When Disgusting Jokes and Scare Tactics Become One
Is it really still a 'joke' when lives are actively threatened?
After the election, the disgusting jokes are running rampant. And with that, the call to ‘not let it get to you’ is everywhere. Because when people threaten you with violence as a joke, it is your job to not take it seriously, right? Well, I believe that we as a society should actually take this way more seriously.
*trigger warning: mentions of assault, sexual violence and racial violence*
I have debated whether or not I actually wanted to write this. Because it seems like a no-brainer: there is humor and then there is a threat disguised as an incentive for laughter. And I thought it should be pretty clear that the latter is never funny.
I thought that, although a lot of jokes shouldn’t be made, there at least had to be a line drawn. At jokingly bullying people under the guise of entertainment, for example.
And maybe it’s naive.
Cause I know white comedians have been making trans people, people of color and women the butt of every joke for years now. For decades, marginalized communities have been paying some of the most famous comedian’s bills with their dignity and their worth.
But I at least thought that by now, we would’ve realized that ‘I wish violence on a whole group of people’ definitely isn’t a joke. I thought wrong. After election day, the punchlines immediately started pouring in.
But only a select group of people is laughing. And it has everything to do with the purpose of these disgusting ‘jokes’.
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THE FIRST DISGUSTING JOKES
It didn’t take long for hate to successfully visibly spread across the US; the day of the election, before the result was even called, one of the smallest men who ever lived tweeted: ‘Your body, my choice. Forever’. And with that statement, he gained over twenty thousand likes.
Merch was made and the harassment of women online surged with threats of assault and sexual violence.
But of course, all of it with a wink; the tension diffused with a ‘LMAO’ or some comforting emojis. Because don’t be mistaken: when they tell you they will rape you, it is still a joke.
A day later, I came across an Instagram post by Rachel Cargle, a Black educator and activist. She shared some of the ‘plantation texts’ that were going around. In these texts, Black people across the country had to read that they were selected to work on the plantations. And that they would be picked up the next morning.
A joke, of course.
Cause the threat of the rejuvenation of slavery is bound to crack some people up, am I right?
IT’S NEVER ‘JUST A JOKE’
But unfortunately, it will.
When you have never had to fight against the status quo because the odds are ever in your favor, you don’t know what it is like to have your safety used as a punchline.
Meaning they’ll never realize that a ‘joke’ like that isn’t actually funny for the people it is about. But still, these disgusting jokes exist and are raking in hundreds of likes every day. And when we live in a reality where over seventy million people voted against the rights of women and people of color, the ‘joke’ becomes even less funny.
So, why is everyone still laughing?
It should concern you that someone openly declares that they’d exert sexual violence on a woman. Or that they think Black people belong on a plantation – especially when it’s disguised as a joke. When have the most hateful forms of violence ever been funny? And what does it say about you when you see this happening and all you can think to do is laugh?
Would you still be snorting if you were on the receiving end – not of the disgusting jokes, but of the actual violence being used against people as a jest?
The average jokester would call us ‘sensitive’ and come in with a classic ‘cry more’. It’s because they don’t care. These people weaponize the fear in our hearts because they know it achieves something.
And the people laughing, let them.
DOWNPLAYING DISGUSTING JOKES
Whenever we talk about the threats we act as if they’re ‘just words’. We brush them off and dismiss them as ‘scare-tactics’ as if that makes it less bad.
Especially the people who it doesn’t immediately concern will tell you not to be afraid. They will come in with a ‘stick and stones’-type of comment meant to comfort you in some way. But the point of scare-tactics is never that the threats they’re making are actually going to happen.
Not even that it is likely to happen.
The purpose of a scare tactic is the hope that the fear it ignites is enough to influence the people it is aimed at. Either to make them act, or to make sure they don’t act. Fear is a very powerful tool when it comes to manipulating and changing people’s behavior and attitude.
And that means that a threat of sexual violence isn’t about the actual threat. It is about power. And mostly about silencing the person the threat is aimed at. The worst thing about it? It works.
THE PURPOSE OF THESE JOKES
We know that the big majority of the men leaving rape threats on social media aren’t going to come find our house and actually act on it. Not every man catcalling us will follow us home. The plantation texts are fake.
But they are very real scare tactics meant to put certain people back in their place. A place where they are quiet and where they stop asking for basic human rights.
It is not a coincidence that these messages pop up more after an election that was so important for people from marginalized communities. People who have been demanding respect. And who have been actively fighting for their own rights – sometimes at the “expense” of the majority (I would hardly call ‘not being able to say the n-word anymore, a ‘limitation’ but that’s how they see it so here we are).
And of course we shouldn’t be silenced by these fear mongers.
It is important to calm your nervous system by saying: ‘They’re lying. They’re just trying to scare me’. But that doesn’t take away from the actual problem that exists: there are people who use horrible violence disguised as a ‘joke’ to assert some sort of dominance.
To silence women, gay people, trans people, and people of color.
THE CONSEQUENCES
But it is effective. Because it can accumulate up to the point where someone doesn’t dare speak up again. If your inbox is flooding with ‘funny’ threats about sexual violence, about how they’re going to find you and ‘force your legs open’, while 10K of their bros like the comment, would you keep subjecting yourself to that? No sane person would still show up when all they get in return is violence in sheep’s clothing.
But silence isn’t the only goal of scare tactics.
Because there are plenty of examples of how people that are usually the butt of these disgusting jokes, vote against their own best interests. Hell, over half of the white women in the US voted for Trump. And as Tressie McMillan Cottom said: “They truly believe that when they vote for something to be regulated, that it won’t happen to them”. It can be a means for self preservation. Why do some LGBTQIA-people align themselves with the MAGA-movement?
Because they hope that when the Republican rapture comes, they will be deemed one of the ‘good guys’.
That the hate will magically skip them and will be solely focused on all the other gays and theys. That is what scare tactics can accomplish. The delusional belief that when you step over to ‘the other side’, you won’t be stripped of your rights.
NOT AN INNOCENT JOKE
So to me, these scare tactics aren’t as ‘innocent’ as some make them out to be. Yes, the threats aren’t real in the sense that the threatened violence (probably) won’t happen. But the words and the purpose behind them is very real.
It is not the responsibility of the receiver to make the message better by watering it down with excuses and a trembling ‘don’t worry, it isn’t real’.
We need to look at the message itself and stop excusing the behavior with an ‘it’s just a joke’. Because violence, actual real life violence that is already hurting – or has hurt – so many people alive today, should never be the punchline.
People not being able to ‘take a joke’ aren’t the problem. Scare tactics are the problem. People supporting this kind of ‘humor’ are the problem. And even if you’re not the person making the joke, the fact that you chuckled or hit that ‘like’-button makes it clear that you do not condemn the behavior.
It makes it known that it is acceptable and that joking about asserting violence on a whole group of people is a normal thing to do.
I’d much rather live in world where ‘we can’t even make a joke anymore’ than in one where we use other people’s pain to get some expensive laughs. Because for these disgusting jokes, other people pay the ultimate price.
