no action on racist/sexist jokes thread

A formal complaint has been levelled at the use of this forum for the propagation of racist and sexist hate speech. When will a response be forthcoming?

A formal complaint to whom?This message has been edited by mark24, 07-30-2004 04:56 AMThis message has been edited by mark24, 07-30-2004 04:57 AM

*sigh*Why must some people be so up tight? We have said that those jokes are being used for humor, NOT TO DEHUMANIZE ANYONE!! Not to mention that we are telling the jokes about ALL races and sexes including our own.

Rand,I know, there have been sexist jokes told on both sides & no ones offended. Luckily contracycle has it under control for us. I don't need to be offended, I now have someone else to do it for me.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

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I know, there have been sexist jokes told on both sides & no ones offended.

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Well, I was a bit offended by B2P's joke:Q: What do you do when your wife is staggering around the living room?A: Shoot her again.I mean, the joke makes me picture a woman staggering around a room, and then the punchline inserts into the image a man who has just shot her and is getting ready to shoot her again.As a woman, this image hits close to home and does not bring a smile to my face. Quite the opposite, actually.But you know what? I don't think I have much business telling him to stop making the joke.I do think it's possible to joke about violence against women, but that joke wasn't funny.

I think most dead baby and battered woman jokes are tasteless and unfunny. But the notion of what we find funny is a much more complex issue than crybabies like contracycle could hope to comprehend.Consider this old joke, told by Jesse Jackson on SNL a few years back:Q: What has six legs and says "ho-de-do, ho-de-do, ho-de-do"?
A: Three black guys running for an elevator.Now this obviously uses black people as a target, but it's not claiming that they're lazy, stupid, or dishonest. It's merely making fun of the way certain people sound to white ears. Is this really all that offensive? I watched Lady and the Tramp with my daughter recently, and the amount of foreigners-talk-funny jokes in that Disney flick would be enough to make contracycle have a conniption. Yes, the humor depends on "delineating an other," as my women-studies prof girlfriend would put it. But that's what humor is, and our simian heritage makes us respond to such ingroup/outgroup cues. Are black people unable to bear such mild teasing about the way they talk? I don't find that joke particularly offensive, but it's not all that funny either.Now consider this joke my brother told me when we were driving one day:-It's bad luck to hit a black kid on a bike.
-Why?
-Could be your bike.In contrast, I do find this joke offensive, but also funny. The explicit meaning is that black kids are thieves, but the implicit condemnation is on the speaker: the only reason he would feel bad as he's led off to jail for vehicular homicide is that his own bike was damaged?Now contracycle might say I'm reading too much into this (not surprising considering how little of his own thought has gone into the subject), but I think these are valid points. Would he claim that my brother told the joke because of his urge to dehumanize and exterminate black people? In that case, my brother must be the most hate-blinded person in human civilization, considering that everyone else has no trouble noticing that his own wife and kids are black.This is the essence of this debate: are offensive jokes told only to dehumanize people, or could it conceivably be that the crybabies are wrong about the notion of 'hate speech'? Could it be that humor is motivated by many different human needs and enjoyed on many different levels?regards,
Esteban Hambre

Hi Schraf, There's a joke that goes along the lines of (shortened for brevity); a Frenchman & an Englishman are granted a wish each. The Frenchman goes first & asks for a wall around France a mile high to keep out foreigners. The Englishmans turn comes, & he asks the genie, "is that wall watertight?". "Yes", replies the genie, "in that case, fill it up".Now that joke could be turned around on the English & it wouldn't offend me (& I'm sure the same joke is told in France with the roles reversed), yet the image is millions of drowning people. Why wouldn't it offend me? The joke is in the unexpected cleverness (he says) of the punchline rather than the violence itself. Come to think of it, it wouldn't particularly offend me if a Frenchman actually wanted that to happen, I'd just find the chap a bit of a saddo.If you didn't find the joke funny, fair enough, & you haven't given me much to complain about, either, since you accept it is possible to joke about violence to women.I think it's interesting what some people find as offensive when others can laugh, despite belonging to the group that is the butt of the joke, regardless of the imagery involved. I suppose I'm fairly immune to the imagery, it's the cleverness of a gag that I find funny.Not particularly disagreeing, just my own thoughts.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

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Now that joke could be turned around on the English & it wouldn't offend me (& I'm sure the same joke is told in France with the roles reversed),

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Which brings up the topic of sheep shaggers. In America, we claim that the Scottish and the Basque "take advantage" of sheep. In Britian, from what I hear, they claim the same thing of Australians and Kiwis. In Australia, well I think they agree with us Yanks. Anyway, you get the idea. The point I am trying to make is that making fun of another group is universal, so we shouldn't pretend that one group is picking on another group in the absence of the same thing happening in the other direction.

