Post by The Hatter on May 13, 2007 12:46:28 GMT -5
I'm going to state this one time. If people want equal treatment, I'll give it to them, if they don't I'll give them that too.
Something happened to me today a work that I thought I should tell you about, and gauge peoples reaction, and get their opinions on it.
I was standing around at work with some of the guys that I work with on our lunch break. We stood outside, smoked and joked around before we had to go back in. Durring this time, my friend Sean told a joke, that by nature was abit controversial because it's punch-line was jokingly dregrading the female gender. This must be keenly understood. Sean is not a mosogynist. He has a wife, and a new son and loves his wife very much, and respects what women put up with on a daily basis. But like all men, despite sexual prefference, there are times when you just get fed up with the female gender for a period of time and feel the need to poke fun at them.
Now before any girls get up in a tizzy, I hang around with you all alot too, and you do the same thing, if not moreso than most of the guys I hang around with.
Moving on. After the joke was over, all the guys, myself included got a chuckle from the joke. Well a woman came up to the door from her car and asked what we where laughing about. We all fell silent at this question untill I spoke up and said, "We where laughing at a joke" to which she said "Oh really? Can I hear it." I warned her that the punchline was alittle degrading to her sex, she said she didn't mind and so I told it this time instead of Sean. She looked at me like I had just poo-ed all over the carpet. She said that the joke wasn't funny and I should be ashamed of myself for finding it thus.
This pissed me off for one reason or another, and at the time I couldn't figure out why. I stood there in mute anger for a moment before looking at her and teller her this, "You asked, I told you that you might not have wanted to hear it, and you insisted so I told you. You have no right to be pissed at me. Females want equal treatment, right? Well if I told you it was a guy joke, you would have thought that I didn't want to tell you because you where a woman and wouldn't get, thus calling you stupid, and you would have been offended then too. So either way I walked away the bad guy. If I have a black joke, and I couldn't tell it in Dayton, then I don't need to tell it. If I have a cripple joke and I can't tell it to a guy in a wheel chair, I have no right telling that joke to anyone. Same thing applies here. Whether or not you got offended is your own problem. If you want me to "Clean up my jokes around ladies" then you are telling me that you want SPECIAL treament, and not equal. So therefore, telling me that, you are telling me "Aj, you need to do this because I can't handle this, and so you should aquiest to my request as a lesser being because I don't have the mental capacity to deal with it on a personal level." That's what your telling me?" To which she replied No. Then by all accounts she can't be pissed at me anymore, because she wants equal treatment so I'm not going to appologize.
I'm sick of everyone getting this backwards. I have the right of free speach weather or not people like what I'm saying or not, I'm not going to make applogies to people if I offended them and I give them due warning, or didn't know the cirumstances at the time. If you tell me, your brother was beaten to death because he was gay, I won't make gay jokes around you, because now I know the cirumstances, and the joke is innapropriate for the situation at hand (Yes I still make gay jokes despite my sexual preffernce.), however I will not have a problem making a joke once your gone, because then your not there to hear me say it, and thus the conversation had nothing to do with you directly despite being tied to you though the subject of homosexuality. This goes for anything else as well.
People don't know how to take a joke anymore. I make racial jokes from time to time, why.....because their funny. I make black jokes, I have alot of black friends, I make Latino jokes, my boyfriends family is from South America...etc. People need to lighten up...
Something happened to me today a work that I thought I should tell you about, and gauge peoples reaction, and get their opinions on it.
I was standing around at work with some of the guys that I work with on our lunch break. We stood outside, smoked and joked around before we had to go back in. Durring this time, my friend Sean told a joke, that by nature was abit controversial because it's punch-line was jokingly dregrading the female gender. This must be keenly understood. Sean is not a mosogynist. He has a wife, and a new son and loves his wife very much, and respects what women put up with on a daily basis. But like all men, despite sexual prefference, there are times when you just get fed up with the female gender for a period of time and feel the need to poke fun at them.
Now before any girls get up in a tizzy, I hang around with you all alot too, and you do the same thing, if not moreso than most of the guys I hang around with.
Moving on. After the joke was over, all the guys, myself included got a chuckle from the joke. Well a woman came up to the door from her car and asked what we where laughing about. We all fell silent at this question untill I spoke up and said, "We where laughing at a joke" to which she said "Oh really? Can I hear it." I warned her that the punchline was alittle degrading to her sex, she said she didn't mind and so I told it this time instead of Sean. She looked at me like I had just poo-ed all over the carpet. She said that the joke wasn't funny and I should be ashamed of myself for finding it thus.
This pissed me off for one reason or another, and at the time I couldn't figure out why. I stood there in mute anger for a moment before looking at her and teller her this, "You asked, I told you that you might not have wanted to hear it, and you insisted so I told you. You have no right to be pissed at me. Females want equal treatment, right? Well if I told you it was a guy joke, you would have thought that I didn't want to tell you because you where a woman and wouldn't get, thus calling you stupid, and you would have been offended then too. So either way I walked away the bad guy. If I have a black joke, and I couldn't tell it in Dayton, then I don't need to tell it. If I have a cripple joke and I can't tell it to a guy in a wheel chair, I have no right telling that joke to anyone. Same thing applies here. Whether or not you got offended is your own problem. If you want me to "Clean up my jokes around ladies" then you are telling me that you want SPECIAL treament, and not equal. So therefore, telling me that, you are telling me "Aj, you need to do this because I can't handle this, and so you should aquiest to my request as a lesser being because I don't have the mental capacity to deal with it on a personal level." That's what your telling me?" To which she replied No. Then by all accounts she can't be pissed at me anymore, because she wants equal treatment so I'm not going to appologize.
I'm sick of everyone getting this backwards. I have the right of free speach weather or not people like what I'm saying or not, I'm not going to make applogies to people if I offended them and I give them due warning, or didn't know the cirumstances at the time. If you tell me, your brother was beaten to death because he was gay, I won't make gay jokes around you, because now I know the cirumstances, and the joke is innapropriate for the situation at hand (Yes I still make gay jokes despite my sexual preffernce.), however I will not have a problem making a joke once your gone, because then your not there to hear me say it, and thus the conversation had nothing to do with you directly despite being tied to you though the subject of homosexuality. This goes for anything else as well.
People don't know how to take a joke anymore. I make racial jokes from time to time, why.....because their funny. I make black jokes, I have alot of black friends, I make Latino jokes, my boyfriends family is from South America...etc. People need to lighten up...
