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Why do we laugh at sexist jokes?

Why do we laugh at sexist jokes? published on 1 Comment on Why do we laugh at sexist jokes?
Post about stereotyping, cliche
thinking gets stereotyped,
cliched image

Let’s say you view love as a battlefield. Okay, more like a football field. Dating, sex, relationships, marriage– they’re all a series of skirmishes against the other team, aka the opposite sex. You compete with others on your own team as well, fellow Men players and Women players, but when push comes to shove it’s really your team against their team. When you get together with fellow teammates, you make fun of the other team with abandon. Sometimes you even do it in their presence. It’s expected; it’s normal– why wouldn’t both sides of a rivalry do that? And hey, it’s all in good fun. More or less. Because after all, you’re going to be playing on this field for your entire life. You will never stop playing, and neither will they. As a straight person, that’s what you’re expected to do– it’s all you can do. Right?

That’s what you’d call an adversarial model of sex and relationships– a zero-sum game, in which men and women are two sides in a conflict, each trying to get what they want from the other. Generally speaking, according to this model what men are trying to get is sex with the hottest women possible (and eventually marriage with the most virginal) while women are trying to get married to the wealthiest, most high-status men, and the behavior of both sexes can be read as performed in pursuit of this goal. Both the “is” and the “ought” here are taken as a given, and since the goals of men and women generally differ, they are eternally at odds with each other and can be expected to engage in various forms of manipulation in order to get what they want. Sure, at times this will result in love– but never complete trust, because the goals remain different even though they overlap. You’re in competition amongst (straight) people of your own sex because you all want the same thing, and also with people of the opposite sex because they also all want the same thing, and they want it from you. Hopefully.

If you don’t view relationships this way yourself, you probably know people who do. When there aren’t members of the opposite sex around they’ll talk about how crazy women are, or how stupid men are, secure in the belief that you not only won’t mind but will actually appreciate these comments, because after all you’re on the same team. You’re just one of the guys/gals, and we’ve got to stick together. Bros before hos, and whatever the female equivalent is. I’m pretty sure there isn’t one, or at least there isn’t an actual slogan that women employ for this mentality. We are not, however, exempt from that kind of thing.

I was thinking about this while reading Miri at Brute Reason’s excellent post discussing research on sexist humor. Her post covers studies which found a correlation between appreciation of sexist jokes and permissive attitudes toward sexual assault and rape, and it’s a must-read. The most interesting portion of it to me, however, was this:

Men who found the jokes funny also tended to score higher on a measure of adversarial sexual beliefs, which is basically the idea that men and women are “adversaries” in the game of love and that women will deceive and manipulate men to get what they want (therefore it’s also a measure of good ol’ sexism). The study had female participants, too, and for them, the degree to which they enjoyed the sexist jokes was also correlated with their endorsement of adversarial sexual beliefs, but not with their self-reported likelihood to rape or any measure of aggression.

It actually hadn’t occurred to me that if you’re one of these people– male or female– who views sex and love in adversarial terms, you’re not only likely to likely to appreciate sexist jokes, but likely to appreciate (or at least not be offended by) sexist jokes against your own gender. That is, if you go through life assuming that people of the opposite sex are in some sense the enemy, trying to manipulate members of your sex into getting what they want, you’re not likely to be surprised when they make jokes at your gender’s expense. In fact you’d expect this, because it’s not like you can have a battle with only one side fighting, can you? It’s all in good fun to trash people of the opposite sex because a) it’s so true (that’s why we’re laughing), and b) hey, they do it too.

Now, the studies Miri discusses weren’t conducted to examine adversarial thinking in relationship to sexist jokes specifically, so I’m extrapolating from this. But I would hazard to guess that if the jokes told had been sexist toward men rather than toward women, the men wouldn’t have been terribly bothered and might well have laughed, again in correlation with the extent to which they think in adversarial terms. And this makes quite a bit of sense when you consider that a lot of the jokes which poke fun at people based on their sex do so in both directions. It’s staggering to think about how many comedians have built their entire careers trading on such stereotypes, male and female, and they’re usually at least implying some not-so-flattering things about their own gender while appearing to attack the other. Often unintentionally, but still they are.

