joke

Anon

I was once told by my shitty supervisor that if I’d lived in the middle ages I’d have been burned at the stake for being an uppity woman. Pretty funny!!! But less funny when contextualised by the fact he once told a joke about me going to the dentist and ‘getting something in my mouth’.

Karina

I worked as a board operator at a radio station, and one day while doing a remote show (meaning that I was the only one in the studio, and the hosts were on location), so I could only hear them through the board when they had their mics on, but I wasn’t in the same place as them. During a break when their mics weren’t live, but were still on I heard the old fat male host tell an inappropriate joke about me (he didn’t know I could hear him). It made me feel so gross and disgusting, and I quit the job the next day (I wasn’t in love with it enough to deal with that), but I never told my boss why I quit and regret that.

amy

i am 15 years old in grade 10. I started to hear sexist comments in school by grade 5. On a daily basis I hear comments about women being unqualified to work, women belonging in the kitchen, women over using the term rape and sexual harassment and comments about feminists being cancerous, over weight and pretty much every other degrading word in the book. To top it off, every time i have spoke up to say something i get ‘its just a joke’ ‘take a joke’ ‘calm down its not like they really mean it’ … but my question stands, why is it that degrading women is so funny? It’s not a joke, it never was. I started getting cat called at 12 years old, when walking home from school on pajama day. In grade 7 i did a project on gender equality and was told by 4 boys in my class that it wasn’t real and it didn’t matter and to just sit down, shut up and look pretty. When i was 12 i was told by my friends grandfather that people need to stop making such a big deal about a few little jokes boys make time to time because boys will be boys. When I was 14 I went to a fair, and tripped on a rock. I fell to the ground and was immediately surrounded by boys I didnt know, all older than me. They turned to each other and said ‘what do we do with her? should we take her somewhere? what do you want to do to her? can i go first?’. so my bad for ‘not taking a joke’. im so sorry i don’t think my objectification is funny.

Mara

I was sandblasting a pattern into some stone, too short for the machine, I was on my toes and my arms were pretty stuck in the armholes and gloves while operating it with my face glued to the screen for detail. My male colleagues walked past for their break, after the first one slapped me on the arse, each one following did it as a joke. Must have been at least 8 or 10 of them. My yelling made no difference. I was dying inside as they all laughed and ate their lunch. I set an alarm for their break after that. No point complaining to the lecherous boss or his jealous wife either. They made life difficult enough. (9 years ago, ex employee of abusive company)

From the Vice President

The Vice President (male) of the company I worked for thought it was funny to show me (female) the business card of a prostitute, complete with a naked picture of herself. He was amused that the prostitute took credit cards, and wondered if she “swiped the card in her ass”. When I spoke out to the President (male) I was told to deal with it myself, and “talk to him” to “make him understand how I felt”. I made me very uncomfortable to be put in the position of having to correct a superior, after having just been the victim of harassment by that same superior. His response….it isn;t harassment if he didn;t intend it to be, if his intentions was just to make a joke then it’s ok to do it. The President took no further action and just swept it under the rug. The VP went on to continue to make sexist “jokes” to me and other female staff until he retired.

Eve

At an event for bloggers and journalists the theme was cheese and gin. The producers (all male) held speeches about their products. When it came to how the gin got its name the producer told a story about the founder who went to Scandinavia and was welcomed there with open arms and the daughter of the house was offered to him as a friendly gesture, apparently back then that was normal, but the man refused. The audience didn’t really react, except one person who said: “But was she pretty?” he himself being the fattest, ugliest guy in the room. There was nervous laughter and the speeches continued. What can you do, what can you reply to a comment like that? Could someone have intervened, told him how sexist his comment was? I don’t think so. Because that’s just the world we live in.

A, via email

I live in Newlyn, near Penzance in Cornwall. A pub in our village specialises in writing offensive “jokes” (sexist, racist, misogynist etc) on a blackboard fixed to the outside wall of the pub and therefore seen by everyone who walks past. This week’s “joke” is: Paddy asked his wife what she wanted for Christmas. She said “a black iPad” so he punched her!!! It’s shocking that anyone could find this funny or acceptable. A few weeks ago, the “joke” was: How do you stop your wife from staggering? Shoot her a couple more times. I find this utterly disturbing and a shocking indictment of the way women are thought about in 2016, when we think we’ve come so far.

Karen

A man in a car asked me where the nearest Tesco is, and I told him the direction, “head straight, turn left at the end of the road, it’s a big Tesco you won’t miss it.” Instead of thanking me he laughed and replied, “so you like everything BIG then?” Also what troubled me is everyone I told this story to thought that the incident was absolutely hilarious and the guy was such a genius for coming up with that comment.