Tag Archives: humor

When Is a Joke not a Joke?

Laurie and Debbie say:

(Cross-posted on Feministe)

Our internet neighborhoods are buzzing over a particular piece of April fool nastiness, in which a movie reviewer, whose April Fool’s pseudonym is the rather descriptive L. Ron Creepweans, for Locus Magazine (the most prominent news magazine in the science fiction/fantasy world) thought he could be funny by posting a satirical little piece about WisCon (the world’s first and largest feminist science fiction convention, which both of us go to and love). We’ve written about WisCon before.

To tell the end of the story first, Locus staff immediately apologized and took down the article and has since pulled Mr. Creepweans’ posting privileges. As a reviewer, he had the ability to go onto the site and post material no one else had seen. He’s trying to riff off an incident a few years ago in which an invited guest of honor said some Islamophobic things on her blog (not, as our joker says, “in the mildest possible terms”), deleted the comments when people showed their anger, and was disinvited as a guest. His April Fools’ “story” relates how WisCon’s “ruling committee” was going to force all attendees to wear burqas “in sizes small to 5X” to keep from offending Muslims by the “by the amount of sinful and wanton flesh” on display at WisCon, and also to “eliminate ‘rampant looksism.”

To ice the cake, he used the name “Belle Gunness” for the WisCon chair. Unknown to most folks, the real Belle Gunness was a serial killer at the end of the 19th century.

Since the story was pulled, Mr. Creepweans is feeling very good about himself. Traffic to his own blog spiked, and we’re sure he’s getting a lot of adulatory fan mail, along with the angry letters and comments from WisCon members and supporters. And he gets to feel all censored and attacked since the piece was taken down so quickly, but lives on in Internet screen captures.

It’s almost impossible to read this story and not think about last week’s Internet storm around Adria Richards, who decided to take some pix of the guys at the tech conference telling “big dongle” and “fork” jokes while sitting behind her, and tweeted the pix to the world at large. She has since been fired for this incident. She has also joined the legion of women bloggers who have received volumes of nasty rape and and death threats when they speak out.

But, hey, it was April Fool’s Day! But, hey, those guys were just sitting in the audience talking to each other! But, hey, you’re just perpetuating the stereotype that feminists have no sense of humor!

(If you believe feminists have no sense of humor, come to WisCon sometime and check out Ellen Klages, Tiptree award auctioneer. But we digress.)

What makes a joke funny is a combination of the actual wit and humor used and the context. It’s really easy to get laughs about groups or stereotypes (or individuals) that you and your audience both hate or despise. The right audience will love whatever you say about “those people.”

When your audience is diverse, then you have to be genuinely funny. On an Internet news site, whether it’s a specialty news site like Locus or a general news site like CNN, it’s impossible to keep your jokes from finding the “wrong” audience, the one that doesn’t appreciate how you trash their culture.

Creepweans took everything he’s ever heard–and hates–about WisCon: Feminists go there! They were mean to a potential guest who was just telling the truth about Islam! Lots of them are fat! They get angry easily! They claim to be welcoming! He then tried to wrap his stereotypes up into one finger-pointing, body-shaming, misogynistic anecdote. It is extremely difficult to be mean-spirited and funny at the same time. Creepweans isn’t.

Feminist Enough?

Debbie says:

At first, I was just amused by the Tumblr page “Is This Feminist?”, which has the tagline “Because being a marginally acceptable feminist is a full-time job.”

The concept is pictures of Women Doing Things, with short text explaining why, no matter how feminist–or harmless–the Things They Are Doing may seem, there’s always some way to cast them as problematic. And then there’s a humorous twist.

Here are two examples:

 

This woman is texting a friend about her date. IS THIS FEMINIST?  Frankly, it’s appalling that you think we might endorse antiquated, stereotypically feminine behavior like “texting your friends about your dates,” or “telling your friends about your dates,” or “having friends.” However, this particular woman is texting her friend to say that her date was Zorgon, the All-Powerful, and that after their date he teleported her to a glowing void dimension in which there was no space nor time, only unlimited free wireless. So, we’re fine with it. This woman is REPRESENTING FEMINISM. For now. 

This woman is texting a friend about her date. IS THIS FEMINIST?

Frankly, it’s appalling that you think we might endorse antiquated, stereotypically feminine behavior like “texting your friends about your dates,” or “telling your friends about your dates,” or “having friends.” However, this particular woman is texting her friend to say that her date was Zorgon, the All-Powerful, and that after their date he teleported her to a glowing void dimension in which there was no space nor time, only unlimited free wireless. So, we’re fine with it. This woman is REPRESENTING FEMINISM. For now.

This woman is watching a sporting event of some kind. IS THIS FEMINIST?  No. The culture of sports is a sort of miniaturized warfare, which incites the individual to lose him- or herself in identification with his or her “team,” in a proto-nationalist fashion, making him or her complicit in an exercise of brutal, organized physical domination of the enemy “team.” Thus, sporting events create and support a patriarchal conception of “power-over” in which victory — and thus worth — is defined by physical domination and conquest of the Other. It’s still feminist to watch “Friday Night Lights,” though. PROBLEMATIC. 

This woman is watching a sporting event of some kind. IS THIS FEMINIST?

No. The culture of sports is a sort of miniaturized warfare, which incites the individual to lose him- or herself in identification with his or her “team,” in a proto-nationalist fashion, making him or her complicit in an exercise of brutal, organized physical domination of the enemy “team.” Thus, sporting events create and support a patriarchal conception of “power-over” in which victory — and thus worth — is defined by physical domination and conquest of the Other. It’s still feminist to watch “Friday Night Lights,” though. PROBLEMATIC.

There’s lots more, and it’s all funny. Whoever is behind this page (anonymous, as far as I can tell) has a really good grasp of feminist rhetoric, and knows how to twist it to make it ridiculous.

When I got past the giggling stage, and thought a little, I decided that I was seriously impressed. The mysterious Tumblr-er’s underlying point is not only valid, it’s important.

Social awareness, like everything else, is a bell curve–the vast number of people are in the middle, and the further we are to one extreme or the other, the more aware we get of how different we are from that vast number of people in the middle. And everything they believe and do and say starts looking problematic to us–generally because it is problematic, based on our values and what we think is important. It’s inevitable (and in fact, it’s a good thing) that this makes us scrutinize everything, from texting to sport, from doing science to doing laundry.

And the more we scrutinize everything, the more problems we find. If I take this scrutiny far enough, it’s easy to get to the point where I can’t get out of bed in the morning, because what shoes to wear, what soap to wash with, and what tasks to do first are all completely entangled in what’s problematic and why. And if I don’t take awareness far enough, I’m more part of the problem than I am part of the solution. And, to recomplicate matters one more time, every person’s definition of “too far,” and “not far enough” are different.

Self-aware, informed laughter is one of the very best ways to navigate this dilemma. So I’m grateful to the anonymous Tumblr-er who gave me a set of good giggles and a useful new way to think about how radicalism works.

Thanks to Feministe for the pointer.