So if this is all true, it gives you something to think about when, for example, discussing why a woman would laugh at Seth McFarlane’s “We Saw Your Boobs” song at the Oscars. That song celebrated adversarial thinking, without a doubt. And when a public figure makes a joke, song, commercial, speech….really any sort of performance that transmits a message which turns out to offend people, the first thing those who enjoyed/agree with it do is find examples of people the performance supposedly mocked, hold them up, and say “Look at this– we found a woman/person of color/homosexual/citizen of that country/member of that religion who thinks it’s funny/true! Therefore it’s not offensive!” Every. Single. Time.

In the case of sexism, maybe this is the explanation for why. Not because the joke isn’t sexist, but because they share a mindset with the person making the joke which permits them to enjoy it along with them, even though it’s sexist in their direction. Because hey– it’s so true. And they do it too.

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In related news, it’s a travesty that this Kickstarter will almost certainly not be funded. If you’re interested in the general topic of offensive jokes, consider supporting it even if you don’t like this post from me. Even if you think I’m absolutely wrong– especially if you think so. Because if so, that documentary might bolster your case. 🙂

Forward Thinking: What is the purpose of marriage?

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Libby Anne and Dan Finke at Patheos have started a project called Forward Thinking, which is a series of questions they put to bloggers to encourage them to think productively. The replies to these questions are then rounded up and a new prompt posted. This is my second crack at it. The first can be found here. This round’s question is actually three questions, so I’ll answer them in order.


What do you believe should be the purpose of marriage in our society today? 

The purpose of marriage is to confer government and societal benefits on people who have established what they intend to be long-standing attachments to another person who isn’t a relative by blood or adoption, because these are considered to be the basis of new family units and turn individuals into households. Do I believe that should be their purpose? Sure, I suppose. It’s awfully handy to have what you already consider a binding attachment to someone officially recognized, because otherwise the people with the most legal control over your life besides yourself, who will get to inherit your stuff and make decisions for you in the event of you falling into a coma, are your family. And family can be wonderful, but sometimes it isn’t. You didn’t choose your ancestral family, but you can choose your spouse– sort of. So marriage, as practiced in places where it isn’t arranged, can be a means for the individual to have some more autonomy that way. But I think realistically, marriage results in less autonomy overall. When we think about freedom most of us don’t think first about who will get our stuff when we die or who gets to decide whether to unplug our brain-dead selves from life support if such necessity should arise, but rather our daily existence. And marriage gives another person, and the government, more control over our daily existence. Most people seem happy to make that trade-off, however, and sociological research says that married people are happier in general.

Another thing marriage does is prioritize certain kinds of relationships– namely, romantic ones (again, in places where marriage is not arranged). There isn’t any particular benefit to the rest of society if two (or more) people fall in love, and the benefits they receive by being marriage don’t require them to love each other. Romantic love is a pretty strong glue, and I’m not saying that people who don’t love each other should get married, but there are other kinds of love besides the romantic variety. Other glues are good too. I don’t see any particular reason they couldn’t be just as good for sticking people together and calling it marriage.

What do you personally see as the purpose of marriage for your own life? 

As discussed in my recent post on getting rid of the “premarital” in “premarital sex,” I’m not married. And it’s not because of some scary precedent set in my own family– my parents just had their 45th anniversary and are going strong, and both of my brothers are in happy marriages. My eldest brother got married in 2009, and prior to the wedding my mother and I had an interesting exchange. It went something like this: “Your brother is going to be the best man, and her sister the maid of honor…you won’t be part of the wedding party.” “Oh, that’s okay– I still get to be there!” “Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t mind.” I’m really not very into weddings.

And, an even bigger indicator, I’m not into having kids. At all. Both of my brothers went into marriage expecting to have kids, which is good— that’s something you should definitely figure out ahead of time, in case your spouse-to-be does not! But I attended that wedding in 2009 with my boyfriend at the time, whom I’d been with for ten years. Not a smidge of a desire for kids in either of us, and unmarried. And, not too much later, we broke up. I don’t think that had anything to do with our not being married– if we had been married, we would have had a divorce on our hands rather than a break-up.

So I guess at least at this point, the purpose of marriage in my life is nil. While I’m quite capable of loving and being in love, and while a big party with my family and friends with nice gifts and a vacation following sounds awesome, that’s like thinking you want a dog because you like puppies. Don’t get a dog unless you want the dog.

