Humour Comes in Many Forms: Objectification is Not One of Them.
Humour is something that has been studied by many people in this world. Philosophers, academics, and so on. Humour also comes in many forms, and is very applicable to a wide range of stuff. Comedy videos, films, sitcoms, books, and even in daily conversations with our friends and family. The downside is, however, people sometimes can use comedy as a reason to justify their actions that could hurt other people.
“Relax, you can’t take a joke can you?”
“That’s only a joke, why so sensitive?”
“How do you not understand that it’s a joke?”
Those are the words that are unfortunately very familiar in our daily society. My personal enemy, my biggest despise is to those who objectify people, but hiding behind the word “joke”. This is not a new thing, it has been around for as long as I can remember. The presence of social media also somewhat plays a role in contributing to the bigger amount of objectification “jokes”. Yes I’m using quote unquote because that’s not a real joke. Not even close, not even a little close. While social media has its positive sides (obviously), the people in it can misuse the media to write objectifying “jokes” (and not even the worst part of it, lo and behold) – to strangers.
Yes strangers. Strangers as in the person they do not know, at all. As in the person who they don’t know if they will need them in the future. Strangers as in the person whom they might hurt… without knowing their backstory and issues.
It is. So. So. So. Messed up.
And what’s more messed up is that it’s almost normalised. The act of objectifying “jokes”, and when other people called them out, they will say, “it is a joke, relax”. It’s not a joke. Even if it is, it’s not just a joke. And no, I personally will not relax. It’s hurtful, it’s not funny, and it certainly has much more disadvantages rather than advantages. It’s an objectification, a degrading comment, a hurtful thing, and it most definitely is wrong. Do not try to justify it.
This has been quite an emotional piece considering it still happens everywhere around us. It’s ironic and incredibly heartbreaking to see these kind of comments are still present in the very much civilised society. And I’m not super sure who will read this but if you do, please remember that it’s not a joke if it hurts someone.
