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.
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.
There are fair critisisms to make of OP’s post, this is frankly not a good one. The difference is that op is in community (here, on lemmy) with the person who posted the meme, and op is entirely justified in telling people they’re in community with that their behavior is harmful
We’re not taking about canceling someone or taking things off netflix, we’re talking about whether this platform with many trans people on it, treats trans people who are currently experiencing lots of vulnerability, with respect and care, or denigrates that already vulnerable group.
The argument that vulnerable people can’t critisize people they’re in community with for not treating them with care when they’re actively threatened, just because it happens in the form of a post of a comedian’s joke, sucks.
Personally, I pointed out this is a shitpost comm and the wrong place to vent, and that the images they’re comparing the referenced one to aren’t really the same thing. But please don’t tell vulnerable people they’re wrong to take issue with people posting hurtful things just because its a joke.
Jokes can still denigrate and disrespect people. People are valid to want to be respected as human beings while online, and are entitled to saying they as a vulnerable person feel the people they’re in community with are failing to treat them with respect.
Theyre also entitled to saying a joke from a comedians set sucks and treats them as a vulnerable group poorly too if they wanna. They have that right too.
And I totally agree. My point was that “it’s problematic” or “X person was offended” is not the only dimension to this. Comedians still make problematic and offensive jokes, even despite many waves of cancel culture. People still enjoy those jokes. Because sometimes a joke is not problematic enough to matter. If a million people find a joke funny and 1 person is offended, is the joke fine? What about 1000:1? Everybody has different thresholds. But if we simply say “if a joke offends anybody, then it should not be said”, then that would erase a very large portion of comedy. I don’t think we want that.
To be clear, I think it’s fine to call out a joke as offensive. But I also think it’s fine for other people to believe that a joke is harmless. Both opinions are valid and can be voiced. These things can only be gauged at the population level.