Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Analogy for "can't you take a joke?"

Some people say cruel things to others and if called out on it say "Can't you take a joke?"

Some people think "a good sense of humour" means "laughs at every one of my attempts to make a joke, no matter how pathetic", and accuse those who don't laugh at their unfunny attempts at humour of having a bad sense of humour.

Today my shower gave me an (unfortunately phallocentric) analogy for both these phenomena:

It's like kicking your partner in the balls while you're having sex, and then accusing them of being impotent or bad at sex when this doesn't give them an orgasm.

Being good at sex, like being good at humour, requires anticipating and meeting the other person's needs. If what you're doing doesn't get the results you're going for - and, especially, if what you're doing causes unwanted pain - you're the one who's doing it wrong, not them.

And even if there have been some people in human history who laughed at your unfunny attempts at humour, the fact still remains that if the attempt at humour doesn't work for this particular audience, you're the one who's doing it wrong.  Just like how, even though under Rule 34 there is probably someone somewhere in the depths of the internet who gets off on being kicked in the balls, the fact remains that if you kick your partner in the balls and they double over in pain instead of having an orgasm, you're the one who's doing it wrong.

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