political correctness is so gay

[sophiaserpentia]

I worry lately that i'm losing my sense of humor. Leftists in general seem to be a rather humorless lot when it comes to society and politics, but i'm not convinced that's a bad thing, since most political "humor" is dehumanization and ridicule.

Lately i've been thinking a lot about Robert Heinlein's take on laughter and humor in Stranger in a Strange Land, that it is a response to pain. Any quantum of humor involves a situation that occurs at someone's expense, but since laughter involves the release of endorphins and reduces our stress level we're inclined to think it's a good thing. Since a lot of humor involves a hint of the unexpected, i will guess that it involves the startle response. But if we didn't have ways to relax the startle response, we'd be overly cautious and aloof, frightened by everything and everyone, incapable of friendship and love.

One major result of "political correctness" has been raised awareness of the ways in which certain styles of humor occur at the expense of oppressed and exploited people, and therefore contribute to stereotyping. That which is laughed at widely enough becomes that which is laughable.

As a transperson i know this probably better than most of you, because sometimes people will laugh simply because they look at me. I am walking ridicule, just add eyesight. There are so many jokes that involve men dressed as women that the very perception thereof elicits the humor response. Like rubber chickens or eyebrow glasses, a man in a dress is just inherently funny. And yet, some of those jokes are funny to me too. So what am i supposed to do, curtail my sense of humor?

"Political correctness" in speech simply means having some consideration for people who by way of oppression are at a social disadvantage. Many jokes that men enjoy about women, for example, are not funny to women at all, but instead are hurtful. They contribute to the othering and dehumanizing of women. The same goes for racist jokes, and so on.

A lot of the resistance i see to "political correctness" seems to be a kind of "awareness fatigue." Being forcefully made aware of disadvantage or discrimination is definitely an imposition. However, that awareness is already being imposed to a much greater degree on the people who live with the oppression. The expenditure it takes to be "politically correct" in one's speech is miniscule compared to the expenditure of being oppressed. (There are ways in which PC has been misused, particularly in cases where people have lost their jobs, and trust me, that annoys me just as much as it annoys you.)

So there is open rebellion and backlash against "political correctness" which essentially comes down to, people are tired of being asked to show one another human decency. They want to be allowed to make "lighthearted" remarks at the expense of women or Jews or black people or queers. And, look at all the race jokes Mel Brooks has made, and no one accuses him of being a racist. (Of course, Brooks's use of irony to deconstruct racism is a whole other topic...)

One recent form of this that i'm not sure how i feel about is renewed use of the pejorative, "Oh you're being so gay," as a way to put someone down for being in their judgment overly sensitive. Mostly i see this among people in their late teens and early twenties, who have grown up in a world where homosexuality and queer people are on constant public display. Much of the time people who use the word this way either are queer or have demonstrated their alliance to the queer community. Thus the implication is that this is a "lighthearted" use of the pejorative, as if one can use the term that way and still be in rebellion against bigotry rather than in support of it.

The nuance is complex. Is it a deconstruction of homophobic stereotypes? Or does it signal tacit support for them? The boundary between what is funny and what is offensive is more of a fractal than a nice straight line.

Comments

[legolastn.livejournal.com]

The usage is much broader than "overly sensitive" IME. "That's so gay" seems to me to be roughly equivalent to the use of "That's so lame" or "That's so retarded," which of course are/were other popular pejoratives. Bad, stupid, annoying and/or uncool are some possible "translations." The cultural ideas transmitted in these phrases seem to me to also overlap at least partially with the idea of the "square."

And I've seen some people spell it as "ghey," perhaps in an effort to distance it from reference to sexual orientation and thus make it less offensive?

It's still early so I hope this makes some kind of sense...

