Humour and offence

I agree with the viewpoint but maybe not the tools.

Cutting off the jokes that are not acceptable, I feel forces the issue and leads to entrenchment by factions that want immediate change and those that want freedom of expression. That can certainly facilitate the schisms that lead to culture wars.

The trick is to get to a point where people collectively get to the same place with a minimum of division. It’s my opinion that simple market forces can get us there without forcing the issue. If a comic is free to tell whatever jokes they like but gradually find they aren’t making enough to keep a roof over their head because society has moved on, they will too.

Forcibly stamping it out or trolling only satisfies those who were offended. Everyone else still holds their views and factions just grow further apart. I firmly believe that a person shouldn’t not laugh at a joke because they think it is in poor taste. They should not laugh because they realise it isn’t funny any more. Others should not try and do that realisation on their behalf.

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Just wish Big Parma would come up with a vaccine to counter the “ if I determine something is offensive it must be so”, and “ I’m sensitive so you can’t say anything which upsets me and my view is gospel” infections that seem so prevalent today.

Boy does it seem like a 1984 Groundhog Day again.

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But that would make cheesy lines and hamming it up ok.

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That’s a reasonable position to take if it’s true.

Can you back it up? What’s an example of something you think is reasonable to say, that you would be prevented from saying?

There are words used to describe those in favour of restricting people’s freedom of expression and thought…

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It’s ok - finish your sentence! What words?

Society isn’t anarchy - there are many rules already which curb freedoms. It’s about finding a balance.

I’m all for a debate about where the line should be drawn. So let’s have some real examples - what is modern society preventing you from doing/saying/being?

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One example for me would be something you wrote earlier in the thread:

I really can’t fathom why anyone would consider that joke to be ‘not ok’. It’s not even a joke really, it’s just a fact. Kids are expensive, marriages are expensive.

As someone who isn’t married with children (yet), i can confirm that i have much more to spend on frivolous hobbies than my friends with comparable incomes do who are married. It has nothing to do with misogyny but just with changing priorities.

You however seem to find this remark offensive enough to use it as an example in this thread, so apparently it really bothers you and if you had the power you would have removed or censored it (right?).

The remark itself is not offensive at all, the misogynistic implication is put in there by you, not by the original poster. Maybe the guy’s wife earns more than he does, who cares, he likely would still have more money to spend on his personal hobbies as a bachelor.

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It’s not what I am prevented from doing it’s what others are prevented from doing.
Try criticising your government in Iran, stand up for democracy in many countries, try practicing your chosen religion in many states.

Mmm

It’s true, that is possible and I could have taken it out of context. I didn’t report it (and wouldn’t). But my view is that a remark that implies a wife is an ‘expense’ is mysoginistic.

Now, whether he meant that or not, true, I can’t be certain. But it is a common enough sentiment.

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What does that have to do with this topic, though?

It’s great ofcourse that you can also see the other side of this issue.

I do think however that is what @ChifChaf meant when he said:

“if I determine something is offensive it must be so”

People are very eager to shoot from the hip these days when it comes to political correctness, and they follow their personal interpretation of what was said/written rather than making sure the implication was actually meant in that way.

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Sure but I’m still short on actual examples of things people want to express that they can’t.

Change creates nervousness, of course. Who wouldn’t rather keep things as they are. But what, really, is stopping people from being themselves? Who actually wants to call something “gay,” for example, intending the remark to be derogatory?

Indeed. But a perception that you can’t be who you want to be needs to be backed up by examples. What are you being prevented from being? And who is preventing it?

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On the Naim forums there is a general rule that when posts are flagged for being offensive they are removed. So if you would have flagged that earlier post, which would very well have been possible since you did perceive it to be offensive, it would have been removed by the moderator(s).

The same happens with a lot of posts in the jokes thread: someone subjectively perceives a joke as offensive, flags it, and boom it’s gone.

There was a thread about old advertisements in which @TheKevster posted a few historical ads that today would be considered racially insensitive, and a few other ads were posted that today could be considered misogynistic. Boom whole 50+ post thread gone.

To me that is unnecessary censorship, especially if there is meaningful or historical information posted that is confined to it’s proper context.

Funny enough, i have a few gay friends and my former business partner of 18 years is gay, and they use the term all the time in a humorous way. “Oh man that’s so gay”. Is it less offensive when it’s said by a gay person? It’s difficult to say…

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You observed that less tolerance is a good thing.
I don’t agree and cited examples where less tolerance is problematic.
Most people tend to believe that their view of what should be tolerated is the one that should hold sway. Once you accept that intolerance as a general principle is justified you are effectively into a Darwinian contest to assert your particular set of intolerances.
I prefer to start from the principle that intolerance is only justified where significant harm otherwise arises. Mere offence doesn’t meet this threshold.

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That’s just ridiculous, the world is not black and white. If anything’s offensive is this assumption of if you say/do/think X it must be because of Y. There’s this saying, assumption makes… This is exactly what I meant when I wrote that context can’t be ignored.

FWIW, my gf contributes far more to our finances than I do, we share the childcare for our daughter, and the cooking, more or less equally. I guess the traditional bit is that she does more of the laundry and I do more of the DIY. Not by any design where either of us thinks it’s their or the other’s job, it just happens to work out that way. I probably get her a wine more often than she gets me a beer. etc.

Yet I do enjoy a “sexist” joke. That does not mean I would want our relationship to be any other way or believe in some 50’s ideal. And I know plenty of people like that. We see them as just that, jokes. Maybe I’m some kind of dinosaur, but as @feeling_zen says, market forces should take care of that. I generally agree with what he’s said so far, far more eloquently than I ever could I might add.

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I agree.

What we need to determine is what constitutes ‘harm’.

An Irishman joke, for example, told by an Englishman, is generally going to be offensive. The ‘stupid Irishman’ trope. The funny part of the joke is the idea of a fool doing something foolish. The fool doesn’t need to be labelled as an Irishman for it to be funny. So, why did the joke use an Irishman as the fool?

There’s only one answer - whoever wrote it a) had that perception about Irishmen and b) they thought it would be relatable to others with that view.

After decades Irish people got a bit sick of being portrayed as fools. And certainly it was not helped by centuries of questionable treatment by the ancestors of those telling the joke.

An Irish person being self deprecating about themselves is another matter. But that’s quite different from someone else making fun at their expense.

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I think it is a different matter, yes. Humour at one’s own expense is different to using other people to get a laugh.

Context is of course everything too. Billy Connolly sailed close to the line many times, but I think it generally was understood as observational comedy rather than actually laughing at a group.

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I agree that context can’t be ignored.

But if someone makes a joke about their expensive wife, in a relationship where she might not be in paid employment, that’s generally not on. Consider all the examples of men divorcing their wives and moaning about how much of ‘their’ money they have to pay out

The gay people i know usually use the term to describe straight people that say or do anything outrageous, so i guess it’s a grey area…

In The Netherlands we have commonly themed jokes about Germans and Belgians. Some of those jokes can be quite crude, for instance ones that relate to the war which is still somewhat of an old wound culturally.

The jokes about Belgians sometimes imply that they are a bit dense.

Does that mean we don’t like Germans or Belgians? Not at all, we love our neighbours and we consider them to be good friends. They equally have their own jokes about the Dutch, that we are cheap for instance, and that is totally fine.

As a Dutchman, jokes like the one below are just really funny to me, i can only laugh about them:

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