Ask them to explain the “joke” then once they finish say I didn’t find the joke funny.
I do this, but then I pick it apart to make it really painful.
“Oh, jokes just normally have a punchline and aren’t just stating something really backwards”
what’s the counter to “whatever you just dont get it 🙄”??
“it’s just not funny.”
What’s there to get? Why can’t you explain it? Feeling uncomfortable?
They can’t ever explain the joke, though.
That’s half the fun. Watching them squirm and try to figure out how to explain the joke without saying the -ism out loud when they realize they’re not in “safe” company.
This one’s my go-to.
As long as 1 singular person finds the joke funny it still counts as a joke.
I have a lot of jokes where my friends don’t find them funny. But there’s always a punch line, some smart wordplay, terrible pun, even if they feel like it’s too forced (smh).
Racists do know that openly saying that “minorities being abused is funny” sounds racist as fuck, so they try to avoid explaining their jokes.
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Slight lean back
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Expression of baffled disgust
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Quietly: “The fuck?”
Cuts deep
If you’re especially non-confrontational, then even the first one, or 0 reaction, can do. Just don’t do the polite chuckle. They’ll think it landed.
I have to work really hard not to laugh myself, and instead let it be awkward.
yes. Relish the beautiful silence.
“Bruh”
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Honestly I haven’t had to say something in almost a decade
You’re hanging out with the right people
It’s all about where you live and what you look like.
I’m a huge white dude in a red state, I’ve been getting hit on by nazis since before I was a teenager because I look like their “ideal”.
Like, when they picture their “master race” it’s what I look like, so they always fucking assume I’ll agree with any side comment they make.
If you’re not in a super blue area, you’re not hearing stuff because something identifies you as “them” and not “us”. But even in blue areas I’ll hear shit.
I’m a white American immigrant in Germany. The shit people say to me about immigrants, which they then walk back with “but not you, you’re one of the good ones,” is infuriating.
“Bro, not cool.” With a stern look always sets the homies straight.
But what if want to set them gay?
My personal go-to is, “They’re a human being, just like you.”
Sadly, they often disagree. The whole basis of bigotry is the idea that I’m human and you’re less than.
“… aren’t.”
Being human doesn’t make you good. Plenty of humans are monsters. They’re not some eldritch evil that simply started existing hating, they chose this.
That makes them worse, of course… but still very very human.
Yeah, humans are fucking awful, by and large. Just look at the entirety of human history.
In drag’s experience, calling someone a human is a tremendously vicious insult if you have cool enough friends.
You don’t need to be cisgender, heterosexual, male or white to call people out on their bigoted beliefs.
Edit: if you are in those categories you’re more likely to be taken more seriously by other cishet white men. I think I understand the point of the original post now.
No, but bigoted, cisgendered, heterosexual white men are probably more likely to listen to other cisgendered heterosexual white men due to their bigotry.
Someone disagreeing within Chad Junior’s very narrow social circle will mean more to him than someone outside of the circle, especially if that person is also unlike Chad Junior in several ways. Unfortunate as it is.
In my experience that is almost never the case. They’ll just call you a liberal soyboy or something and never think on it further.
Definitely. It’s just an amplifier. Imagine a protestor saying “too many cops are violent and need to cool it”, as opposed to a cop saying “too many cops are violent and need to cool it”
Exactly. Also some of us have learned to fear pushing back against cishet men who are being aggressive. As a trans lesbian I’m not going to improve the situation with confrontation, I’ll just get shouted at, called a snowflake, or otherwise dismissed. But when say, my girlfriend’s husband, a very large extremely masculine cishet guy challenges it, it may not always go well, but it’s perceived as peer disapproval as opposed to “triggering the enemy”.
Oh, I got it. Thanks
It’s like you missed the point entirely
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Yep, that’s my go to as well.
So Mexican dudes can’t say these things, eh? Only white dudes, and only if they’re straight?
You need to add ‘ese’ to the end of it.
Throw 3 or 4 ‘pendejo’ in there for good measure
The only Spanish I know is from Speedy Gonzalez, so is it ok if I just chuck “Andale! Andale! Arriba! Arriba! Yii-hah!” on the end there?
What a weird thing to say
That’s a disgusting opinion to have!
I had a Mexican friend back in college and we used to joke that if you put El in front of something, it became Spanish.
So he’d say something like, “Hey, do you want to get el pizza tonight?”
And I’d say, “Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.”
(Although normally we’d do it as an inside joke when someone couldn’t understand him because of his accent.)
My ‘hey, you’re being a fuck stick’ detector doesn’t discriminate, despite what my stolen meme says
And only to men, because of course there aren’t any women who hate on trans people!
Middle-aged white men have a lot of privilege. It’s time we used it for good.
Is this white-saviour and/or patriarchial? Yup. Does it work? Also yup.
I don’t know if we all realize this, but some shitlord being told “What the fuck is wrong you?!” cuts deeper when it comes from someone who looks like their dad, granddad, or their boss.