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

Well I can't speak for anyone else, but my own disenchantment with PC-ness and fatigue about it isn't based on an awareness fatigue, but more is based on frustration with the fact that it seems that no matter how hard I try, I can never be PC -enough-.
I am semi-constnatly getting slammed, shushed and shut down, often quite aggressively, for -something- I've said somewhere along the way, mostly because I dare to talk at all. I'll be talking about something inoffensive and I'll find that I've been vegan-insensitive because I hate hummus and am talking about a meat dish I once had. I'm being New Ager insensitive or Naturist offensive. Furry intolerant. I'm cat-person offensive (Not kidding, I got tagged with this one once, in class).
I find that I am no longer allowed to hold a less than positive -opinion- about ANYTHING or anyone without being accused of some form of political incorrectness against some whole group of people who are now claiming marginalized space. Whether they actually -are- marginalized or not. Like the Christians sudden claim of "help, help, we're being oppressed" when they clearly are NOT.
The whole PC dance of extreme nonoffensiveness gets very old, very fast. This is where my personal backlash comes about. I'm fine with everyone affording each other a basic measure of respect and humanity when speaking, but I'm sick to death of talking without speaking and having everyone around me shush me and silence me, invalidating my perceptions in the name of the continuation of all of us dancing around the essential nature of our shared reality. Truth speaking of any sort is right out.
Carlos Mencia did this -amazing- comedic piece recently showing this yellow traffic sign that had a picture on it of a man, woman and child running across the road. It's a sign you find quite a lot in San Diego. Everyone knows what this sign means, and to prove this Mencia went to man on the street interviews with San Diegans of various ethnic and class distinctions. Everyone knew what that sign meant, yet when Mencia went to this city official about it, the man was so carefully schooled and determined to be PC that he would deliberately cloud the intention behind the sign. "It means pedestrian crossing.." "It's about foot traffic awareness on the highway..."
Finally Mencia got tired of the dance and he pretends to turn the camera off. He then tells the guy speaking "Ok, the camera's off. So just between you and me, what's this sign for?" The man doesn't miss a beat. He says "Wetback crossing. It's to warn motorists not to hit the wetbacks running across the border over the highway." Boom. The truth. The reality. 30 minutes into the fact and we're just -now- off record, allowed to actually get down to discussing what's really going on.
Using the PC terms for things doesn't change people's reality or their perceptions in all their inequality. We all still know what's going on. Those who view that category of people as less or laughable or contemptable are just substituting the new name for the old one - in public.
PC-ness to me, has become a nice little verbal sandstorm of obfuscation that never changes the reality but totally screws with our ability to percieve or describe our reality to one another. We can't seem to ever get a firm grip on what's really going on under the cover of flying particulates and that seems to be serving the priviledged classes very, very well.
For me, I'd rather return to the practice of truth speaking, even if that means I'm going to get hurt by words again. Plain, honest, unPC truth gives us someplace -real- to start the work of fixing what's broken, rather than just dressing it up and pretending that it's fixed.

Re: It's still early so I hope this makes some kind of sense...

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Ok, but why couldn't the man have called it pedestrian crossing? Those *are* pedestrians. Or even Mexican crossing, or illegal immigrant crossing? Why is it somehow more accurate to call people wetbacks? Would a similar sign in a black neighborhood be more correctly described as nigger crossing? Would a sign in the Castro in San Fran be more accurately described as faggot crossing?

Granted, vegans don't have the right to lambast you for talking about eating meat in conversation. Cat people don't have the right to call you a catperson oppressor for saying you don't like cats. Ridiculous. Opinions and life choices are one thing. Using an insulting word when a less-insulting one would do as well is another thing.

reposted with correction

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Having lived in the South for most of my life, i haven't been much exposed to the kind of high sensitivity you're describing.

It seems to me that what you're describing is kind of like the pendulum swinging the other way; for so long, when people used language they were never asked before to consider how their language use affects other people and perpetuates hurtful concepts. So there has perhaps been some excess in going the other direction. Open awareness of how language affects perception and shapes our interpersonal relationships is a new and unprecedented social experiment. That will i think balance out over time.

Another aspect of that is the trap that many liberal activists fall into of policing one another to watch for the slightest breach of ideology in one's words and actions, when attention should really be focused outward. That's a whole rant in itself, which will come out once i can find a way to articulate it.

The other issue you raised though is a serious one:
"Using the PC terms for things doesn't change people's reality or their perceptions in all their inequality. We all still know what's going on."

My answer to that is to suppose that the real beneficiaries of language consciousness will be our children. "It's too late for us," as the old cliche goes, because our brains have already been wired. The fact though that we all know about the prejudice underlying it does not mean that it is completely futile. Why should we surrender to it?

[zarfmouse.livejournal.com]

Any quantum of humor involves a situation that occurs at someone's expense, but since laughter involves the release of endorphins and reduces our stress level we're inclined to think it's a good thing. Since a lot of humor involves a hint of the unexpected, i will guess that it involves the startle response.

I don't think this is true at all for "any quantum of humor". I don't think of laughter as having to do with being startled anymore than an orgasm does. I think the endorphins from laughter are a reward from the brain for giving it a new and novel set of things to connect/associate. The brain is a big associative map of concepts and jokes very often involve a juxtaposition of concepts that wouldn't normally be connected. The brain rewards us with laughter at the punchline because the joke has made the brain a better thing. I know that I often feel like laughing when I look at something very new and very beautiful...certainly the sun setting behind the mountains in Denali National Park is not at someone's expense and it wasn't startling. It was new and it slightly reconfigured my brain and my brain awarded me for bringing it that experience.