And finally, what responsibilities, duties, and/or obligations do you believe marriage should entail?

I don’t like being all normative about other people’s relationships– there is no one-size-fits-all model for the perfect marriage, just as there isn’t for any other committed relationship. So I’d say that the same applies for both, which is that a successful relationship is most likely for two (or more) people who want the same things (mostly), and are able to work out between them how to go about getting them. This generally means setting standards for themselves and expectations for each other, and then following through on those. If your relationship doesn’t forbid X and someone else’s does, then in their relationship it’s a responsibility to avoid X while in yours it is not– and vice versa. Relationship advice columns are not completely useless because there are some things that most people in relationships can be counted upon to want– that doesn’t mean, however, that there’s any particular reason they should want them, aside from the fact that they do. Your relationship, your rules.

If that’s the case, then the best ways to fail are a) failing to meet expectations that have been set in your relationship, and b) failing to set any expectations at all, just assuming that your partner already knows everything you expect, presumably by osmosis or something. The best “duty” to have in a relationship is to communicate. To say what you want and think and how you feel, and then listen to what your partner wants and thinks and feels. If you don’t do that, what’s the point of being attached to them in the first place?

Review: Hope Springs

Review: Hope Springs published on 1 Comment on Review: Hope Springs

I went to see Hope Springs this afternoon with my mother, who has been married to my father 44 years. Kay and Arnold, Meryl Streep’s and Tommy Lee Jones’ characters respectively, have only been married for 31 years, a fact which Arnold slings around throughout the film in order to justify his opinion that nothing’s wrong with his marriage.

If you’ve seen the previews, you know why– as could be expected without seeing the previews, he is the unwilling half of the couple. He is, frankly, an asshole. Not a charming curmudgeon, though the packed audience (we’d intended to see the film earlier in the day, but that showing was sold out) with a mean age of about 50 years laughed at his antics in shock that he could be that much of a…well, asshole. And Kay is a smiling doormat of a wife, before she decides to fund a trip to Maine with her own money so that the two of them can go through “intensive” marriage counseling with Steve Carell’s character, Dr. Feld. And then she actually returns to doormat status for a good portion of the film after that.

Also as you might expect, it’s a tough job to condense a “we have to fix our marriage” story into 100 minutes and the movie does fail at that, although Streep, Jones, and Carell do so well in their roles that you almost don’t care. I am rather bitter about a couple of fully clothed sex scenes– not that I wanted to see a full-on nude sex scene while sitting right next to my mother, but because it reeked of “We don’t trust our audience not to be grossed out by showing people older than 40 or so having sex.” This is a movie with extensive conversation between those people about sex, but apparently including so much as fallen trousers on Jones or bare shoulders on Streep would be just too squicky. That actually means that the sex scenes are no less uncomfortable in the way that sex scenes can be uncomfortable; they just come accompanied by the bizarre conclusion that the reason the sexual aspect of Kay and Arnold’s marriage has been so abysmal might just be that they insist on all sexual activity be performed while covered well enough to gain admittance to a Hasidic business in Brooklyn.

I’d gone into the movie thinking that Steve Carell would be playing the marriage counselor comically, and was very glad to find that wasn’t the case. When Arnold makes fun of him late in the move by impersonating him, it’s difficult to tell at first who he is pretending to be and what he’s trying to mock…but that gives you a further indication of Arnold’s character, which is a refreshing change from the “severely grumpy for no apparent reason” state that he inhabits for most of the film. Don’t get me wrong; Jones is excellent at that…I just wish he’d been given more to do, more evident motivation for what he does. Really that’s a small quibble, but it does make Kay’s dogged devotion to him seem mysterious. The power imbalance that exists between them when this story begins clearly wasn’t there when the relationship began and the interactions between Kay and Arnold don’t really explain it, though they do focus a spotlight on various places along the way where things went wrong, where one party didn’t make his/her intentions and devotion clear to the other, with unfortunate consequences to come.

