards women have barely budged in 70 years. So long as women continue to be seen as an appendage of men, I would imagine that comedian will have material for a very long time.
"Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is." - A. Shakur
"There is nothing here, no oil, no strategic location. We will recommend to our government not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans."
- Rwanda, 1994
even if you were able to tell such a thing, why would it matter?
Because context? Same reason Chris Rock can do a joke premise called I love black people I hate N**gers and have a black audience howl with laughter, but had a white guy done that bit, it might of recieved a totally different reaction?
Also as for your post in reply to the question, it would show a woman who did this was not trying to denegrate her entire sex, women liked this on facebook and share it, meaning maybe most women do not view it as sexist but a satirised version of partially true common events in relationships?
As I said above, my girlfriend sent it to me and loved it. My girlfriend does not hate women or think they are less capable as their male counterparts. She is just a nice prson who enjoys humor and doesn't act outraged at things that do not warrant it.
I see a huge qualitative difference there - the black thing - but cant elaborate on it now, since smartphone and bed. will do tomorrow and if not remind me pls.
Liberal Dudes are guys who will jump up and down to tell you that they’re all about equality and prosperity for everyone, but then tell you about the strip club they were at the night before or about the awesome anal porn site they last jerked off to. Liberal Dudes are ready to welcome us into the boardroom, provided we’re still willing to dance on the conference table at the employee party. Liberal Dudes love “sex-positive” “feminists” because Liberal Dudes support women’s freedom and “rights,” up to and including our “right” to strip and to suck dicks for money. Liberal Dudes love to see women embracing pornorific behavior like pole dancing, pube waxing, porn watching, thong wearing, chick kissing, and boob flashing as a means to “empowerment,” because that’s exactly the kind of power they want us to have: the power to give them boners.
Will do.
I hate this one stereotype so much about how men have to make sure they don't say the wrong thing or the woman will erupt with rage and lash out at him. They do that on so many sitcoms too. The husband is a dumb clueless oaf who just cannot seem to communicate with his wife who is a raging lunatic, ready to get pissed off at the least little things.
And "should you be eating that"? What kind of asshole partner says that to their significant other? Obviously health reasons are an exception, like if they have heart problems and are questioning them for eating bacon and shit. But obviously the one in the chart was meant to imply that they better keep their trophy wife from gaining any weight.
Yeah, fuck that.
The artist formerly known as Ace Steel
alternatively that women are, like men, affected by living in class society that devalues and privatizes reproductive labor and demonizes femininity.
we call this internalized sexism.
And then if you get angry at the stereotype people can always say that you're proving it. 'See, you're overreacting to this sitcom joke. Are you feeling HORMONAL today?'
I say it to my girlfriend, but thats because I am just worried about her on the one hand as she smokes and eats like crap, but also because I want to be attracted to her. If I am going on a phase of eating junk and boozing she will rub my belly and call me Jabba the gut with a evil little grin, If she is packing on pounds I will rub hers and ask when she is due. To be honest it is more of a friendly joke with a real warning that we are concerned for the other person, but I don't imagine most people would be comfortable with that kin of thing in their relationships.
We love each other and are honest though, a lot of couples see menioning the others weight as some great taboo. If one of us is getting to be a bloated rotund person through negative habbits, we call each other out.
God help us if we ever go on a bad run together, we might be on one of those TV specials, I can just imagine it now; Dispatches, my 500lb lover and me.