Of course, the fact that laughter represents a reconfiguration of the concept map also adds weight to the idea that laughing at stereotypes can be dangerous. Too much of that laughter really could represent a solidification of prejudice in the mind of the laugher.

You alluded to Mel Brooks' deconstruction of racism through humor. I think that's something to consider in greater detail as well. Perhaps the telling thing about a stereotyping joke is whether we are laughing because the joke associated a behavior with a type of person or we are laughing because the joke associated an absurd conclusion with a stereotype. In the latter case we "learn" something about stereotypes, we leard how absurd stereotypes are, and so we ultimately laugh at the existence of the stereotype and the sorts of illogical conclusions the stereotype might lead us to. That laughter is a positive thing.

There's a definitely grey area among jokes where for a given joke some people might laugh for good reasons (deconstructing their stereotype) and others might laugh for wrong reasons (reinforcing their stereotype). Can we condemn a comedian because some people don't get the subtlty of his joke?

Finally, unrelatedly, there is an interesting book called "The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education" by John K. Wilson which talks about how since Reagan the conservative movement has manipulated the use and meaning of the formerly light-hearted term "political correctness" to paint themselves as victims of some kind of cultural censorship. The book goes to great lengths to show that this is simply not actually happening and that there has been a huge perception of a rise of liberal political correctness based censorship that just isn't happening (at least not in academia). It is a really interesting read, very eye opening about just how much a few conservative think tanks and politicians can fundamentally manipulate and redefine a cultural concept for an entire generation.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I don't think of laughter as having to do with being startled anymore than an orgasm does.

Yes, it is probably a mistake on my part to attribute the working of humor to any one thing. I recall reading that laughter corresponds to a kind of resonance within the brain -- so a widescale conceptual remapping does seem to be part of it.

It does give us some insight into the way that humor can be directed *at* oppressed populations in order to objectify and dehumanize them. This in turn makes it easier to compete with them for scarce resources... while projecting outside of one's self the awareness that they are knowingly taking advantage of another person's disadvantage.


Can we condemn a comedian because some people don't get the subtlty of his joke?

Hmm. How is it that we can tell Mel Brooks isn't a racist, whereas we can't tell Sam Kinison wasn't a homophobe? A lot of it has to do with delivery and context, I suppose. An audience takes what it wants, in many ways, but I think the commedian deserves at least some of the blame (or credit).

Thank you for the book recommendation. Yes, the conservatives are those who had the most to lose from language awareness, so they are the ones with a vested interest in demonizing its proponents. The agenda becomes clear with the advent of the frightening "academic freedom" [sic] movement.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Aww, thank you. :)

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

It's common to say feminists have no sense of humor. But what most people are referring to when they lob this accusation are "jokes" or "entertainment" that is grossly misogynistic. Who is amused by rape and incest jokes or jokes in which a woman is shown to be stupid? Who benefits from the common acceptance of such jokes without a blink of the eye? Similarly, who benefits from jokes which make a presumption of an undesirable stereotype of gay people, people who are not white and anglo saxon, etc.?

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yes, the accusation that we "just can't take a joke." "What are you so upset about, it was only a joke, everyone knows i was only kidding." That response to the complaint of misogyny says a lot; it normalizes hateful "humor" and therefore the stereotypes on which it's based.

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

I am a survivor of incest. People are routinely astounded to find I don't object to incest jokes. ("That's an awful big word for a nine year old...")

I also gleefully enjoy and seek out jokes about my race/religion (Swedish Lutheran) and hobbies. I understand and am okay with the fact that steretypes are often based on general truths about groups of people and from the outside these commonalities can be amusing to other groups, and if we allow them, ourselves as well. I find that being able to joke about the stereotype is very different from belittling an actual abuse incident.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

I do strenuously object to them. I don't find child abuse funny, ever.

[lordsluk.livejournal.com]

racist jokes can be funny without being insulting. my friend who has an african american wife says, he's not in love he just has jungle fever. its racist but not in a humiliating way. afterwards breaks the ice and people will ask more personal questions about racist attitudes he has come across.

i often make a joke about my disability when i'm at a party with new people. i notice people are more relaxed around me afterwards. I say something like "i'm not really disabled i'm just really lazy" or if people are talking about a sexual issue i say, "sex with the disabled is by definition kinky sex."

off color humor can be used properly or it can be used to disguise hate. the humor itseelf has nothing to do with it.

when Micheal valentine smith Groks humans and starts laughing at the monkies, he never loses his compassion for humans or monkies. in fact he becomes MORE compassionate. his humor doesn't hide hatred or harden his heart.

if humor is used therpeutically it will diffuse the hate and bigotry.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

That's all about the context. Showing that you're willing to be light-hearted about certain subjects can indeed put people at ease. This is one of the tactics recommended by transsexual activist Kate Bornstein.

