Humour Part 4 - Why I don't think they're funny

I regularly get emails sent around with sexist jokes like those in Part 1 & Part 2. I'm pretty sure a few years ago we used to have a whole lot of them hung on the walls of our postgrad labs. I know I found them funny then, but I don't anymore.

I know they're just jokes, but I think that our tacit acceptance of the stereotypes underlying the jokes is no laughing matter.

These jokes are based on stereotypes. The male stereotype is that men are stupid but straightforward and only interested in sex. The female stereotype is that women are incomprehensible and insecure, withhold sex to manipulate and are only good if they shut up and cater to a man's every whim (especially sexual whims). You have to know these stereotypes to even comprehend the joke at all.

The racist jokes in Part 3 are also based on stereotypes. Jews are penny pinching misers, Asians can't drive, Mexicans are lazy, dirty thieves and black people are all criminals who should be put to work or put to death.

I originally set out to find racist jokes to contrast with the sexist jokes. My argument was going to be that the humour in both derives from stereotypes, and to ask how come people still find the sexist jokes funny and worthy of sharing, but would never laugh at or forward those racist jokes.

However, I think it's more complicated that that. Humour comes from many places. Some humour is funny precisely because it is shocking, and offends our standards of decency. The racist jokes can be funny because it is just so preposterous to believe that someone could actually hold those opinions and give those answers.

So, it's entirely possible that you found all those jokes funny, but I'll bet you were more shocked by the racist ones than you were by the sexist jokes. You just don't see or hear jokes like that very often these days.

However, things can also be funny because we see truth in them. I've heard a lot of people chuckle at some of the sexist jokes and say 'hahaha, that's so true'. I doubt anyone I know would say that about the racist jokes. But some people would.

One of the places where I found a whole bunch of these jokes was on the discussion forums for a large white supremacist organisation in the US. On the discussion forum, people linked to these jokes along with comments about how true various aspects of the stereotypes were and shared anecdotes and stories to back up and reinforce how true those stereotypes were. These people do seriously think that all people who don't have white skin do not deserve to live, and they would be more than happy to create gas chambers and man the firing squads.

I find those people truly scary, and knowing that they seriously see these jokes as reflections of truth makes the humour completely vanish for me. I actually started feeling physically sick when I was culling the lists of jokes on these sites. The level of bigotry and hatred is just appalling.

So, it was the exposure to neo-nazi racial prejudice that killed the humour of the racist jokes for me. But what about the sexist jokes? While writing about this, I've come to the conclusion that it is my recent exposure to people who actually believe (or profess to believe) in these sexist stereotypes that has killed the humour for me.

OK, first of all, to head off those who want to argue that the stereotypes are in fact true, I will concede that yes, there are physiological differences between men and women. Men have more testosterone so they do on average have a higher sex drive. Men and women are socialised differently and so different personality traits are reinforced more in one gender than the other. However, I do not believe that this makes either gender superior to the other in any sense. It certainly doesn't give members of one gender different rights to members of the other. And finally, I think these are average differences and I think the average trends are overpowered by the noise of individual variation. We're all just people.

Various male friends have hassled me by invoking the female stereotypes of being less logical, less intelligent, always changing their minds, loving shopping, being unable to read maps and so on. However, I tended to assume that because they were so intelligent, they obviously knew it was false and were just saying stuff that was clearly wrong and inflammatory to get a reaction from me.

However, more recently, I've come across other people saying the same things, and the context, and matter-of-fact way it comes up leads me to think they actually do really believe in those stereotypes. And I think that must have been what has killed my sense of humour towards the sexist jokes. They're funny as satire, but as reflections of actual beliefs, they're just sad.

I wonder about what the appropriate response should be when I receive something like this. On one hand, if I make a big deal about it, and point out that the stereotypes are false and that this shouldn't be acceptable, surely I am being a killjoy. I've 'lost my sense of humour', and I 'shouldn't take things so seriously', and it's just a joke so I should 'lighten up'.

But my problem is that it seems that the more these things are circulated, the more the stereotypes are reinforced and become normalised and widespread in society. If something is repeated often enough, it tends to become regarded as established fact, especially by people who aren't given to deep analysis. Even if I don't forward them myself, if I stay silent about one when I receive it, I'm allowing the social reinforcement to occur unchecked.

So instead then, I should speak up. I should point out that I think that these jokes are based on completely false stereotypes. I should tell people that I don't think it's a good idea to reinforce these false stereotypes. I should tell people not to be silent when sexist and racist stereotypes are invoked.

And I guess that is the entire point of this series of posts.