Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site frog.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!frog!wjr From: wjr@frog.UUCP (STella Calvert) Newsgroups: net.jokes.d Subject: Figure-ground offensiveness theory Message-ID: <633@frog.UUCP> Date: Sat, 8-Feb-86 22:53:59 EST Article-I.D.: frog.633 Posted: Sat Feb 8 22:53:59 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 14-Feb-86 03:30:12 EST References: <119@midas.UUCP> <1094@druxo.UUCP> Reply-To: wjr@x.UUCP (STella Calvert) Organization: The Church of the Holy Starship Lines: 65 Keywords: hit "n" if you hate to think Summary: probably offensive to someone In article <1094@druxo.UUCP> nap@druxo.UUCP (ParsonsNA) writes: >> Didn't think >> something you saw on it was funny? Tough. Don't read it then. >Would you be among those that also advocate that if blacks (or women, or >whatever) don't like discriminatory behavior directed against them, they >should stay away from places and people where it is found (i.e., stay in >their place)? Well, it works for me. I'm a woman, and at least a few different sorts of whatever, and that, is precisely what I do. If someone does/says something I find stupid, I let them know why I'm leaving and go away. Their loss. It seems to me that the offensiveness of jokes is a figure-ground problem. By this I mean that no joke _I've_ ever heard is universally offensive. (Though _I_ wouldn't tell the "pizza doesn't scream when you put it in the oven" one to anyone, I first heard it from a Jew, and can't recall EVER hearing it from a goy.) If it weren't for the net volume problem, (and possibly the gross volume problem too...) I'd offer some small prize to the first person to post a joke that no-one _could_ find offensive. Note that I said, "could find". We are each unique. We each have our own individual soft spots. I recently flamed a few folks for telling jokes I considered stupid and homophobic as well as being about AIDS. My excuse? (which doesn't _excuse_ a lapse of sanity of that order) I had just heard that an old friend was dying of AIDS. But the "I've been raped" joke tickled me, since I equate force and fraud, and tricking someone into a sex act by fraud therefore IS rape to me -- not legally, perhaps, but according to my ethical standard. So any joke, I think, plays on the tension between our values (whatever they are) and our suboptimal society. One of the personal-growth practices I've been working on is stamping out my aversions to thinking about/discussing all sorts of things. Because it seems to me that whenever I am offended, I can take it as a sign from the gods that there is some area about which I'm not thinking clearly. There's a difference, I think, between being able to discuss, even joke about things, and condoning them. And unless we can share our attitudes in the relatively non-threatening form of jokes, I doubt that we can ever come to show our love of each other in our actions. And as to John Woolley. It seems to me that he's getting flamed for a joke that other posters might well have gotten away with. I prefer to take my very real disagreements with him to the newsgroup in which he riles me, rather than taking any chance I find to jump on his shit. A favor. Maybe I'm dense, but I took the "homophobic" accusation against the "change for a ten" joke to be a metacomment on the tendency of some members of the net community to find offense in everything. I've been stranded in a paperless stall, and searched with growing desperation through my purse for _something_. If I have missed a genuine homophobia in that joke, you could do me a great favor by sending me mail, since I would stop telling that (presently funny) joke, since gaiety is something I don't NEED to joke about. STella Calvert Every man and every woman is a star. Guest on: ...!decvax!frog!wjr Life: Baltimore!AnnArbor!Smyrna! !SantaCruz!Berkeley!AnnArbor!Taxachusetts Future: ... (!L5!TheBelt!InterstellarSpace)