Of course, when you tell a joke about disability your goal is not to objectify yourself but to do the opposite. So i wonder if we can think of that as the original, emancipatory use of humor, versus humor used in the service of objectifying people and perpetuating stereotypes as a kind of misuse or misappropriation.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The consensus i'm seeing is that different people have different levels of tolerance or enjoyment of tasteless humor. So any one answer to this question is not going to work. Generally people wait until they get a sense of a person before sharing a tasteless joke, and that's probably the best policy.

The "oppression trump card" seems restrictive, but then we are as a society becoming aware of how endemic oppression really *is*. None of us want to be conspirators in it, but we all are, in large part because we don't really have a choice (see my posts about this being a cannibalistic society), and we've just learned strategies to keep that awful truth from being obvious.


Policing the words does not necessarily police the thoughts, and on the flip side, indulging in offensive humor doesn't always indicate that someone is broadly prejudiced or insensitive.

This is indeed one of the limitations of a broad approach. Any approach to humor has to be sensitive to nuances. I think it comes down to discerning the intent of the person making the joke.

i've got a White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) joke for you...

[merlot-winters.livejournal.com]

why don't southern women like group sex? too many thank-you notes!

how many WASPs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

why two, of course! one to hold the ladder while the other climbs up it, unscrews the first light bulb (make sure that it's cool enough to handle!), hands it down to the person holding the ladder, then screws in the replacement light bulb until you meet resistance.
why would you want to ask such a silly question like that?

[chimpstop.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you are self aware enough to realize you might have painted yourself into a grime and grumpy corner.
Remember: Not all humor is based on making fun of subgroups. Monty Python rose to fame and fortune by making fun of British Normalacy, and they are one of my biggest humor imprints.
I don't tell jokes so much as a crack wise and deliver sudden satire, usually on people who take what they are doing too seriously.
Have to remember the wisdom of one of my ancestors: I haven't lived your life, or even experienced a day of it, so I am in no position to judge whether or are dealing with your situation in the best way possible or the only way possible.
But, it does seem obvious to me that you share the same Sin of restriction that I often fall pray to, Taking one's self too seriously. But if you've spent your life feeling like EVERYONE is laughing at you, it may be impossible to laugh at yourself when you know you are being dorking, even within your own value judgement framework.
And my sense of humor is not completely based in the human model, I spent a chunk of my early childhood around dolphins, with their warped and wicked sense of humor, and some chunks of my adult hood around Bonobos, who have their own odd nearly human sense of humor, which is nothing compared to Orangutan Humor.
Dogs and Cats, our closest client species, have a pretty wicked sense of humor if you let yourself observe it.
On an odder note: I once avoided getting my ass kicked, or having to tear off some one's arms, by laughing at some one who was leaning over me while I was relaxed on a couch, until he ran away screaming in frustrated and freaked out undirectable rage.
I'm gonna email you an image that a week ago left my SO uncontrollably laughing for nearly 30 minutes, I am eager to hear your response to it.
Any way, just my twenty cents worth on this topic. It's my personal opinion that the loss of the ability to laugh or find anything at all fun is the first step to loosing the ability to experience joy. I know you see yourself as an X-Thelemite, but if you can't find value in the line "Existence is pure joy." you may find becoming less and less tolerable as the decades drag on and on.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Actually i had Monty Python in the back of my mind while writing this post. As you say, they don't pick on subgroups (with the possible exception of furries) but even their absurdity occurs at someone'e expense. Somehow humor doesn't seem as bad if the person is deemed by the audience to be worthy of the deprecation, or if the person is using it to disarm apprehensions. The self-deprecating jester acknowledges his or her social disadvantage but jokes about it in order to show that he or she is not outwardly bitter about it.

It's hard for me to be convinced that everyone isn't laughing at me. Why shouldn't they? I belong to two groups it is still perfectly acceptable for anyone to insult or laugh at at any time for any reason, fat people and transsexuals.


It's my personal opinion that the loss of the ability to laugh or find anything at all fun is the first step to loosing the ability to experience joy.

You might be on to something there. I still like sex though...

[chimpstop.livejournal.com]

If sex stops doing anything for you, then it's pretty much over, cept for cooking and gardening...

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

"Robert Heinlein's take on laughter and humor in Stranger in a Strange Land, that it is a response to pain."
Are you familiar with Arthur Koestler? One of his books treats humour ... I think it's "Ghost in the Machine".

