4.2: Tendentious Jokes are Immoral
What is a tendentious joke? As a first approximation it’s a joke that uses stereotypes as part of its structure and which is designed to introduce or reinforce a bias. The stereotype can appear in either the set-up, the punchline or both. If you want a classic example of a tendentious joke just think of a joke which hinges on the idea that blonde persons (especially women) are not as smart as everyone else. In its most common form tendentious jokes use negative stereotypes. There are, of course, many examples of tendentious humor, as many examples as there are negative stereotypes. 18
So, what’s wrong with this kind of humor? Isn’t it, like any other humor, just using the shared cultural background of the comedian and audience? Don’t all jokes play on expectations in some way? Can you even tell a joke without using some sort of stereotype? We don’t have space in this chapter to address the broader questions about humor, but it will be fruitful to consider the issue briefly, at least as a point of comparison.
The simplest answer is that not all humor uses stereotypes because humor is broader than joking. Physical humor and practical jokes, for example, can be performed without leaning on our shared assumptions about different groups of people. If we restrict ourselves to verbal humor, we can still find jokes that do not use stereotypes. Knock knock jokes and observational humor are examples of joke styles that do not rest on stereotypes:
What did the 0 say to the 8?
Nice belt. 19
It is possible, therefore, to be funny without using stereotypes. Does that mean that we should always avoid using stereotypes? Aren’t there non-harmful stereotypes, even positive ones? If a joke uses the stereotype that isn’t derogatory is that still a problem? In other words, is it harmful to use any stereotype, full stop, or is it only harmful if we use negative stereotypes?
Types of Stereotypes
To better answer that question we should consider some examples of stereotypes that we might use in a joke.
- salespersons are mendacious,
- Asian people are good at math
- men are childish
To begin to see what’s wrong with this sort of humor we can start by looking at the differences between those three examples. Once we’ve teased them apart we can more easily consider why stereotype using jokes should be avoided.
To start with we can see that (1) is about a category of persons that is not an intrinsic property. No one is born working in sales. Anyone who does work in sales can choose to quit and pursue a different line of work. So, when we make jokes about salesperson, lawyers, doctors, etc. we are not making fun of a characteristic that a person has no control over. Indeed, using the name for a job or career is just a shorthand for a series of actions. They don’t describe inherent characteristics like skin color, gender, height, etc. If you don’t like having people assume that you are a liar, you can stop working in sales. You can’t stop being a man or being a person of Asian ancestry.
Does this make it OK to make jokes that incorporate the sort of stereotypes that we see in (1)? Maybe. For now, we can note that while it seems right to say that making fun of what a person does is not as troubling as making fun of who a person is, the people who are being mocked may not like it very much anyway.
Another important difference between the examples is that (1) and (3) are negative stereotypes while (2) is, at least on its face, a positive stereotype. It seems likely that putting someone down in a joke is worse than lifting someone up, and using a 130 positive stereotype might be an example of the latter. However, we should note that people do not always see eye to eye on the issue of whether or not a particular stereotype is positive. Latines are stereotypically said to have a good sense of rhythm. 20 This might be a positive stereotype, if you’re Latine and looking to find a dance partner. But it can be a negative stereotype if you are a Latine with two left feet who keeps getting asked to dance by strangers who just assume that you are good dancer.
Indeed, in some cases, like the example in (2), putatively positive stereotypes are seen as a bad thing by many persons within the community. Many Asian Americans, for example, suffer from being used as examples of a “model minority.” 21 The stereotype that they are good at math, and science, is part of that burden. So, we can conclude, that, at the very least, if you are using a stereotype that you see in a positive light, you cannot be sure that it will be seen that way by everyone. Furthermore, the use of stereotypes whether positive or negative will inevitably reinforce biased attitudes toward that group. If nothing else, this should cause some concern.
