5 March 2006 - 1:45pm
Jokes that objectify women
Media girl posted a blog topic So what's wrong with a little objectification, anyway? As science fiction writer, J. F. Rivkin once complained, the cover of the novel (and even the title) often is not under the control of the author, so I have no arguments with author Marrit Ingman, unless she disabuses me of that presumption, about the "babes" cover of her article about Blogher.
Perhaps Second Wave Feminists have no sense of humor about their political struggles and trivializing women's topics is grist for the mill. 
I was a young activist and I recall the cover of Ms Magazine - we called it "M" "S" in those days - which had an article about "why we aren't laughing." Like Polack, black, Jewish, Italian, Irish, and other ethnic jokes, jokes about women are legion. In 1973, I framed this picture and hung it on my office wall as "protest" against the "Rad Libber," (Radical Female Liberation) jokes that were making the rounds. It did not stop my boss from making his own jokes about the woman in the drawing and exactly what "movement" she would be making.
About 15 years ago, Andrew Dice Clay drew jeers for his jokes that demeaned women - women as bimbos and airheads.
Women tend to laugh to hide discomfort and mask embarrassment or even anger.
Make a racist joke to a minority, and chances are the person will call you on it. Make a sexist joke about females, the woman is expected to laugh. If she gets annoyed, then it means she has no sense of humor.
I am sure no one meant any real harm in putting up that cover and were it the Onion, I might think it was trying to make a satirical point, but the cover seemed out of place given the rest of the article.
I hope that this is not part of the post-Roe world.
Like "Lois Lane," "Clark"s" jokes aren't funny any more.
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Comments
Well said. Very well said. Thank you.
The current canard is that you can only make jokes about straight white males unless you happen to be of the group that the joke is to be about. Still, I think that you're going to see gender-based humor around for as long as stand-up comics yuk it up on cruise ships and open mic nights.
Still, I'm curious, where is the limit on gender-based humor before it turns offensive? Obviously, making jokes about "and it must've been that time of the month for her!" is way out of line. But what if, for example, a male comic makes jokes about being unable to divine what his wife wants? Or the male gender not understanding what women want out of a relationship? Is there a dividing line in there? Or is all of that unacceptable?
Not long ago, I saw a comedian (Mike Birbiglia, IIRC), and he joked about the "white people" impersonation that some black comedians used. He asked, "Does anybody actually talk that way?" Was that good humor? Bad humor? Or what? I honestly wasn't sure then, and I'm not sure now.
Oh, and by the way. How many Centauri does it take to change a light bulb?
And ... one (true!) story. This past Christmas, my girlfriend, who is at school right now, mentioned she needed some new pots and pans. So, I bought her the pots and pans. To ensure that I wasn't the guy who bought his girlfriend pots and pans for Christmas, I also decided to get the "romantic" gift -- perfume.
On Christmas day, she kept the pots and pans and returned the perfume ...
--|PW|--
The newspaper is a conveyance of information. What's more, it's in a medium that is threatened and challenged by the disruptive blogging medium.
The newspaper presents this new phenomenon, Blogher, as a man-hating militant feminist fantasy replete with sexualized imagery that both points up the sexual anxiety men have expressed feeling due to liberated women, as well as the "they just need a good fuck" kind of undercurrent.
Oh, but it's all a joke. Never mind! I didn't realize they said....
(They didn't say it. But tell me it's not in the cover art for the cover story.)
Hmm ... it struck me as a sort of pastiche/satire on men's fears that women are out to take over everything.
--|PW|--
If a black group, such as the NAACP, were to have formed a black blog group, and Uncle Tom images were put as the cover of an otherwise positive article, would you say it was "a sort of pastiche/satire on whitie's fears that blacks are out to take over everything."
If Jewish people had put together a Jewish blog, and there was an upbeat article about this, but the editors used a poster from the film "Triumph of the Will," would we laugh it off as "a sort of pastiche/satire on Nazi fears that Zionists are out to take over everything."
No, of course not. You and I would be outraged.
You are right that men have a great deal of insecurity about minorities who would stand up to them and possibly topple men's power. Being able to laugh at blacks, Jews, and women, is a way from WASP males to release the tension they feel after a hard day of ruling the world.
Honestly, I'm not sure if I, personally, would be outraged or not. Images like that really don't do much to me any more, possibly because on more than one occasion, I've been at a media outlet, scrambling to make sure we didn't publish a potentially offensive image, cutline, or what have you.
--|PW|--
Free speech does not mean we can ask a fireman why he wears red suspenders in a crowded theater.
Personally I belive as long as what is said is true, one cannot particularly take offense to it. The source of who speaks the truth is irrelevant, though the methods may be uncouth.
The facts are never 'sexist.' Whether those facts are desirable or not. That is, if one objectively tests a point, and the Genders do not come up equal on said point, that does not necessarily make the tester sexist.
The most offensive jokes are those which are based on an untrue stereotype, or which proceed from a hateful or derrogatory perspective.
Example Joke: A man says to another man, "I find it unfair that women get to bear children, while men get to pee standing up."
This is the opener of the joke. This joke has several glaring imperfections right from the start. Firstly, not all women have the opportunity, or the desire to bear children, unfortunately, or fortunately for them as the case may be. Certainly there are some women who can indeed urinate whilst standing.
Indeed not all men urinate whilst standing either: Their physical or psychological circumstances may render them unable to urinate from a standing position. There may be certain cultural, or cleanliness taboos associated with the standing male urinater. Or he simply may not wish to do so.
Nevertheless, the paradigm of the masculine standing peer, and the feminine ability to bear children is a generalized perception based on fact.
Whether you find it offensive that one draws attention to this paradigm is fully within your prerogative as the audience.
Then comes the punchline.
"Yeah, It's so unfair, because peeing standing up is so cool!"
This is the potential comedic element of the Joke. It uses the principle of inversion to create a comedic effect. The exact opposite occurs from what is expected. The joke begins by seeding the thought that the man is talking about a woman's ability to bear children being superior to a man's ability to pee standing up.
The punchline utterly destroys this perception, rendering null the view of this man as a somewhat enlightened individual, that feels slightly inadequate to the beauty of childbirth.
Instead replacing that perception with the inverse, he sees no worth in that ability, as opposed to his own worth, this man is transformed into the epitome of a sexist.
The potential offensiveness of this joke is dependant on context and tone of the teller. If the teller is a man, speaking predominantly to men. A man may think this is an assertion that men are just as useful in the world as women. A woman might feel well within her right to find it offensive.
This same woman, if she heard the joke told by a woman, with a lighthearted smile, amongst other women, may find it quite hilarious indeed. While a man transplanted from the previous example might find it insulting and emasculating, drawing on his own percieved inferiority to the feminine gender.
Thus, by disecting the joke into it's bit parts, and overanalyzing it. I have ruined any potential humor that might be derived from it, thus relegating it to the 'cheesy joke' section of the universe. Reserved for Chicken/Road jokes and other inane observations.
Or, I could have simply told it, and you could have laughed.