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I don't believe I've read anything by him.

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

In some circles he's best known for a short novel, "Darkness at Noon", that showed the dynamics of a Stalinistic regime ... super-creepy.

You gringos are all crazy.

[kwarizmi.livejournal.com]

As a Mexican living in Mexico, I can tell you this: American people are a source of neverending humor for us, for a slew of reasons... including your (to us) absurd notion of political correctness.

Mexican culture allows us to be very appreciative of the absurd. I suppose there's a defense mechanism in there somewhere... I'm not inclined to psychoanalize my own culture. But the simple fact, which we will gleefully point out to any American person who comes within our conversational clutches, is that with regards to political correctness, the emperor is wearing no clothes.

To us, a person of African heritage is a negro, a Native Mexican is an indio, a person of Asian descent is a chino, an Anglo-Saxon person is a gringo. These are all extremely loaded words! But the allow a great deal of meaning to be conveyed, not all of it exclusive or discriminating or dehumanizing. Because it's not really a label if you can pick it up and wear it yourself.

A Mexican will, for instance, complain about overwork by saying "estoy trabajando como negro", or is he's making good money from his overwork, will tack on a "... para vivir como blanco" (to live like a white man/"cracker"). I can't imagine another Mexican being offended by this sort of comment, whether they be African-Mexican or European-Mexican or what have you. "No seas indio!" is a common castigation for uncouthness, used even if the speaker (such as myself) wears his Native Mexican heritage literally on his face.

Such expressions simply do not translate. A Caribbean person of African heritage (there are quite a few of these in Mexico) will call you "mi negro" as a term of kinship, which is emphatically NOT the same as "my nigger", even if the speaker is an African American.

(My attempt at PC-ness in the above paragraph is frankly exhausting... to a certain extent because it feels redundant and pedanthic, and not in the least because American culture has appropriated most of the constructions that express political correctness. This is not a problem, since you gringos came up with it... no Mexicanito could be so thin-skinned.)

I suppose that Mexican culture somehow assumes that people will not wear their sensitivities on their sleeves and that any division or distinction made along racial-gender-cultural lines is not cause for politics. There is no such thing as the Native Mexican agenda in Mexico in the sense that there may be a African American agenda in the US.

In the matter of "gayness", colloquial Mexican Spanish distinguishes between the homosexual male who may or may not be femenized ("joto"), the femenized male who may or may not be homosexual ("maricón"), the male crossdresser who may or may not be homosexual ("vestida"), the male who unmans himself through cowardly, underhanded or deceitful behavior who may or may not be homosexual ("puto"). There are at least a half-dozen other words someone could use, but I'm limiting myself to what one would hear every day. A similar surfeit of words also exists to describe female homosexuals.

I think the whole "that's so gay" issue may be just a vocabulary problem. It's a known fact that every generation of Americans know and use fewer words of English. Meaning and nuance is bound to get obfuscated when you only have a so many words and no rich tools to construct meaning and context like, say, Mandarin or German does. A young person may be trying to say "that's so unmanly" or "that's so unseemly", but simply does not know the word.

Re: You gringos are all crazy.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as the Native Mexican agenda in Mexico in the sense that there may be a African American agenda in the US.

Not even in Chiapas?

What you're describing is what American culture looked like not all that long ago. People thought it was no big thing at all to make joking references to one's class or race or effeminacy and no one took it seriously at all, after all it was "just a joke."

But then people started to think about how these things made them feel and people realized that these things are more hurtful than we thought. It started to dawn on people that this use of language is one of many things that serves to "normalize," make invisible, discrimination and exploitation. To many of us, that's not acceptable.

Perhaps you are better off without race politics. I don't know. Maybe we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater. It's a valid question.

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

A good friend, just this morning, totally unrelated, posted this. I thought you might appreciate it.

(don't let the last line throw you for too big a loop - she works in the porn industry)

[amazonatheart.livejournal.com]

As a transperson i know this probably better than most of you, because sometimes people will laugh simply because they look at me. I am walking ridicule, just add eyesight. There are so many jokes that involve men dressed as women that the very perception thereof elicits the humor response. Like rubber chickens or eyebrow glasses, a man in a dress is just inherently funny. And yet, some of those jokes are funny to me too. So what am i supposed to do, curtail my sense of humor?

Well, technically you AREN'T a man in a dress...you're, I'm not sure of the p.c. terminology, but something like 'becoming-woman' maybe would be a better term. When a "guy" puts on a dress, yeah it's meant to say, "Look at me"...but when you put on a dress, it's more about who you really are than some cheap cheap comedy.

besides, I guess I already see you as a woman.