In that regard, Kay and Arnold’s relationship is quite generic– their problems are commonplace, even old-fashioned. When “forced intimacy” (Arnold’s term) is prescribed by their counselor, they are more awkward than the most unpracticed couple of teenagers, which is hard to believe even of a husband and wife who have slept in separate bedrooms for years. Most of the audience laughed at these instances, a blend of humor and sympathy, but not too much empathy I would guess. The score is cloying and at times very heavy-handed, but it certainly does its job. All of the supporting actors are wonderful– and all are given names and categorizations even if those things are never stated in the film. Elizabeth Shue is Karen, The Bartender. Ann Harada is Ann, The Happy Wife. Damian Young is Mike, The Innkeeper. And so on.

In sum? I’d say– see it, with your parent(s). Or with your children, depending. It might not be the most original of stories, but that could actually be a strength given how expertly it is told. See it, if you’re older and married or ever plan on being so. It’s a view on life that is worth gazing through, especially if it has never occurred to you to do so before. As Arnold notes at one point, a lot of things change in a relationship over time. New elements arise, and others disappear. This movie is a reminder to pay attention.

How not to be creepy

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I listened today to the inaugural episode of the podcast for one of my favorite blogs, Dr. Nerdlove. The podcast is called Paging Dr. Nerdlove, hosted by Harris O’Malley, and the first episode is about how to avoid coming off as creepy when meeting new people– specifically, how nerdy males can avoid creeping out females they meet, for example at Dragon Con, PAX, Comic-Con, or other nerdy gathering.

I think it’s helpful– or it could be. As with the blog, the advice given on the podcast will only benefit people who want to hear it; who acknowledge that they have some difficulty which needs to be addressed. When the difficulty is avoiding freaking out the person you’re talking to by coming off as threatening, however, it seems like it’s an all-or-nothing deal– either you care about not coming off as creepy and therefore you don’t do it, or you don’t care about seeming creepy and therefore would not even listen to advice on how to avoid it. The people in the latter group might recognize that sometimes chicks do not respond to them well at all, but their next step will be to 1) blame the chicks, 2) read up on how to become a PUA (pick up artist), and then 3) join a Men’s Rights group.

That’s how it would seem to me, that is, and the advice given on the first episode of Paging Dr. Nerdlove is very, very basic. If you genuinely do want to avoid seeming creepy yet are not quite sure how to go about accomplishing that, this is the podcast for you! I do genuinely hope it helps a lot of people. I guess I’ve just been informed too many times that if a woman feels creeped out by a man’s behavior, it’s her fault because she chooses how to feel. He didn’t make her feel anything, so he has no obligation to alter his behavior and how dare she demand that of him. So long as he’s not actually sexually harassing her, he’s not doing anything wrong!

Yeah, this is one of those cases in which the normal human conception of free will tends to fly right out the window– you can make someone laugh, but you can’t make someone feel creeped out apparently. That’s an instance in which a person’s behavior has absolutely no bearing on how the person who was the designated recipient of such behavior ends up feeling. It’s a sort of creepiness apologetics, designed to allow creepy people to go on being creepy without having to admit that that’s what they’re doing. I’m skeptical about the chances of such people ever bothering to listen to this podcast.

But hey, not everyone is like that. Loads of people read Dr. Nerdlove the blog, which includes a lot of suggestions on a regular basis that assume they’re doing something wrong and recommend how to fix it. That’s what an advice column/blog/podcast is for, after all. Let’s hope that just as the blog reaches so many of the right eyes, this podcast reaches the corresponding ears.

Some actual good relationship advice on the web

Some actual good relationship advice on the web published on 7 Comments on Some actual good relationship advice on the web

I know, it’s hard to believe. But hear me out in appreciating Madame Noir for the article 8 Dynamics That Should Never Exist in a Relationship (formerly “8 Things Women Think Are Normal In A Relationship That Aren’t,” which was a wise change). Since it’s a list, each item must have a title. And each title appears so obvious upon reading it that you might wonder why anyone would need a list to inform them that these particular dynamic sshouldn’t exist in their relationships, but then it’s not the titles that matter most– it’s the descriptions and examples. Most of us tend to think we have good relationship sense, especially after we’ve had a few or a dozen, but we can also forget that that a relationship doesn’t have to be outright abusive in order to have problems that need to be addressed. The section on “royal mentality” reminded me of this. Yes, the whole thing is written for women…but men, I know you can overlook that and benefit from it anyway.