Loudmouth, Lol, via a very round about route, I suppose. Tell me, what other topics does it bring up? A private email is fine if the topic to too "taboo", phwooooar. I agree, & like contracycle hasn't told a joke, or at the very least laughed at one with a minority as the butt of it.MarkThis message has been edited by mark24, 07-30-2004 01:05 PM

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

As I can see, there are 4 ways to look at a joke and determine if it is funny or not.1) The joke reflects reality and the reality is unpleasant relative to the culture.2) The joke reflects reality and the reality is not unpleasant relative to the culture.3) The joke does not reflect reality and the reality is unpleasant relative to the culture.4) The joke does not reflect reality and the reality is not unpleasant relative to the culture.I almost never find any joke belonging to group 1 to be funny.An example of group 1 joke is the this:Q: What do you do when your wife is staggering around the living room?A: Shoot her again.The joke hits right on the reality of the situation. The rate of women being abused and even killed by their husbands has always been high. It is an unpleasant aspect of our society.When B2P told it, I didn't think it was funny.I find some of group 2 jokes to be funny and others to be tasteless.Here is an example: Ok, so it wasn't a joke. I found it funny because I sometimes have trouble telling the difference between you white folks. I absolutely do not think that not being able to recognize individuals in another ethnic group at first glance is not an unpleasant aspect of our society.I do not find some of group 2 jokes to be funny simply because they're not funny.Some of group 3 jokes are funny to me. Here is an example:Q: How does Chinese couple pick a name for their new born?A: They drop a can down the stairs and name their new born according to the sounds that the can makes when impacting on the stairs.This one is funny because such names as "Chang" and "Ching" really do sound like the English description of what a can would sound like when it hits something. The joke does not reflect reality.Now, there is a way to make the joke not funny. Imagine that there is an advance alien race and they set out to invade Earth. They kill off 1.5 billion people and takes over the world. Then, they threatens to kill Chinese person that doesn't name his new born using the dropping the can method.In that situation, the joke would be tasteless.Group 4 jokes are boring and most people ignore them. I personally can't think off the top of my head any of them.So you see, some jokes can be funny, some jokes are tasteless, and some jokes are outright offensive. What determines if they belong to any of those categories are who, where, and the situation of the matter.What dehumanizes people is finding all jokes to be offensive. It is part of the human nature and culture to tell jokes. It is universal.

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The Laminator
For goodness's sake, please vote Democrat this November!

The difference to me with B2P's joke is that men shooting their wives to death actually happens. Not infrequently.The joke simply reminded me that it continues to happen many hundreds of times a year.Your joke about the Frenchman and the Englishman is less personal and requires magic to carry out.A man who murders his wife with a gun is all too real and common an occurrence and requires no magic.

no, you know what's funny? exactly. see, but there's another way to read it: it's ok to hit white kids on bikes.

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The difference to me with B2P's joke is that men shooting their wives to death actually happens. Not infrequently.

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And women shoot their husbands as well. Phil Hartman for example. Given the actions of men, I am surprised that it doesn't happen more often.Anyway, back to the subject. We laugh at these jokes not because the condone a certain action, but because these actions are taboo. Humans in any culture are entertained by humor that involves taboo subjects, especially "dirty" jokes of a sexual nature. I would actually say that these types of jokes (within reason) are a healthy sign for a culture being that these subjects are still taboo. It is a good sign that these jokes make us feel uncomfortable, and that is also what these jokes are celebrating. Also, these jokes could lead to a healthy, public discourse on the problems that are being made fun of. That is, jokes can be a way to break the ice in socially sensitive issues. But then again, maybe we should also be sensitive to the emotional condition of others and only tell these jokes among people who are receptive to this type of humor.

You mean I wasn't supposed to shoot my wife twice?

I take back what I said about "the intelligent people here at EvC."regards,
Esteban Hambre