In life, there are just some things you can’t joke about, especially if they never happened to you. Things like harassment and disabilities just aren’t funny, in whatever lens you see them through.
Okay, you might be thinking, but no one jokes about these things, so why are we making a big deal out of this. Well, here’s the thing — although domestic abuse is classified as something no one jokes about, some people are still cracking jokes about it. Just look at this.
So, now we reach the problem. Some of you reading this might be thinking this is funny because, well, that’s not abuse. It just never is when the abused is a man.
Obviously abuse against anyone is horrible, but the fact that the jokes about men being abused are everywhere is terrifying for many reasons.
Some of the people making these jokes think they’re being revolutionary by joking about male abuse victims as a whole means of “turning the tables” in some twisted version of feminism, even though feminism is literally about equality and stands with the victims, no matter the gender.
No, we’re not exaggerating. There are a million more jokes about male victims of abuse that are worse than the one we included in this article and these jokes do a lot of damage too.
Joking about men being abused eventually makes the topic itself seem lighter than it is. It makes it seem silly and trivializes it beyond repair. In fact, many would even think that if you can joke about it, then it’s not serious.
These jokes also make it hard for the victims to come forward with their stories or come out of their abusive situations, mostly because abuse against men is rendered normal.
Think about it. If you’re suffering from something or a situation and you see everyone joking about it and saying it’s no big deal, eventually you start to see it that same way.
There’s a way around this, though. A very easy way out, too.
Instead of joking about abuse, we can simply just not do that. It’s no skin off any of our backs to stop joking about violence, all in all, and the sooner we realize this the sooner progress will come.
This isn’t an attack against anyone. If anything, it’s a call for everyone reading this to mind their words and suss out if they’d be contributing some harmful ideology when saying certain things.
