Hey there. Excellent post, I think you really hit the nail on the head (unless we have an "everything's a hammer" problem - but I'm digressing already with meaningless "cleverness"). I had my own awakening from being a bit of an ironic slur user. I remember it wasn't too long ago that this was one of my favorite ironic jokes:
Q. Why couldn't Helen Keller drive?
A. She was a woman.
I mean, on the one hand, you can (and I did) view that as such a ridiculous joke that it HAS to be a comment on our VIEWS of sexism, not an actual comment on the ability of women to drive. But (not that I'm well read on any of this or, well, anything), it seems to me to be a question of intentionality and perception. If you intend it to be a comment on sexism, and someone interprets it as actual sexism, who's really at fault? I used to think it was the audience for not being "sophisticated" enough, but I'm not so sure of that anymore. Now I think that for such a joke to work, you have to be awfully sure of your audience, and if you fail to read your audience correctly, that's your fault. And since the consequences of such a "joke" being taken the "wrong" way are so hurtful, it's best to err on the side of not telling fucking slur jokes. (And that's ignoring the idea that even without "mis"interpreting a slur joke as an actual slur joke and not an ironic comment upon our society, the mere speaking of slurs of any kind even in an ironic way legitimizes instead of "takes back" the slur. But that's an argument well beyond my limited education.)
Anyway, you know all this, my point is that my perspective on it has changed over a pretty short time, and if you're gentle with her (as people were with me) I hope you'll find that she'll come around too.
Later,
Ari
Commenting by HaloScan
