Everyone see the problem now?
For those who don’t get the point, one of the top posts on all of Lemmy at the moment is doing this same thing. Mocking a (shitty) man by saying he “looks trans” now. That’s not ok.
Since it’s one of the most upvoted things on Lemmy at the moment it seems like an awful lot of people here don’t understand that that isn’t alright, so I’m trying to highlight it for them.
Well I don’t think they “look trans” because honestly I don’t really know what that would look like
So a meme mocking a guy’s looks by saying that he “looks trans” is… insulting to trans people because it’s saying there is such a thing as “looking trans”… and also more insulting to them because it’s before and after images in which the person looks goofier after, so it is considering “looking trans” to be synonymous with looking goofy.
Make sense now?
You are very good at intentionally ignoring the points people make. Have you been practicing?
For decades. Most of you are not the brightest knives in the drawer, and I’m never wrong.
You know what I walked into this not noticing the cunk profile picture. Carry on, soldier.
As mentioned earlier, the OG meme already acknowledged that it could be problematic. As jokes often are. Whether or not something could be a problem, and whether or not it actually becomes a problem, are two separate things.
So yes, it could be a problem. But it also could be insignificant. It’s up to the audience to judge.
Edit: a word
Edit: ok wait I misremembered. I thought the OG meme acknowledged it, but it did not. I was thinking about some of the comments on the meme, which both acknowledge the problematic nature and say that it’s funny nonetheless
https://lemmy.world/post/50729865
Tell me where you see this acknowledgement. All I see is mocking a man for “looking trans.”
Leaving it up for the audience to judge is how blatantly racist and discriminatory jokes get told all the time in certain places and people think that’s an acceptable world view to have.
See my edit. I misremembered. Turns out I was remembering some of the comments I read, not the OG meme itself.
Give me a 1 hour special of any comedian, and I will point out how some of their jokes can be problematic. Sometimes it’s just not problematic enough to end up causing any harm.
No… you’re conflating something being popular with something not causing harm. This meme has dozens of down votes. Trans people are a very small percentage of the population. It could have been deeply insulting to every one of them who read it, regardless of whether or not other people upvoted.
A thing being popular with the general public does not mean that thing isn’t causing harm to a lot of people, just that it isn’t causing harm to the majority of people. That’s why we try to protect people in the minorities. Because assuming things are alright unless they somehow manage to outvote everyone else on every offensive meme isn’t logical or right.
I never said that something being popular meant it wouldn’t cause harm. I’m talking about potential vs outcome. This joke might cause harm, and it might not. And that just because it has the potential to cause harm, does not mean it will actually cause harm.
And unfortunately, due to millions of confounding factors, it’s almost impossible to track down whether or not one specific action had a harmful outcome. So it comes down to people’s best judgement. All you can do is point out the problematic nature (which some people did) and see what everybody else thinks.
But just because people disagree, does not mean that they don’t acknowledge the problematic nature. They just might not think it’s significant.
You don’t get to determine when mocking a group does or does not cause significant harm. That isn’t something we leave up to a group vote. If this post said he looks gay instead it would likely be gone because that’s something that has had longer to filter through lots of thick skulls and be understood as not alright.
You don’t have to track down the actual harm caused by a given thing. It’s very simple. Don’t make posts that mock people for “looking trans” or “sounding gay” or “acting black.”
Actually I still see tons of posts in the shitposting community that poke fun at gays.
If we went by your rules then all 1 hour comedy specials that make problematic jokes (aka all of them) would be taken down.