I’m a 47-year old white guy in a leadership position in a large company. I’ve done exactly this to both young-millenial edgelord types who think I’m in on the joke, and boomer or elder-Xers who are yelling at clouds. I will tell you that, not only does it smack down the dipshit who thought that “lol rape” or “brown people bad” was funny, it also sets the tone for everyone else in the room, and it gets word around that bigotry isn’t acceptable.
Anyone can say this, but it hits harder when it’s someone privileged. Women, LGBTQ folk and other vulnerable groups don’t have this privilege, and get shut down, and if we don’t want that to be the case, we need to speak up for them.
Fuck yes. This is the entire point of the post. This is not my meme, but some turds are focusing in on ‘buh only WhItE mEn?!’. No. Not just white men. White women and children too, anikan. Anybody really.
You raise a very good point about our white male privilege and the lack of ‘stopping power’ less privileged groups have when challenging bigotry.
All of this also applies to women saying horrible things being called out by other women who they respect / think are part of their social group.
It’s only bigotry if it’s cishetwhitemen doing it, otherwise it’s just sparkling discrimination.
I’m not in the trenches of this particular culture war, so I don’t know shit, but I really do wonder why not phrase it as “people who want to be better allies” instead of targeting a single racial group and sexual orientation. Would feel more inclusive.
I think you got it. The op was probably fixating on the biggest impact that they can see, but that’s going to vary by community and who is reading this.
Also huge shocker, diverse groups of people also need to be mindful of this shit.
It’s the reason good “DEI” policies are important. If you just start hiring people from more diverse backgrounds (good) then have them land in a toxic work environment with 0 support (bad) then they’re not likely to thrive.
Didn’t know there were so many All Lives Matter people on here, Jesus Christ.
Yes. Didn’t you know that straight men are the root of all problems in the world?
These comments, yeesh. I am a cis white dude, and I don’t see how this post is offensive. As I’ve gotten older and more self-confident, I absolutely call people out for their garbage opinions/statements. Being a cis/straight/white dude it happens all the time that somebody says something racist/sexist/homophobic in front of me assuming I’ll be sympathetic. I’ve used all these “scripts” and encourage you all to use them also.
Do you hear yourself right now?
'Cause you’re spot on!
This is the way
Yeah I’m not cis, het, or a dude, but I do this stuff when people assume I’ll join in racism. I’ll challenge that shit and attempt to help lead them to the truth
If I know I’ll have to talk to them again soon I’ll just awkwardly look away, hoping they figure it out themselves but other than that I try to be the exact same.
“I won’t let you talk to them that way” is a bad one that doesn’t belong on this list. It implies you’re in control of them, which you’re not. It’s essentially a bluff, and if they call it, you need to be able to beat them up.
To add more good phrases to this list, the phrases need to imply that the person still has their own agency (because they do), and that it’s just a dipshit way to use that agency. The other phrases are great.
I told a coworker they were “full of shit” then repeated that when they said “what?”
Pfff. Everytime my father in law goes on a racist diatribe I tell him, “Mustafa is what now?”. He is my Egyptian brother in law and the kindest and hospitable person I know.
I also very dislike my father in law, used to be a somewhat good guy, then he got old and racist.
Chronic lead poisoning at an early age is a hell of a drug.
My go-to is “Why do you think that is an okay thing to say?”
That why calling out people for being weird worked
ITT: a lot of people reading this to be specifically and only for cis white men, but they’re talking about the power any in-group member has to shut down bigoted shit and that’s what we should be focusing on. In a space where the biggest in-group is black women this post would be about them, but the most common “in-group” (disproportionately so) is white cis men so that’s who they mention. If this is making you feel attacked or targeted then please set aside that part of it and don’t discard the actual message, because this is honestly something everyone should think about.
Anytime you’re accepted somewhere, whether in public or among strangers, you have a lot of social power when it comes to setting the tone of conversation - one loud idiot can make a space feel extremely hostile to an outsider, and if everybody gives a polite laugh instead of speaking up that idiot learns saying things like that is okay and the “outsider” learns they’re not truly welcome. Literally one person who speaks up instead of letting it fly can solve this - the message is to be that person, not to attack anyone in particular.
If this is making you feel attacked or targeted
As a “cis het white man”, I wouldn’t dream to feel attacked by this and find it mind-boggling how anyone could be so fucking braindead and/or tone-deaf that they would feel attacked. But here we are, in a world where there is a “soon to be Nazi-America” where there was once the united states of America.
Look at you, with the hemispheres of your brain actually somewhat separate from one another.
It’s really refreshing to have someone actually get the meaning behind this meme instead of say ‘not all men’ or the equivalent.
I want to know why you, and so many others apparently, cannot grasp the idea of pointing out why one aspect of something is problematic without, by default, being an implication that the entire thing is wrong or that they hate all of it etc etc.
I’m not even offended by it, but I get why someone would be, but that doesn’t take away from the point of the post either. It’s really fucking weird and feels intellectually dishonest.