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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!gargoyle!oddjob!apak
From: apak@oddjob.UUCP (Adrian Kent)
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d,net.women
Subject: Re: That's not funny!
Message-ID: <1174@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 15-Feb-86 03:09:39 EST
Article-I.D.: oddjob.1174
Posted: Sat Feb 15 03:09:39 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Feb-86 05:34:44 EST
References: <11841@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: apak@oddjob.UUCP (Adrian Kent)
Organization: U. Chicago: Physics
Lines: 85
Xref: watmath net.jokes.d:1516 net.women:9023
Summary: 


In article <11841@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) writes:
a long article in the continuing rape/.. joke controversy. I only excerpt and
comment on isolated pieces of it below.

>Consider the prostitute "rape" joke [..discussion follows ..]
>..  That's what makes the joke funny.
>But for those who didn't think it was funny the first time, it's too late
>now.  You can't read it again in all innocence the way you did the first
>time.  I don't think it's a question of not having a sense of humor that
>impeded Adrian Kent's understanding of the "rape" joke, but autodidactic
>revulsion at political incorrectness.  If I were conditioned into vomiting
>every time I heard the word "Belgium", I seriously doubt I could find any
>joke funny whose punchline is "Belgium".

 Why why why why why? No matter how many times I say it's not true, people
 seem to need to believe that I automatically react against the word 'rape'
in a joke. I don't. 

>(Frankly, I think AK was trying to score points against Woolley over in
>net.abortion, and had worked up to a nice mouth foam at the sight of the
>"rape" joke.  Reread the original posting.)

  Never let a smear go unanswered, Michael Foot used to say. (Much good it did
  him.) I profoundly disagree with Fr. Woolley's views on abortion, but what
  I'd actually been trying to do in that debate was understand them better.
  There was (and is) nothing synthetic in my reaction to the rape 'joke'.

>Let's consider another joke that has been denounced as sexist.  "If we can
>send a man to the moon, why can't we send them all?"  The humor comes from
>the totally different meaning of the two clauses, the obvious invalidness
>of the implicit logical deduction, and the not-so-subtle hint to malekind.
>I find that funny!  
 I too. 
 
>Let's consider another rape joke that hasn't been flamed yet.  If AK (or
>someone else who did not like Fr. Woolley's) DID find it funny, I'd like
>to hear about it.  The joke I'm refering to is the Alaskan hazing joke.

 I know it better in the version involving a crate of whisky, tiger and
 maiden, but I do find it funny. Now what?

>There was an earlier posting discussing rude Pakistani jokes circulated by
>violent bigots in England.  He included one rotated with warnings about its
>extreme offensiveness.  I found the joke funny, since here on the net, safe
>in this quiet terminal room, the harmful context was gone.  And I'm certain
>if I read it in the middle of the situation, I would find them funny.  But
 
 This explains a lot. I don't want to be unnecessarily insulting, but I can't
 imagine that anyone with normal human empathy would find the Pakistani 'joke'
 funny. I mean that quite seriously. Maybe I know forty or fifty people well
 enough to be reasonably certain about their reaction to something like this.
 I can think of one who might laugh, and he's (as far as I can tell) 
 completely without feeling for other people (he's also a racist, but that's
 by the way). Are the people I know that atypical? I leave it to the net to
 decide. The ROT-13'd 'joke' is repeated below. Again, I warn that I consider
 it EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE TO HUMAN BEINGS, ESPECIALLY PAKISTANIS OR VICTIMS
 OF RACIST ASSAULT.

Jung'f genafcnerag naq yvrf va n thggre?
N Cnxvfgnav jvgu gur fuvg xvpxrq bhg bs uvz.

>Exploding teacher jokes, whose *punchline* reveals the connection with the
>Challenger tragedy, are similar.  

No, they're not. They're not hate-filled or propagandistic. That makes a great
difference. Humor, like art, cannot be completely divorced from it's social
context. Things which are aimed by the powerful to attack the weak tend not
to be funny, for example. The Challenger jokes are just gruesome: in so far
as they have an underlying purpose it seems to be mockery of death. I found
one or two of them funny.

>Really, there is a simple way to deal with all these jokes you don't like.
>UNSUBSCRIBE TO NET.JOKES AND GO AWAY!  Thank you.  

And the endless, boring, essentially totalitarian refrain. Maybe you don't
like people analysing and criticising the subtext of some postings to
net.jokes. But we're going to do it anyway. You _could_ always unsubscribe to
net.jokes.d (and net.women, and any other forum in which discussion takes
place), if you don't want to read it.

>I don't care if the jokes get ruder or not, but I wish they would get funnier!

likewise redoubled in spades.
                             Adrian Kent