Randolph I recently navel-gazed about what it means to be funny. While I do believe in free speech, there has to be a limit on speaking freely when it hurts other people.
The recent news about James Gunn and Roseanne Barr reminded me that I have some pretty twisted jokes on this site, some of which have followed me around since I started my website in 1995.
I’ve deleted about 15 pages’ worth. That sounds like a lot, but you won’t miss them. Baby jokes, momma jokes, blonde jokes, that kind of thing. Some of the questions you were too afraid to ask have been removed, edited, or gender-flipped.
Sexism is like racism. There are two requirements for racism: discrimination (the most obvious one), and a power dynamic that favours the discriminator. With tastes and norms changing (as they should), sexism and racism are no longer funny. It is just as offensive to make jokes about people of colour, people of Polish and Jewish extraction, as it is to make jokes at the expense of women, if these jokes are simply predicated on outdated shallow stereotypes enforced by those in power. This goes for rape jokes too, EVEN IF THEY INVOLVE CATHOLICS!
America seems to have lost its sense of humour (again), where even joking about things is construed as supporting the thing. So some other jokes have gone.
Look, it’s good that the world is changing. If I don’t change with it, I’m just becoming your racist and sexist “uncle” (we need a non-gender-specific word for siblings of parents).