Dealbreakers

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What’s the point of having a dealbreaker list that you share with the world?

I’m mulling this question over in my head after my blogroll linked to a post called “Dealbreakers” on Big Think. It was inspired by a post with the same name at Pandagon, which was in turn loosely based on 1) a series of essays at GOOD, and 2) an essay commenting on the dust-up at Gizmodo after one of their editors posted a rather harsh account of her disappointment upon inadvertently hooking up with a Magic: The Gathering champion via OkCupid.

The essays at GOOD are partly about the central factors in the end of relationships. That’s not a dealbreaker to me. A dealbreaker, I think, is a relationship preventative. Something you say from the outset: “I will not date someone who is/has/does ________.”

A moral dealbreaker, I can see…the sort of thing you believe should be a dealbreaker for everyone, because racists/homophobes/Republicans/Democrats/libertarians/pro-lifers/pro-choicers/whatever deserve no love. But what’s the point of declaring to the world that you don’t want a man who likes bicycling, has a beard, doesn’t like cats, is into sports, and so on? Is society trying to come to some sort of consensus on what the sexes want from each other, and desperately requires your input?

I suppose part of what bugs/amuses/saddens me is the knowledge that in the abstract, questions like “Would you be okay with a man/woman who has/is/does (insert turn-off here) if he/she also has/is/does (insert multiple turn-ons here)?” are incredibly difficult if not impossible to know the answer to. Sure, you might think you know…but when that person actually comes along, you might surprise yourself. You might even find yourself smitten with a Republican!  And what will happen then– will the world end? I doubt it.

Yeah, it’s okay to have preferences. Far be it from me to suggest otherwise, or that these should be set aside lightly.  I’m not even necessarily saying it’s wrong to make those preferences into principles and adopt a my-way-or-the-highway attitude about them (which is what constructing a dealbreaker list amounts to, really).  But really, do the geeks/bearded men/bicyclists/Magic players/dog-lovers of the world need to know that you’d rather swallow a bug than date one of their kind? Does such an announcement accomplish anything aside from making the announcer look rather naive, petty, and callous all at once?  I think so. Which is why I can’t figure out why it’s such a popular thing to do.

*scratches head*

Some random musings on “forever”

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When I lived in Denmark, a friend told me that no one there receives a prison sentence longer than fourteen years, regardless of their crime.  I’ve since learned that that’s not true, but the idea still baffles and appeals to me, and that has nothing to do with the specific number.  It’s because it suggests that a body of people have cumulatively decided that “forever” isn’t a punishment, that a life sentence is inherently no longer about the perpetrator but instead about desires for revenge on the part of the victim, the victim’s friends and family, and the greater society.  The thought of locking someone up and throwing away the key is immensely satisfying when they have done something to hurt you horribly.  I don’t mean to be at all flippant about this, but it just seems to me that people have a cognitive disconnect when it comes to thinking about “forever” or even “for the rest of your life,” and it gets in the way of our concepts of morality.  I don’t think that anyone should commit or be committed to something forever, or for the rest of their lives, because there is no way for them or us to properly conceive of what that really means.  Our understanding of time just doesn’t allow us to do so.

I’m relatively young, but not very young.  I realize that as you age, the years tend to run together and zip by in a way that would be literally incomprehensible to someone a decade or even a few years younger.  It doesn’t seem like you have changed much between five years ago and today, even though the individual years between when you were fifteen and sixteen or even twenty-five and twenty-six seemed instead like eras.  Still, a person can change dramatically in the span of a single year– any year.  Anyone who has watched their parents virtually turn into different people immediately after retirement, for example, is aware of this.  And yet from the inside, it seems like we’ve been basically the same person all along.  Naturally.  It would be very disconcerting if we didn’t, because the sense of “me being me” would be lost.  It’s common to hear someone say that she is no longer the person she used to be, but when saying that the person is almost always referring to a certain aspect of her character that has changed– not that she went through a complete change in terms of who she is. And yet that’s precisely what often happens.

