“Why do women make better soldiers? Because they can bleed for a week and not die.”
“Did you hear they finally made a device that makes cars run 95% quieter? Yeah, it fits right over her mouth!”
“Why did the woman cross the road? I don’t know, but what is she doing out of the kitchen?”
“What is easier to pick up the heavier it gets? Women.”
Are you laughing? Did these lines remind you of some funny joke that you cracked at the expense of a female? Well, here are a few more.
“When a man opens a car door for his wife, you can be sure of one thing: either the car is new or the wife is.”
“How many men does it take to open a beer? None. It should be opened by the time she brings it.”
Right now, while you are doubled over with laughter and your girlfriend sits next to you with a sad face, a face that shows embarrassment and shame, you will not realise that this is not at all funny. It is offensive.
Biologically, men and women are made differently. However, we decided to be wise and erase the differences. Today, ideally, everyone is equal. Men do not raise eyebrows if a woman is their boss or if they find out that a women has decided that she can run a country. What was my last line about? Read again. The fact that men do not raise eyebrows suggests that this is not something that a woman is “ideally” supposed to do.
Who decides what a proper woman should be like, anyway?
The aforementioned jokes make us laugh. After all, if you need to take a girl out for a date, she needs to feel comfortable, right? Cracking a sexist joke will definitely show them their place and people always feel comfortable in their places. Correct?
Women are objects to be mocked at; they are your cooks, your servants and your house makers. They can be used; they can be lured away from what they really want. It’s easy, as all they want is money, right? Women are conscious and that means they are dumb enough not to care. You can abuse them, rape them, show them the door and hand them the vegetables. It’s all okay as they were meant to “make you a sandwich” right?
It is disturbing that men consider it okay to make such jokes, that women have accepted their place in the community to be such that if they are out of the kitchen and doing something other than cooking, feeding their babies, cleaning, washing, or giving birth to more babies, they are doing something wrong.
I can see men who will say “Come on, it’s all in good humor. We are just kidding!” this is not something that you can brush off with a “just kidding” remark. This type of humor is not edgy and witty. It’s offensive.
Women are thinking individuals, they have their own life, priorities, ambitions and they know how to get to the things that they want and sadly, they are more than money.
“I like my beer like I like my violence- Domestic”
This one was so hilarious, wasn’t it?
Domestic violence is a crime, still we make jokes about it and as a result, we tend to be okay with it. Men and women both seem okay with it. Should we be okay?
Being too sensitive, am I? Maybe I don’t know how to take a joke and laugh about it. Well, these jokes are not funny. They are hostile, frustrating and not at all allowable. Most people will not even realise the fact that something is wrong with these jokes as the idea of women being what they are is so omnipresent in our society that people refuse to reconsider it. Instead, they laugh!
“Sexist humour is not simply benign amusement. It can affect men’s perceptions of their immediate social surroundings and allow them to feel comfortable with behavioural expressions of sexism without the fear of disapproval of their peers,” said Thomas E. Ford, a faculty member in the psychology department at WCU. “Specifically, we propose that sexist humour acts as a ‘releaser’ of prejudice.”
Do you still need an eye opener?
It is so stunning and startling that men who are educated and well-behaved, who are respectful of a woman and fight for their equality find it okay to make sexist jokes at our expense. They see nothing wrong with it. After all, it’s not going to land them in jail now, is it?
Okay, this is the last one:
“Does this handkerchief smell like chloroform to you?”
This was a pickup line, by the way. What would this result into? Date rape. To all those who laughed at it, rapes are HILARIOUS, aren’t they?
We have men who are very cautious that they make no sexist jokes as someone like me might take offence. If they let themselves slip, they argue that there are sexist jokes on men as well. I would say it is not the same! Men have not been subjected to years of violence, rape and inequality.
They will not understand the severity of these jokes. They seem to tell us that the place of a woman, irrespective of her lineage, her education or her status in the society is either in the kitchen making food, or in bed, making children.
Are we over-sensitive? We do not joke about homosexuality any more, do we? Or racism for that matter? Time to be more open and alert of how and where you talk. Sexist jokes are never going to work. Men need to find better ways, use their brains and stop making fun of a woman just because she is a woman.
– Contributor, DU Times
