Just “for the record” but Elysian is the one who came into the “women speak” thread (which wasn’t even started by me) and decided to ruin everyone’s harmless fun.
Now that’s just stupid and unfunny.
See a joke usually consists of an opening statement that sets up the joke followed by a punchline which is a humerous or ironic statement or a surprising twist.
If I wanted to go “all the way” as you say, I might say something like “what do you tell a woman with two black eyes?..Nothin’ - you done already told her twice”.
The problem is that, with jokes like that, how funny they are actually depends not just on the joke itself, but on how the person telling the joke is perceived by the audience. It depends partly on the credibility (the gender relations credibility, in this case) of the teller.
If the person telling the joke is widely perceived to be supportive of women’s equality, then the joke is likely to be taken in good spirit, and/or perceived as some sort of ironic commentary. If, on the other hand, the person telling the joke is perceived by the listeners (due to his attitude and/or to their past experiences with him) to be a misogynist, then the joke is less likely to go over well.
It’s the same reason that a joke told about gay men by Eddie Izzard is funnier, to me, than a joke told about gay men by some comedian whom i know is a redneck homophobe. It’s not just a matter of the content of the joke itself, it’s a product of the relationship between the teller and the listener.
Of course, there can be misunderstandings in any cultural exchange as imprecise and subjective as this. This very thread shows that what some people interpret as good natured banter, other interpret as hostile or hateful abuse. In the end, it’s up to msmith537 to ask himself whether he is just making harmless jokes, or whether there really is something about his attitude that that causes reasonable people to think he’s some sort of woman hater. If he truly believes the former to be the case, he should also be willing to accept that some people don’t find him very funny, and that he is going to offend some people.
Finally, for the record, there are some jokes that i never find funny, no matter who tells them. And jokes about violence against women fall directly into that category.
You sound like David Letterman hanging Stern out to dry immediately after the OJ slow-speed chase. (The appearance was later that same week, IIRC.) Howard comes on and starts riffing about OJ, and Dave just stares at him, and after an awkward silence, says to Howard “There is nothing funny about double murder.”
Now, since Letterman certainly never made a single about OJ joke on his show then or since, he was shown to not be a raving hypocrite. I wonder if you will fare as well?
My point is that there is no “sacred cow” in humor. I recall a 9/11 joke thread on this very board, for example. People who draw a line in the sand and say “this subject is not funny no matter what” either don’t understand humor very well, or simply didn’t have a sense of humor to begin with.
Never said that you couldn’t find it funny, or that other people couldn’t. I said that i don’t find it funny. I’ll happily take the time to explain the difference, if you’re having trouble understanding.
And, FWIW, i tend to agree that there are no “sacred cows” in humor. And if i heard a joke on the topic of violence against women that i thought was genuinely funny, and being told in the proper spirit, i’d probably laugh. It just hasn’t happened yet.
You are quite correct in your distinction that I failed to grasp. I read your sentence correctly, but then I internalized it to mean that you were saying some things just weren’t funny.
Yes…I see, once again, you resort to the tired, over-used crap. My point was, be original. Make up something strange and so out there that we KNOW you’re kidding.
Because, quite frankly, you often go into these rants when you’re NOT kidding, making women out to be a bunch of shallow, gold-digging airheaded bitches. And you don’t even come up with some material of your own.
Hmmmm, now see, I can sometimes laugh at offensive jokes, not so much because the jokes are funny, but because they’re so offensive, it’s almost as if, “Holy shit, who the HELL would come up with that!” Like, ha ha, let’s laugh at the stupidity behind it. I remember one Dopefest, we were telling some really crude racist jokes that wouldn’t be funny on their own, but just laughing at the offensiveness of them. “Oh my god, that one is soooo fucking wrong!” giggle
Does that make sense?
And sometimes you have to laugh, or you’ll go insane. I think our Onion Headlines for September 11th was one of those. (That was a GREAT thread, and I think it really helped many of us deal with what was going on, just looking at the absurdity.)
Sure it makes sense. But, for me, part of that involves taking into account who tells the joke, and the spirit in which they tell it. If i think the person is telling the joke to be hateful, and because he or she might actually believe the basic idea behind it, then i’m not so likely to find it funny.
It might seem sort of strange, the idea that how funny a joke is depends on who’s telling it, but to me it often works out like that. It’s sopmetimes hard to separate the words from their telling.
Yeah, but…the dog talks. The baby is highly articulate and has plans for world domination. The neighbor woman is eternally pregnant and never gives birth. The guy in the wheelchair can perform feats of strength regularly-abled people can’t do. The son appears to be clinically retarded but is in regular classes in school. You can accept all that but not accept the classic intelligent-attractive-woman-devoted-to-overweight-lunkhead scenario?
Anyway, Lois doesn’t laugh off all of Peter’s transgressions. And the main reason I can laugh at FG is that Peter’s behavior is never regarded as acceptable by the other characters, and he never profits from his jerkishness. I shied away from watching the show for a long time, because I thought he was supposed to be a heroic character. But when I realized how often he ends up stewing in his own juices, I was okay with it.
While I understand what you’re saying, I can’t help feeling that it’s difficult to determine a joke-teller’s motivation; even moreso in a written, off-the-cuff (without editors) medium.