One last distinction that we can point to is that (3) refers to a group, men, who are generally in positions of power in our society. Does this mean that it’s OK to make fun of them? Many comedians subscribe to the notions that it’s acceptable to punch up, but not to punch down. Which is to say, it’s acceptable to for someone to make of fun of people who have more power than the joke-teller or the audience. The idea, in brief, is that the group that is the butt of the joke, because of its privileged position, cannot actually be hurt by the joke. It is probably right to say that the ability to be harmed by a joke, or a stereotype, varies with the amount of privilege a person or group has within society. More powerful people, whether their power is economic, socio-political or structural are less likely to be vulnerable to the opinions of others. When you think of things this way it does seem like punching-up is a victimless crime. We should note, however, that even if some groups are less harmed than others by tendentious humor, that doesn’t mean they aren’t harmed at all. And, again, reinforcing biases that make it harder to see persons as unique individuals, and not merely tokens of their group, is something that we should be wary of.
So, we can see that even when we are just discussing tendentious humor and the use of stereotypes in a general way the whole thing is, at best, a problematic practice. Even before discussing the sorts of harms tendentious humor can cause we can see that there is at least a prima-facie case for concern.
Let’s turn to the specific harms that tendentious humor can cause.
The Harm of Tendentious Jokes
In this section we’ll look at three harms that tendentious jokes can inflict. 22 Of course, this is not an exhaustive catalog of the harms of stereotypes in humor, but, even this brief list will make a strong case against tendentious humor.
We can start with the observation that individual members of a group, even one with significant institutional advantages can be hurt by the stereotypes in humor. Many individual men are no doubt bothered or hurt by the media’s depiction of men as barely functional, overgrown children. It should be even more obvious that persons who are not as privileged as cis, straight, middle class men will often be hurt by the stereotypes used in jokes.
And even in the case of jokes about jobs and not identities, it’s not hard to imagine that a lawyer being aggravated at the millionth telling of the “good start” joke. It is true that these jokes are not as damaging as some others, we might think of these instances as small scale harm, but it is a real harm nonetheless. And yet consider that tendentious humor isn’t the only way to get a laugh, that the harms just mentioned, small as they may be, are not tempered by any great need. How can we then justify these jokes?
Of more concern are jokes that reinforce harmful stereotypes for groups of persons that are in positions to be harmed. Many racial, religious, ethnic and gender minorities spend their lives in harms way. They do not have the institutional advantages to protect them, as a class, from the damage that stereotypes can do. The biases employed in jokes exposed them to even greater danger.
The most obvious way in which tendentious humor is harmful is in the way that it can demean entire groups of people by employing negative stereotypes. 23 Anyone with a minimal awareness of humor and jokes is aware of the many shameful ways in which minorities can be depicted: Jews are greedy; blondes are dumb; Muslims are hateful; immigrants can’t be trusted; women are crazy; and fat people have no discipline. To name just a tiny fraction of the stereotypes that are often used in humor. Consider how queer men and women might feel when they hear friends casually retelling homophobic jokes. But there is a different, more subtle, way in which stereotypes used in humor can be harmful.
One way in which jokes cause harm is via their role in social policing. Social policing is the use of social cues, such as humor, to reinforce norms. Take, for example, the social norm that men should be stoic. 24 The notion that men are weak or less manly, if they show almost any emotion 25 is enforced by peer groups via jokes at the victim’s expense and which employ stereotypes to debilitating effect. You can see much the same effect in the supposedly playful teasing of little girls who don’t express enough interest in being typically feminine. The girls quickly learn that to the only way to stop the teasing is to conform to the toxic norms. And, of course, recall that even in the case of so-called positive stereotypes, like the stereotypes of Asian students, the attitudes displayed in jokes, and stories, that employ them reinforce biases that place unfair pressures on the affected groups. Tendentious humor, when deployed in this way, robs us of individuality and the freedom to be the persons we want to be.
