So, time to make a PSA about how just because something was obvious to you, doesn't mean it was obvious to someone else.

This has come from many, many people now saying 'obviously I didn't mean [group]!' when my telling them they were hurting a group in question shows it's not.

This PSA may as well be a lesson on 'Theory of Mind', because that's what this all comes down to.

To you that 'K*ll all men!' joke may be *obviously* a joke, but to, say, a gay trans man who is new to feminism and the queer community as a whole? It may not be!

Let me explain. That joke, one that is thankfully now mostly defunct, was an in-joke among a certain part of feminist communities that very quickly spread to a whole bunch of people! To a lot of these feminists it was 'haha see no one would ever *really* say that about men!'

That's what was so funny about it to them! The idea that anyone would *ever* think that all men should die was *hilarious* because, lol that's only thrown at women, right?
So to these women who lived so much in their own life, and lacked insight into other minds, it was good fun.

But see, trans men are a thing! Trans men are very poorly supported by a *lot* of communities. Depending on where a trans man entered feminism, he can get anything from 'You're just a silly girl, it's normal to feel awful about your gender!' to 'You're a man? D*e!' ++

on the negative side of the spectrum, sometimes multiple points on that spectrum. To many of these trans men, it *wasn't* obvious that this was some joke that relied on hyperbole to be funny. For a lot of them it was a very real, very *scary* thing to see this joke.

They'd either just gotten into feminism, or they'd been in a part of feminism that regularly told them *men* were the enemy, not just the institution of patriarchy, and that by being trans men they were *evil, bad, wrong*.

They'd been inundated with 'the world would be better if men just d*ed', often times day in and day out.

Their experiences meant *this was not obvious at all*.

This isn't even getting into the part where the 'joke' eventually got picked up by those militant communities.

Suddenly you had people that you, the person in feminism for four years, thought were being funny jokesters come out and admit 'yeah, actually, why *don't* we just k*ll all men?' and then you'd realise 'oh shit people actually believe this!'

So, imagine when these comments were seen by trans men, both those who did and didn't get in on the joke, and the realisation that *oh. Maybe this was never a joke to some people at all*.

It also maybe wasn't 'obviously a joke' to the people who actually wanted men to d*e.

And this is just *within the feminist community*.

One problem we (humans) have is assuming that our community's in-jokes and culture are the norm, and are obvious to everyone else. We forget that there are newcomers, and that there are people whose first language is not our own.

And then we forget the outsiders to the community.

The people who, in this case, may have feminist-aligned beliefs (like equality) but aren't in on the terminology. The people who have been falsely raised to believe feminism *is* the hatred of men.

"Why should I care about either of those, if they aren't going to commit and agree to be feminists?!"

Why should you care about *literally anyone* other than yourself?

Whatever your answer is, the answer to the above question is similar.

Some good ones?

Because sometimes people whose beliefs align with feminism don't call themselves feminists because they are actively pushed out of feminism. Example? Lotsa black women subscribe to womanism instead, which as I understand it focuses on the issues black women face.

Because sometimes those people who have been falsely raised to believe feminism is a hate group (like myself!) will come to see the light when they actually get introduced to feminist theory.

Neither of those groups is in on the 'joke' in many instances.

(protip: jokes about causing grievous bodily harm to other people? Still not funny when the target is a white cishet man.)

So now I've explained why *that* joke was far less obviously a 'joke' than people thought it was. But the jokes don't need to be that ridiculous to be either difficult to separate as jokes, or to not be co-opted by people who mean to use it seriously.

[suicide]
There are jokes whose punchlines are best described as:
'Everyone who doesn't agree with me should just go k*ll themselves'.

"If you didn't think of this politician I hate when a joke asked you to imagine a bad person dying, you should d*e too"

[suicide]
To someone who's on the verge of suicide already? That shit can be what it takes to knock them over the edge. The fact that they thought of their abusive partner who made them suicidal to begin with instead of that politician is enough 'proof' that they deserve to d*e.

[suicide]
Even if a part of their mind *does* register it as a joke, the depression/suicide brain is too strong to counter that. "Joke or not, it's still true!" the brain says.

It clearly was *not* obvious a joke enough.

A joke doesn't need to include death or harm to be damaging.

Let's look at the way the term 'fragile masculinity' is used as a joke!

The term is another term in feminism. Like 'toxic masculinity', there's a lot of misunderstandings on what it is. And unlike 'toxic masculinity', I had no clue it even existed until about 3-4 years ago.

(Which isn't to say it's new! I've just been a feminist about 12 years, and never ran into it!)

Being a feminist term, there's also a lot of people who just don't have *any* clue what it is. Even other feminists just assume it's a funny way of saying 'men are whiny babies!'

In short, it's when a man feels the need to either defend his own masculinity when it's not under attack ("I'm not gay! I love women!" when given a pink shirt to wear) or when a man instinctively jumps to another man's defence without any evidence ("Not all men!").

This is leaving out a lot of nuance of the term, but in short it describes a phenomenon where a man feels his masculinity is threatened when it's not. It's a useful term for describing this phenomenon and what *causes it*.