I can’t help but think of the reactions I’ve heard to Jesse Bering’s theory about a cognitive constraint that prevents us from conceiving of the cessation of existence.  Basically, he argues, we believe in life after death because we are unable to conceive of being dead.  It’s impossible to do so, because there is no way to be conscious of the fact of being unconscious.  The immediate response is “Of course we can!  Do we not dream when we sleep?”  Sure we do, but that’s not real unconsciousness– real unconsciousness would be awareness of nothing, not even dreams.  Real unconsciousness isn’t sleep; it’s a black-out. You feel nothing during it, but you can sure feel terrible afterward.  Even if you’ve done it, you haven’t experienced it because experience during it is impossible.  In the same way, we think we can conceive of forever, or “for the rest of my life” or “for the rest of his/her life,” but we really can’t.  We can conceive of a really long time, because everyone has experienced a really long time, but that’s as close to “forever” as dreaming is to death.

It’s impossible to tell whether this conclusion is the product or the cause of many of my thoughts about justice and morality, but it is certainly connected either way.  It’s why I consider the death penalty to be more compassionate than a sentence to life in prison, for example.  Make no mistake; I oppose the death penalty– but I oppose life imprisonment more.  Given the chance to be Queen of the World for a day, I would abolish both but allow prisoners to opt for death at any point in their sentencing if they decided that was preferable.  But that would be a penalty they would have to carry out transparently and by themselves.  As horrible as the reasons for and means of committing suicide can be, I consider it a fundamental right, and perhaps if more people agreed with me on that, the means would become more humane for everyone involved.

I cringe when I hear people speak blithely-but-seriously about someone going to Hell, or even saying, as atheists often do, “I wish I believed in Hell so that he/she could burn in it.”   Do you really?  Do you honestly wish that you believed there is a place where people will be tortured forever?   You aspire, in other words, to be the worst sadist imaginable and regret that you’re not?  Because that’s what wishing eternal torture on someone entails.  If you were a sadist-in-practice in this life and tortured someone on your basement in the most merciless way for thirty years, behaving like…I don’t know, a Reaver from Firefly, it would be but a paper cut in comparison to an actual Hell.  Not even that, actually, because of course nothing can be compared to infinity.  How long would it take for your torture to become meaningless?  To become as much torture for the inflicter as for the inflictee?   A shorter time than I’d guess for people who like to invoke this lunatic notion, if they’ve even considered the idea in the first place.  And yet I’m not willing to convict them of sadism precisely because of that– I don’t think they have actually thought much about it.

At the opposite end of the spectrum (one would hope)– “I’ll love you forever.”  Really?  Are you sure about that?  Unconditional love is a nice-sounding idea, but loving someone who has decided after twenty years to become an ax murderering child rapist isn’t exactly a positive character attribute even if you manage to achieve it…and there’s no particular reason why you should, regardless of what Charles Manson’s many female admirers would say.  I would posit, actually, that most if not all of them admire him precisely because of the acts that caused him to be imprisoned in the first place.  If he were to be released and decided to take up a career as a janitor in Montana, much if not all of the attraction would probably be lost.  Again, a personality change over time.  There’s a good reason, I think, why such sentiments as “IIIIIIIII will always love yoooooooouuuuuu” are referred to as “sweet nothings.”  They sound sweet but literally mean nothing, if you’re doing it right.  There are a lot of stupid reasons to stop loving someone, certainly, but a heck of a lot of good reasons as well, and there’s no way to know which ones of either variety are going to crop up until they do.  Surely if you love someone for who they are, you should continue to love them for who they are.  Right?

What prompted these thoughts?  Something very mundane, actually, but still important– a discussion on whether people who have committed to a monogamous relationship are allowed to cheat, if something catastrophic happens which effectively kills any chance at romance.   Dan Savage’s answer is “yes,” if the cheating functions as a kind of pressure release valve which enables the sex-desiring partner to stick around.  But what got me thinking about “forever” was mainly the comment thread in which people discuss  what pledging your life to someone can and should mean.  As a Buddhist might point out, the only permanence is impermanence.  We’re all changing all of the time, and that’s a good thing.

There’s a thought I try to keep in mind.  I debated getting it tattooed, but it’s not exactly elegant wording– clumsy as hell, actually– so have decided against that.  Nevertheless, I try to live by it:
Life is short, so take it seriously.  But life is short, so don’t take it too seriously.