Finally, if we look at the role of stereotypes in reinforcing prejudicial attitudes, we will see a third type of harm. Jokes that employ stereotypes reinforce biases which cause fissures within society. The primary mechanism is similar to the what happens in the social policing examples, jokes use stereotypes to reinforce biases, but in this case the effect is to highlight and harden the differences between groups in society. This type of humor creates an in-group and an out-group. The out-group is mocked, belittled and out-right insulted with no particular care given to the effects of these actions. This is perhaps the most harmful result of tendentious humor.
Recall the example of jokes that make fun of people working in sales. We can now see why, even though a job is not a central part of a person’s demographic identity, and so making fun of a lawyer is different from making fun of a black person, lawyer jokes still encourage us to adopt divisive insider/outsider attitudes.
When we make jokes at the expense of certain groups we set the stage for thinking of them as fundamentally different from us. This, in turn, makes it easier to think of the out-groups as alien, as not really belonging, and as inferior. Of course, this is in itself a bad thing, but it also makes it easier to pass laws and take actions that directly harm the out-group. There is a direct line between making jokes denigrating a group and adopting a hateful attitude toward the group. This style of humor drives wedges between in-groups and out-groups in a way that isn’t just about solidarity or cultural affirmation, but about hurting the out-group.
Answering the Objections
If tendentious humor supports some of our ugliest tendencies, then why is it so prevalent? It’s defenders often resort to two defenses:
- Free Speech
- It’s just a joke
The free speech defense is insufficient. It is simply not the case that we can say anything and everything that we wish to say. There are prohibitions against lying on the witness stand or using racist language at work. It is true that not all forms of insulting or harmful expression are formally disallowed by law or corporate policy, but simply being free to say a thing does not make it acceptable to say it. We have a right to express 134 ourselves, but this does not give us a right to harm others. If tendentious humor is harmful, then it ought to be avoided by good people whether or not it is officially censured.
The more common defense among persons who enjoy this humor is that they’re just jokes and that the offended group is too thin skinned. In other words, humor is not able to actually harm you, if you don’t let it. It seems very unlikely that this is true. In the case of children being shamed into conforming with toxic norms it’s not at all clear that they can defend themselves from the harm. In the case of out-groups the harm comes from the in-group’s behavior, as affected by the humor-reinforced biases. How is a thick skin meant to keep a black person from being denied a promotion because of their skin color? How is a thick skin meant to keep an immigrant from being denied a job because of their accent?
Finally, proponents of tendentious humor assert a particularly problematic attitude. They argue that their preference for a type of humor is more important than anyone else’s preference to avoid being denigrated and harmed. Is this a reasonable position for a good person to take? Should it be acceptable, morally or socially, to simply not care about the effect your words have on other people?
At the very least a person who wants to enjoy tendentious humor about blondes adopts the attitude that they don’t think blonde women deserve to feel upset. The joke teller also does not care, if blonde women do get upset. Is that an attitude that a good person would embrace?
Jokes like those we have been discussing are harmful in themselves, but even more importantly they help to desensitize us to the resulting and related harms that accompany the humor and makes it easier to do even more and greater harm.
Footnotes
18 It is possible that a joke can express a bias without resorting to stereotyping. A joke could simply be insulting, crude or dehumanizing. In this essay, we will focus on the use of stereotypes, however the conclusions that we draw will hold true for tendentious humor across the board.
19 Share this joke with any male parent, they’ll love it.
20 Latine, pronounced lah*tee*neh, is a newer word that takes the place of latinx. Latine sounds better to fluent Spanish speakers and can be conjugated, in Spanish, in a natural way: un latine, los latines, etc.
21 https://cmhc.utexas.edu/modelminority.html
22 It would be a good exercise for the reader to consider what harms have been left out.
23 Here we will focus on negative stereotypes, but recall that even seemingly positive stereotypes can be harmful.
24 Boys don’t cry.
25 Men are allowed to be angry and horny and that’s about it.