As a kind-hearted, liberal, sane and socially conscious feminist with an actual sense of humor, I will say something right now that will not earn me many friends, but somebody has to say it: Stop getting offended all the time. Because I'm sick of it. And I'm not the only one.
What brought this on? I was perusing the Internet today, and I stumbled across a headline saying Cinnabon had gotten into trouble for its tribute to Carrie Fisher. I’ll let you check that out here.
And all I could think was, "People are offended? Seriously?"
There is a time and place to be offended. But when you get offended by every little thing, it starts to lose its impact. People stop caring that their jokes are offensive. And guess what? They shouldn't care. Because offensive jokes aren't the problem. Problematic jokes are.
Next time you see a joke and your knee-jerk reaction is to be offended, don't think of a joke as "offensive." Offensive is subjective and gets you nowhere. Also, jokes can be hilarious and offensive at the same time.
Instead, think of whether or not the joke is problematic. What makes a joke problematic?
Does it encourage rape culture? Does it promote violence against certain people or groups? Does it make light of a serious situation in a tasteless way? Does it hurt the subject of the joke in a personal attack?
For example, an actually problematic and offensive joke would be if Cinnabon had taken a picture of Fisher in her slave outfit, and joked about her having the best "buns" (aka her rear end) in the galaxy. That would be problematic. You’d be right to be outraged by that.
If you ask yourself these questions, and you've found they fit the criteria of a problematic joke, then instead of screaming about how offended you are, try this instead. Try leaving a thoughtful, intelligent comment on the article about why it is problematic - don't use the word "offensive." Try leaving informative articles and statistics in your comment to back up your point. Is that too much work? Then you don't care enough about the issue, so let it go.
Will it do any good? Probably not. Will you be met with a lot of ignorant, rude, foul-mouthed people that will waste no time telling you how stupid you are for being intelligent and logical? Probably. But if you care enough, that's not enough of an excuse to not try. And I can promise one thing that definitely WON'T change anything: being blindly offended.
Don't fight ignorance with blind, personal statements about being offended. Because if you calmly fight ignorance with logic, facts and conviction, you will always win. No matter what.
