All I meant was you pick your audience. There are some jokes I would never tell my mom that killed on the golf course. Someone is liable to get offended by any number of jokes. And what is wrong w/ “blue” jokes - folk who are offended by sex?
I just thought it odd that “rape jokes” were singled out, as opposed to all the other potentially offensive jokes in that thread. And no, I don’t think I told a “rape joke.” Not sure I could come up with one. Tho I imagine if I tried, I could come up with a joke about people regretting their choices of. the night before, which someone might say is. inappropriate as it is about rape. Tho mine would probably be about a man and his choice of farm animal…
Looks like a cut-and-paste from this list. If others are curious, it’s the first hit if you Google “Blond man jokes,” and the point of the article is in the title, “Changing it up with 12 jokes about blond men.”
I don’t think anyone doubts the jokes exist in theory; rather, folks are pointing out that they’re almost always gendered in a misogynistic way.
How about subbing out the specific group of the joke with “Greendale Community College Human”?
My favorite Polish joke (Chelm actually is a real town in Poland btw) is very dated, set back in the days of Solidarity movement. Some Polish Americans sent relatives back in Poland a thousand dollars to help get through the period of strikes.
“Wonderful but we don’t yet need it. Let’s put it in the local bank.”
“What if they fail?”
“They’re backed up by the Bank of Warsaw.”
“What if they fail?”
“They’re backed up by the bank of Poland.”
“What if they fail?”
“Then they are backed up by the Bank of the USSR.”
“What if they fail?”
“Wouldn’t that be worth a thousand U.S. dollars!?”
I can’t see how any adult can tell a dead-baby joke. Even as a child, I thought they were “off”. But I don’t know any woman who hasn’t suffered traumatic miscarriage. And I know of several, including on this message board, who’ve suffered through the death of a child. I would imagine any adult telling one one of these jokes has to be male. Are all you dudes telling these jokes sure that the guy you’re telling it to hasn’t suffered such a loss?
The “humor” of dead baby jokes is that they are inappropriate and gross. I never liked them, because I never found them funny.
That being said, I’m really surprised that every woman you know has suffered a traumatic miscarriage. I can only think of one among the people I might joke around with. (it was VERY traumatic, though. She lost twins pretty late in the pregnancy.) And while I know some friends of friends who have lost a child, I can’t think of anyone I know personally who has.
(I know lots of women who have miscarried. But early miscarriages are often not all that traumatic.)
Saw a joke this morning which, while not especially funny, might help illustrate some things:
Structurally, it’s almost exactly the same joke as the Dirty Johnny joke above: the punchline is wordplay involving an unexpected and inappropriate ranking of someone’s sexual attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10.
But, while I don’t find either one particularly hilarious, the joke I just quoted doesn’t ping my “Gross, dude.” I think that’s for a couple of reasons:
It was told by a guy, supposedly about himself*. Self-deprecating humor is rarely gonna ping the Gross dude reaction.
Inappropriate sexual ranking of men is inappropriate, obv. But it’s nowhere near as common as inappropriate sexual ranking of women, and is not part of a structural system of inequity.
Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see two jokes with such similar punchlines but that I react to so differently, and wonder if others have similar reactions.
*“But how do you know it wasn’t told by a lesbian?” you smartass ask. Well, because a guy on Facebook posted it, smartass.
I invented the nation of Baldavia a number of years back to get around ethnicity jokes.
Still… do you know what happens when you tell a Baldavian a blonde joke?
He nods at the profound wisdom.
And even that joke could be told either as, “I asked my wife…” or “My wife asked me…” Or “I asked my husband…” or “My husband asked me…” To my mind, they are essentially the same joke and equally funny. But some characterize 1 (possibly 2?) of them as mysogyny.
Any comment on a woman’s attractiveness inherently supposes that a) it is her job to please you and b) that you have any business commenting on her personal choices.
This, of course, does not apply if the woman in question has made an effort to look pretty for you, like on a special date.