Welcome to the 21st century.

[andrewducker]

I can understand why there's a stereotype of feminists as humourless.

I mean, if you're used to being able to make jokes about horrible things happening to women and then a group of people start telling you that they don't find this funny then your perception of them is going to be that they just don't have a sense of humour.  After all, you don't _seriously_ want bad things to happen to women, you're just having a laugh, right?

My old friend Ed went to this debate in which a controversial comedian debated whether it was ok to make offensive jokes.  Frankie Boyle used his moments on the debating stand to tell a series of increasingly unpleasant jokes - all of which got a massive laugh from the audience, except when they touched on a subject just a little too close to home.  My friend found himself laughing at all sorts of appalling things, until the subject was (coincidentally) turned onto his own situation, at which point he found himself thinking "but that's not funny".

Because it's never funny when it's about you.  It's only funny when it's about someone you don't care about. 

Or, at the very least, if you can pretend that nobody you know is like that.

It's much easier when you live in a nice insular environment, where you only really know people like yourself, and you certainly only socialise with people just like you.  Then you can bask in in-group/out-group socialisation to your heart's content.

Not to easy when you're on the internet, and people are likely to pop up at any moment and point out the flaws inherent in something you thought was innocent fun.

The question is - how do you deal with it when someone points it out?  Do you have to let the flaws ruint it for you because they offend someone else?  Do you have to argue that there's nothing wrong with the thing you love?

If you care (and nobody is going to make you) then some very useful hints and tips can be found here.  The flow-chart at the end is particularly good.

Comments

[chuma.livejournal.com]

I'd still suggest this is negligable, or at the very least people looking for something to complain about. It would be like me complaining about Giles as being a stereotype nerdy, tweed-loving, po-faced Brit.

[andrewducker]

You think people complaining about the stereotypical portrayal of their race is jut because they're looking for something to complain about?

Really?

[chuma.livejournal.com]

I think they are entitled to complain, but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. The goth kids on South Park make me laugh even though it is effectively picking fun at a label that describes me. I see characteristics of myself and many of my friends in the stereotype, but they are exaggerated in order to make fun of them. Sure, complain if you want to, but do I really understand? No not really. I see Hugh Grant playing English stereotypes all the time and not identifying with him on any level whatsoever, but I wouldn't set up a discussion topic on him.

[andrewducker]

I think they are entitled to complain, but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.

Yes. And in a lot of cases that reason is to keep control over people who up until 40 years ago didn't have the right to vote. I'm lucky, the racism that I might face isn't going to be major, and it's likely to always be in the form of humour.

In the States there's still a lot of very unpleasant racism that's expressed through violence and intimidation. And if you've spent most of your life dealing with that kind of atmosphere then you're going to be very sensitised towards it.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

It's a little different ripping the piss out of a group of people who've chosen to dress and behave in a certain way and reinforcing stereotypes about a group of people who've been historically enslaved/butchered/etc due simply to the colour of their skin. Srsly, there's just no comparison. There's a big difference between racism and taking the piss out of babybats.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

Sure, there may be a big difference, but the problem is that I can only relate to any experiences through my own. I cannot know how it feels for a black person to be racially abused, I can only draw comparison as best I can. However there is also the world of difference between racism and making a joke about, lets say, dead hookers. All things can be said to have their differences.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, where do you draw the line between born with e.g. race, disability and people who chose certain behaviour?

What about religion? This is a choice, technically, but it difficult to pick and choose between your feelings and beliefs and this can be so closely linked to culture and upbringing. Some people are gay but make the ‘life choice’ not to be, they suck it up and date the opposite gender or remain celibate. And, in either case, miserable. With the possible exception of disability (most kinds) it is possible if you choose to cover up anything about your life in the same way as you choose to behave in certain ways. I don’t know enough about it, but suspect there are those who equate gothdom with being a kind of religion (and it ties closely to some religions). I totally understand your point – but where is the line?

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Dude, you're very wrong here, and I think you should rethink or at least rephrase the first sentence.

Failing that, I suggest you go to any blog or community which deals with discussion of issues on race (preferably a community mostly containing Asian people), post that comment, and see what happens.

PS: I don't suggest this really!

[chuma.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't because it would come across as someone white making fun of or trying to upset a group of asians. That wouldn't be the case. This is an example of me checking my thoughts around certain people to avoid offense.

