Comment on We love hate!
Abyssian@lemmy.world 6 hours agoNo… you’re misinterpreting something being popular with something not causing harm. This meme has dozens of down votes. Trans people are a very small percentage of the population. It could have been deeply insulting to every one of them who read it, regardless of whether or not other people upvoted.
A thing being popular with the general public does not mean that thing isn’t causing harm to a lot of people, just that it isn’t causing harm to the majority of people. That’s why we try to protect people in the minorities. Because assuming things are alright unless they somehow manage to outvote everyone else on every offensive meme isn’t logical or right.
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
I never said that something being popular meant it wouldn’t cause harm. I’m talking about potential vs outcome. This joke might cause harm, and it might not. And that just because it has the potential to cause harm, does not mean it will actually cause harm.
And unfortunately, due to millions of confounding factors, it’s almost impossible to track down whether or not one specific action had a harmful outcome. So it comes down to people’s best judgement. All you can do is point out the problematic nature (which some people did) and see what everybody else thinks.
But just because people disagree, does not mean that they don’t acknowledge the problematic nature. They just might not think it’s significant.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
You don’t get to determine when mocking a group does or does not cause significant harm. That isn’t something we leave up to a group vote. If this post said he looks gay instead it would likely be gone because that’s something that has had longer to filter through lots of thick skulls and be understood as not alright.
You don’t have to track down the actual harm caused by a given thing. It’s very simple. Don’t make posts that mock people for “looking trans” or “sounding gay” or “acting black.”
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
Actually I still see tons of posts in the shitposting community that poke fun at gays.
If we went by your rules then all 1 hour comedy specials that make problematic jokes (aka all of them) would be taken down.
Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 3 hours ago
There are fair critisisms to make of OP’s post, this is frankly not a good one. The difference is that op is in community (here, on lemmy) with the person who posted the meme, and op is entirely justified in telling people they’re in community with that their behavior is harmful
We’re not taking about canceling someone or taking things off netflix, we’re talking about whether this platform with many trans people on it treats trans people, currently experiencing lots of vulnerability, with respect and care, or denigrates that already vulnerable group.
The argument that vulnerable people can’t critisize people they’re in community with for not treating them with care when they’re actively threatened, just because it happens in the form of a post of a comedian’s joke, sucks.
Personally, I pointed out this is a shitpost comm and the wrong place to vent, and that the images they’re comparing the referenced one to aren’t really the same thing. But please don’t tell vulnerable people they’re wrong to take issue with people posting hurtful things just because its a joke.
Jokes can still denigrate and disrespect people. People are valid to want to be respected as human beings while online, and are entitled to saying they as a vulnerable person feel the people they’re in community with are failing to treat them with respect.