Most people seem to run into it as a punchline.
++++++++

Instead of seeing it used to describe what's going on, and how to help make it less of an issue (because surprise: men feeling the need to defend their right to be men is not good for them, or anyone else! and is a side-effect of a society that's damaging men, too!), it's a joke.

It's commonly used by people making fun of guys who are happy something was marketed towards them in a way that reinforces their gender in harmless ways - think, say, fancy soaps for men, makeup for men, etc.

[rape]
It's also sometimes used whenever a man disagrees on something a woman said that's about men. Like. "Men can't be raped!" and when a man says "Hey I'm a rape victim?" he gets told his sexual assault wasn't *rape*, and that he's got fragile masculinity to think otherwise.

[rape]
Let's not forget when men ask for the rape statistics of men inside and outside of prison to both be talked about - ON THEIR OWN FEEDS, not in reply to a thread on female rape statistics - you'll find people going 'lol fragile masculinity!'

[rape]
As if somehow it's funny that men too are concerned about rape, and how rape culture also affects *men*. You know. That thing how we're always telling men they need to be aware of, but we refuse to let them *talk* about how the culture affects them so it can be worked on?

[rape]
And again: I am not talking about men going into a woman's mentions to make a topic about himself. I'm talking about when they make their own threads in their own spaces asking other people to think about how rape culture affects men, too.

[rape]
and it does, by the way. It make men less likely to report their own rape, or a rape they witnessed for fear they'll be emasculated and raped for not being masculine. A component of fragile masculinity is *the fear that you will be raped because you are not man enough*.

[rape]
It's a real fucking problem, and using it as a punchline is fucking *horrible*.

It's not just white cishet men who have to deal with this, either. (Not that I think they should have to deal with it to begin with!)

This shit affects gay men, trans men, disabled men, and POC in their own ways, too.

So when you say 'This joke was obviously aimed at cis men!' about 'lol fragile masculinity', if you're not *specifically aiming at cis men in your language*, you're hitting other people, too.

I can't talk in depth about how this affects gay men and POC men, but I see *every day* how it affects my friends who are trans men, *and* I see a lot of the posts aimed at them. I see emasculation of disabled men on my feed fairly regularly, too!

My transmasculine friends are afraid to post about things that help them feel less dysphoric, like, again, fancy soaps for men, because they get 'lol fragile masculinity' from other people, sometimes even trans women.

(Which is *insane* because you'd think they'd *get it*. That they'd understand how nice it is to have things that bring you closer to being seen as your gender! How it's nice to have scents associated with your gender that make you feel more in line with public expectations!)

And don't think I'm calling out trans women and saying 'you're awful!!!' or anything, because they're *far* from the only ones, and I've seen some of my fellow NB folks, and queer people *in general* do this shit. It's just shocking to me when I see a trans woman make the joke.

And the thing is, I don't even think most of the people making these jokes are awful! Most of them are just going along with a joke that has been popular, downright memetic, in recent years. Most people don't see how these jokes are used to *harm* others.

That's why you don't see me saying '*Obviously* these jokes hurt people!', because if it was *obvious* a lot of people wouldn't be using them.

These jokes also aren't *obviously* not making fun of non-cishet men for reaffirming their gender to themselves.

And on the final note I'm going to comment on:

"Obviously I don't mean you!" "Obviously I'm not serious!" "Obviously it's just a joke!"

I heard that shit a LOT growing up, and thanks to my being autistic, I couldn't see how *anyone* would see it as obvious.

[ablism]
I couldn't see how "I hope all gay people get aids!" was a joke any more than I could see "I hope that bitchy server's house burns down because she got my order wrong" was a joke. When I acted with shock and discomfort people in turn called me a retard for not getting it

I was actively pushed out of friend groups because I couldn't tell that mean things they said about each other when the target was around were 'jokes'. I couldn't tell that a *lot* of things were jokes, because I took a great many things literally.

*because I am autistic*.

My 'not getting the obvious joke', or 'not knowing the obvious way to do things' has gotten me hurt *over and over and over*.

Most of the time no one ever explained the joke, or why it was funny. (Because most of the time the joke was 'I want to be a jerk')

[child abuse]
No one ever explained what I was *obviously* missing. And there were times, many times, where I was outright beaten for not understanding, because people thought I was *playing stupid*.

Because clearly, no *real* person could not understand!

[abuse, suicide]
Things being 'obvious' and me not getting them was used to actively abuse me, to make me want to kill myself well into my adulthood. Because clearly, I had to be malicious and evil to not understand why a joke whose punchline was 'this person should d*e' was funy

In closing? I'm not going to say you can't make these jokes. I'm not saying you're an awful person for making them. I am however going to tell you *very few things in life are obvious to everyone*, and a LOT of the time, people use 'it's obvious!' to hurt people.

I want you to be *aware* of the harm that can be caused by saying something is obvious, while ignoring the fact that *clearly it isn't as obvious as you thought*. Not because I want you to feel bad, but because I want you to at least be educated on the potential harm.

I believe that most people don't want to do harm. I also believe that those who *do* want to do harm should at least be well aware of *who* they're hurting so they can avoid harming people they don't intend to.

(Not that I want *anyone* hurt. But. You know.)

/end