Maybe if you could actually give me an example of how firefly was offensive to them I might understand better? To me it was just a western in space with a modern context to the earth as a whole rather than nations. Personally, I would have found it offensive if they had have done the usual hollywood trick of just having Americans in space with no other amalgamation of cultures from Earth.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can give you a good example of how firefly is offensive in that way unless you're female, PoC, disabled, not cisgendered, or something along those lines.

It's in the context of constant, omnidirectional subtle put-downs, implications, opinion about "place" in society.

Any one example of a PoC being shown in a subservient role isn't, taken in isolation, hugely offensive.

But when time and time again, that's the dominant portrayal - one you're faced with everywhere you go? And your kids are faced with it too?

It's all part of a culture of subtle prejudice that makes every single example of it an irritation - one which builds to an inflammation.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

The "you can't understand, you're not on the to-be-protected minorities list" argument is rarely convincing, and always irritating. If I was going to believe things based on people telling me I couldn't understand them, I'd be a lot more religious.

I'm sorry that my response is an inflamatory way to take this debate, and I won't be responding further on this, because I don't want to get into a RaceFail re-enactment.

However, I really don't feel, based on the number of people who have mentioned they find it extremely irritating, that anti-prejudice crusaders do themselves any favours with this argument. At base I actually do feel that trying to work against prejudice is a good thing, so, you know, I thought that was worth mentioning.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

I'm not trying to "do myself favours", by the way. If there was a different argument I could use which would get the point across, I would do. If you notice, I then go on to try my best to communicate anyway.

This is an expression of my inability to communicate something as much as me suggesting that "you wouldn't get it".

Perhaps other anti-prejudice activists are better at communicating this thing than me. I ain't one of them, sorry!

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I know I said I wouldn't comment further, but I think this could do with clarification - when I say "do themselves favours" I mean "increase the chances of their points being sympathetically received and understood".

Thanks for the very reasonable response.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's what I understood you to mean. I just read my reply though and it does look like I'm fingerquoting you to make it seem silly! Sorry about that.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Slightly following on from Cairmen’s comment, Chuma may not be ‘female, PoC, disabled, not cisgendered, or something along those lines.’ But he is male. Men are starting to see massive accepted gender opression and stereotyping, particularly in popular comedy – I see what could be ‘seen as an arrow (which to me is subtly different to my seeing the arrow) in comedy clubs, in countless sitcoms and dramas e.g. Friends, Sex and The City, Buffy, Ugly Betty to name but a couple of the top of my head. Some of these go hand in hand with female stereotyping, but why is it worse with women? Put this hand it hand with the treatment of men in magazines and popular culture and sexist rulings at a legislative level - eg rules that groups or boards etc that specify that at least one woman must be appointed, but not at least one men, which means it is legal for a board to comprise all women but not all men – that is sexist.

AND men aren’t allowed to complain about it, because they ‘couldn’t possibly know’. Yes I realise that worldwide female oppression and stereotyping is a much larger problem but the hypocrisy of saying ‘you’re a man, you couldn’t know about what it is like to have a gender’ is, to me, sexism of the most extreme level.

Lx

[meihua.livejournal.com]

*nods* I don't deny that sexism against men exists, or that it's a problem.

However, there's one key difference between sexism as experienced by men and the prejudice experienced by the groups I mentioned; here in the west, those are not the groups in power.

Someone else (I think in this thread) said that the problem is "prejudice + power", and I think I agree.

It's one thing to experience sexism in some walks of life but be able to retreat from those areas at will.

The thing which I don't know to describe to someone who is in receipt of most forms of privilege is the experience of being in an environment of ubiquitous prejudice where even the idea of prejudice-free-space (such as women-only spaces, PoC-only-spaces) is still seen as radical by some.

To someone who doesn't experience that - I don't know how to describe how it feels. How much it amplifies the feeling of prejudice.

The key difference is that if you're white, male, cisgendered and above the poverty line, then most of the time when you experience prejudice you can walk away.

[broin.livejournal.com]

It depends. Sexism towards men is something I'm keenly interested in, whether it's in pop culture as described above, or less obvious, even insidious places.

Recently, two separate friends had difficulties joining parent-baby groups because the women there supposedly found it uncomfortable having a man around. So these young fathers have literally nowhere to go to share their experience, and learn from others how to be parents. Never mind, how to be a father.

I've had a similar problem with a friend (at least, she used to be) who said she'd never send expose her children to men in authority. She wouldn't accept male primary school teachers.

Retreating isn't an option. To be honest, that's as useful a recommendation as 'don't wear such a short skirt'.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

You're right - these are exceptions to what I said above.