Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Boring Sexist Comedy

I have had an article published over at London Is Funny about sexism in comedy. I am secretly a bit gutted they couldn't manage to format the bingo card properly (also the headline is not mine, I just wanted to call it Boring Sexist Comedy but editors, editors,...) but hopefully readers can appreciate the main points...

4 comments:

UneFemmePlusCourageuse said...

That was an awesome article. Very applicable to America as well as Britain.

Unknown said...

Wow racism is seen as taboo yet you slag off Islam (technically not racist but near as damn it), you talk about burning people because "they are French", criticise practices of the indigenous Australians and you seem to take great joy in taking the p*ss out of Americans at every possible opportunity.

How hypocritical.

Cruella said...

Oh f*ck off!! Islam is not a race, it's a belief system - you choose to believe in it or you don't. I make jokes about every religion, thay're all as daft as each other. That's totally totally different from criticising someone because of their race, which they have no choice about. The French are also not a race. And anyway the joke is about the historic animosity of relations between the English and the French and what is funny is how incongruous that seems to modern audiences.

But in any case there is a huge gaping chasm of difference between an oppressor ridiculing the person or people they oppress and the oppressed making jokes about those who oppress them. Obviously.

In case you hadn't noticed Americans are not a race and also not an oppressed group.

And I make a joke about my sister-in-law not understanding the difference between a didgeridoo and a boomerang. It may be deeply offensive to my sister-in-law but since she is fictional no offense can possibly be taken.

I'm not going to discuss this any further, you really really don't get it if you can't see the difference between racism and jokes about religious beliefs.

Unknown said...

Since you believe that the French, Americans and any other nationality are not races it shows that you know nothing about the English language.

From the Cambridge dictionary:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=65069&dict=CALD

Race:

group noun [C]
a group of people who share the same language, history, characteristics, etc:

LITERARY The British are an island race.

From the OED:

race2

• noun 1 each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics. 2 racial origin or distinction: rights based on race. 3 a group of people sharing the same culture, language, etc.; an ethnic group. 4 a group of people or things with a common feature. 5 Biology a distinct population within a species; a subspecies.

Or British Law which defines a racial group as:

"any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin".

According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the term racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination.

According to The National Analytical Study on Racist Violence and Crime (Italy):

"Racism does not originate from the existence of ‘races’. It creates them through a process of social division into categories: anybody can be racialised, independently of their somatic, cultural, religious differences."

In other words although Islam is a belief system, any form of discrimination or derision would be construed as racism.

Again the Cambridge dictionary defines "cultural":

cultural
adjective
relating to the habits, traditions and beliefs of a society:

Making jokes about any religion in the way that you have should not be tolerated. There is already enough racial tension and we can do without people like you prodding the stick. If you don't like the ideology behind religion take the piss, nobody could really care less but when you start saying that if you believe in a particular belief system then you are going to become unpopular then that is discriminatory and that is vile.

Your holier than thou attitude coupled with your racist undertones really does disgust me.

"I'm not going to discuss this any further, you really really don't get it if you can't see the difference between racism and jokes about religious beliefs."

No, you've been called on your racism and you will now run away. Well done.