So I prefer to let individual posts stand on their own merit, and as such I try not to hold a poster’s board history against them when reading one of their posts. Then again, because I recognize so many names on the board, it’s unavoidable that their history will color my perceptions one way or the other.
I guess my position is that I dispute the characterization of msmith537’s posting history based on the evidence presented in this thread. Some say he was joking and funny. Some say he’s a hateful asshole. Why is one group of posters more relevant than the other? Clearly, not everyone agrees his posts were hateful. Isn’t it possible that they were, in fact, not intended hatefully?
Actually, in the joke thread, I think he would have been justified in simply creating a pit thread and tearing the person a new asshole for pissing all over a joke thread. Instead, he used simple tongue-in-cheek parody to make the same point in a much less hostile way. And many found it funny. So in my book, he gets points for taking the less hateful route.
I think his posting in the joke thread was hostile, because it derailed the thread. The other jokes were generalized; his were directed at a specific poster. He should have opened a Pit thread; that would have shown some courage. As it was, he was able to hide behind the “It’s just a joke!” defense, which was and is bull.
Your opinion is not less relevant than anyone else’s. I disagree with it, but that’s as far as it goes. I pitted him based on behaviour I’ve seen him exhibit and opinions I’ve seen him put forth since I joined the board. I have yet to see msmith voice a positive opinion about women. One specifically, or any in general. His posts are insulting and condescending. I think he’s a mysoginistic jerk who posts what he does to get a specific reaction. You obviously disagree.
I was directing at a specific poster who was trying to derail the thread. My response was completely appropriate for a thread on “docoding woman speak” And YES I was certainly making a joke at her expense.
What courage does a Pit thread show? Because people are allowed to flame each other, you freakin’ moron? Sorry for being clever enough to incorporate my humor in a response to some uptight jerk who strolls into and tries to derail a joke thread that someone else started, that mirrors the SAME EXACT THREAD about man-speak, instead of opening some stupid Pit thread so I can rant like a two-year old who didn’t get his/her way.
Look, I certainly never advocated beating women. I don’t even think I said anything that should be considered that offensive unless you happen to be a woman who thinks that men should worship the ground you walk on.
What posts do people give as examples? A couple of obvious jokes? A brutally pragmatic response to a poster asking for advice on dealing with his overbearing girlfriend? Some thoughts on something I had encountered in a sociology book? I think you need to do better than that.
Occassionally I make some statements on the relationships between men and women. Sometimes I use my own material. Sometimes I quote something I heard somwhere else. It’s like those posters of a really good looking girl with a caption that says “somewhere there’s a guy who’s sick and tired of her bullshit”. It’s funny because there is an element of truth to it.
Maureen - Get over it. It’s been 4 pages already. You failed to make your case and I’m not going anywhere anyway so stop wasting your and everyone elses time. :dubious:
Guinastasia - Sorry I couldn’t be there for your offensive racial joke-fest. I’m sure it was hilarious :rolleyes:
See, this is the problem, right here. You think this is “brutally pragmatic”, that is, referring to a fact; you can call this brutally opinionated if you like, but it’s not brutally pragmatic, because it is NOT TRUE.
Look, on more than one occasion, you opine that ALL women are such-and-such unflattering, untrue thing. If I opined on more than one occasion that ALL black people are such-and-such unflattering, untrue thing, wouldn’t people have a leg to stand on if they started calling me a racist? Do you not see where we’re coming from in thinking that you have some kind of problem with women?
I, too, try to take people’s posts on a case by case basis. I try not to let disputes from one thread spill over into another, or color the way i view a poster is general. But, as you know, once you get it in your head that a certain person is a certain way, it can be hard to change your viewpoint.
For me, if i develop some sort of antipathy for someone, it usually involes particualr issues, or particular types of issues. Take the recently banned milroyj, for example. When ever i saw him in any thread verging on the issue of politics, i knew we were in for stupidity and unreflective gibberish, and i treated him accordingly. I had enough experience with him on matters political that i was no longer willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for his idiocy. BUT, if he appeared in a Cafe Society thread about movies or music, or an IMHO thread about “boxers or briefs?” (these are just made-up examples), then i did not treat him differently than any other poster.
But the fact is, once i see any poster act in a certain way on enough separate occasions, chances are my view of that poster will be colored by the experience, even if it is only in relation to one particular issue.
Sure it’s possible. I believe i even conceded that fact a little while ago. But it seems to me that when you’ve got a bunch of people who believe that what you say is hateful, it’s worth looking at the way you express yourself, even if your intention is not to offend.
And it’s not just a matter of being “hateful,” in the sense of yelling abuse or epithets at or about women. It’s a matter, sometimes, of ridiculous overgeneralizations that suggest a complete inability to deal with the diversity of women and women’s behavior. The quote provided by featherlou, four posts previously, is a good example. It may not have been intended hatefully, but it demonstrates a level of stupidity and oversimplification that bespeaks a reluctance to actually discuss the issue rationally, and a desire, rather, simply to outrage or offend. And i see no evidence that it was intended ironically or with tongue in cheek. I even when back to the original thread to check if the quote had been taken out of context, or if it had been part of a post that could conceivably have been intended as humor or irony. But i just don’t see it.
