I would rather work in an office where the jokes are of the funny sort, rather than the makes-one-person-feel-miserable sort. I really don't think there's any overlap between funny jokes and sexist jokes.
Most if nor all of humor revolves around something bad happening to someone. That's what funny.
(In normal workplace setting women are actually shielded from that friendly fire because men don't feel as comfortable/can't predict what's OK and what's not)
You want jokes, you have to acquire certain skin thickness. If you don't, then I don't want to work with you. Fun is fun.
But I'd suggest that an alternative exists-- you can actually be hilarious without knocking other people down. I think that's a worthy goal.
Received autism is not a virtue. Some people seem to be honing their internal conflict and blaming it on people whose jokes (or anything, really) touched it accidentally.
A person without serious internal conflict would not be hurt by a mild nerd humor. Hate there isn't, just some reflection on the awkwardness of human existence.
"TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."
But even within that context, there's a line between saying something funnily negative that the person can take and saying something that hurts them. If you've attempted a joke that fell flat because it was hurtful, then the problem isn't the target being too thin-skinned; the problem is you having poor judgment (or a taste for cruelty).
Hardly. That describes only the most ignoble, uninspired level of humor.
They didn't used to be shielded like this, because men didn't used to think "what women thought was OK and what's not" mattered. In the same way, "white" men used to feel universally entitled to make off-color comments about the silliness and inferiority of "non-whites". Now the power relationship has changed, and now there is some thought given to what's appropriate and what's not.
You want jokes, you have to acquire certain skin thickness. If you don't, then I don't want to work with you. Fun is fun.
"Skin thinness" has to do with a certain degree of wounding and the remnants of institutionalized injustice. Both the wounding and the echoes of the injustice in the culture might take some generations to completely fade away. That said, all people have fun. All people want to relax and be genuinely themselves with someone, sometime. Are you entitled to have fun with absolutely everyone in the particular way that you know? I'm sorry, but it might not even go as far as the small subset of your workplace.
"Fun is fun" is pretty naive. If one studies humor, one finds that it's mostly highly contextual and cultural. This is particularly true for what's acceptable between men and women. That's not some conspiracy to rain on your parade, it's just how things are in the world. Just get to know people first.
I would phrase it, "If everyone's humor had to be bland Disney G-rated fare, then a lot of fun would have been sucked out of our work environment."
For the people on the other side of the joke, it's not fun. From what Katie Cunningham writes, it's so unbearable that she's on the verge of leaving the profession she loves.
With that understanding of the situation, sexist jokes lose their humor, at least for me.
Where did I defend sexist humor?
I think that Katie Cunningham is putting up with some nonsense and she should take direct action.
My question to Katie was just regarding the line between humor and offense and how she drew a distinction?
She apparently didn't get offended and answered me quite frankly. There's really no need for you to jump in and mischaracterize my position.
Lots of white knights in this thread that she doesn't really seem to need to take care of her.
This is the line that made me think you were defending sexist humor: "I would be sad if my relationship with my coworkers couldn't handle, let alone thrive upon, humorous interactions."
Maybe you meant non-sexist humor that erroneously came across as sexist?
I'm so sure you are going to come back with some "blah blah politically correct blah blah" disingenuity, I will adress it now: No, it's not all about PC and rules and whatnot, it's about genuine respect. Making comments and jokes centered on a person which aren't about that person, but about their membership in a class is generally not cool. It's called othering (and sometimes objectification). Othering is exclusionary, and a good joke for the target (but sometimes a good joke to the in-crowd, it solidifies their superiority!). Basically most jokes are OK, if they don't hinge on "and that's why that group is inferior and different from us".
I'm going to be better at calling that shit out from now on.
If I were one of her male coworkers, and I had to watch that kind of behavior continually, I would quit. I want my coworkers to be able to do their jobs without being tormented.
Also, I think you're missing the distinction between sexual jokes and sexist jokes. There are plenty of funny sexual jokes. There are even plenty of sexist jokes that the joke-teller finds funny. That opinion is not shared by the butt of the joke, and that makes them crappy jokes.