Women's College Cancels The Vagina Monologues So Transgenders Won't Be Offended- Page 2

[ScottyDoesn'tKnow2]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 3:02pm

You mentioning that you were "old" came before the other post with those terms in parenthesis and as a response to a post that reacted negatively to your original post. Even so, it still reads somewhat as an excuse as to you not being as with it with the terminology, even if you gave us a short explanation of past terms used. I admit it's hard for me to assume best intentions considering how your original post came off, and your reactions since then.

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 4:23pm

What the hell are you two babbling on about? Shut it.   The political correctness here is f*cking stupid and should be condemned by all. Art, and theatre in particular, need not be burdened with political correctness. 

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 4:26pm

Interesting to see how many people here think Ms. Ensler's play needs to be banned so that no one's feelings are hurt

I... don't see a single post that says that. 

[ScottyDoesn'tKnow2]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 5:29pm

"What the hell are you two babbling on about? Shut it.   The political correctness here is f*cking stupid and should be condemned by all. Art, and theatre in particular, need not be burdened with political correctness. "

That's rich.

[Sally Durant Plummer]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 6:27pm

Political Correctness is something that shouldn't effect the arts / the theatre, but does. Schools now use "racism" as an excuse to not perform "Bye Bye Birdie", regardless of the fact that the mother's racism is blatantly satired in "Spanish Rose". Same for "Carousel" (domestic abuse), "Smile" (Racism), and many others.

 

It's particularly annoying when shows have lots of merit and are wrongly wrote off because of a conceived "offensive" section, when that fact is, people are simply too sensitive and, as a result, ignorant.

[hork]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 6:37pm

"Count me in. I'd hardly call this "Women who have penises have feelings too, you know," innocuous. Unnecessary, yes. Ignorant, definitely. Innocuous? Far from it. "

It's not ignorant at all. It's sarcasm aimed at people who think women without a vagina would be offended by women speaking about vaginas (which is ignorant), which NoName even explained for people who didn't get it the first time. This is what he (she?) meant by reading comprehension.

I now understand why Jerry Seinfeld doesn't perform at colleges anymore. Too much PC nonsense. I feel like the more progress and acceptance that transgendered people receive, the less we're able to talk about them.

Incidentally, "transsexual" is not an offensive word. It simply means someone who has transitioned from one sex to another. Sex and gender are not the same thing, so we need these different words. Of course, it depends on how you use the word. It could also mean exactly the same thing as "transgender," in which case it's definitely not offensive.

Updated On: 7/26/15 at 06:37 PM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 6:43pm

Jerry Seinfeld doesn't perform at college campuses because he's a reactionary old ninny.

[hork]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 7:06pm

Right, he's a reactionary. He's the Jewish Hitler.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 7:08pm

You're a flippin' moron.

[ScottyDoesn'tKnow2]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 7:16pm

Paul Lynde thought the song was offensive as well and even wrote about it. It's like when Dave Chappelle stopped humoring people with his satirical humor as well. It gets to a point where the intent is lost and the actual impact is that people are laughing a little too hard at things.

I think for people who complain that people are too sensitive and should just take it, well maybe you should ask who is speaking out and ask why they are speaking out, and have they historically spoken out before?

As for Seinfeld, he can't have it both ways. He can't complain about not going to colleges (as if he actually would have done that) because he feels censored when he wants to suppress people's true reactions. As Colin Quinn respectfully said (and he's still friends with Jerry Seinfeld and they're working together):

"“Look,” Quinn said, “people still have a sense of humor, but it depends on where you’re coming from. You can’t just [throw your hands in the air] and say, ‘it’s just jokes,’ because it’s not a free pass.'"

Comics need thick skin, and if your humor fails to transcend people's reactions, then the fault lies with the humor. If you want to stick with your guns, then get a thick skin (like all comics do) if you want to play with crowds who grew up differently than you did, or maybe you should realize your humor isn't relevant to certain populations anymore and pander to ones that get you (not every comic is universally liked and play to their own crowds), but don't blame evolving society that no longer thinks that what was funny 20-30 years ago is funny now. It's not that things are more boring, it's that humor has evolved and will always evolve. I'm sure people resisted when people complained about minstrel shows or when Asian-Americans started saying Mickey Rooney wasn't funny in Breakfast at Tiffany's. That's a problem with an art form that requires relevancy and to be on the pulse of pop culture, it changes with the times.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 7:21pm

Jerry Seinfeld doesn't DO college gigs!  

Whipsmart comic's comic Andy Kindler promised to cover all of Seinfeld's stupidity (and maybe also the stupid people who keep repeating his stupidity as if it proves something about "political correctness") in his annual state of comedy talk at Just for Laughs in Montreal this week.  As the New York Times reported:

 

[Kindler] said he would ... focus on the controversial interview in which Mr. Seinfeld said college audiences had become too politically correct. “I’ve been studying it like the Zapruder film,” Mr. Kindler said, before chuckling over Mr. Seinfeld’s claim that young people like denouncing racism but don’t know what the word means.

“I love the idea that they don’t know what racism is, but he does because he grew up in ... ,” Mr. Kindler stopped, pausing for dramatic effect, “Massapequa, that hotbed of racial unrest.” Then he shifted from a wry tone to that of a lawyer laying out the facts of the case: “Massapequa is 1.7 percent black. The median income is $100,000 a year. The first black person Jerry met was George Wallace,” the comic... .

He also has little patience for Mr. Seinfeld’s claims that political correctness is chilling comedy. “There’s no incident here — he doesn’t play colleges, he didn’t lose a booking,” Mr. Kindler said, exasperated. “Lenny Bruce’s career was ruined by language. You’re going to whine about your perceived inability to talk about stuff.”

 

[hork]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 8:31pm

That's the thing, though. He doesn't want to perform for crowds who grew up differently than he did. And why should he? Why would he want to perform for people who don't find him funny? He's perfectly right not to. He's not looking to suppress people's reactions, he just doesn't want to hear them, if they're negative. What comedian does? Comedians want laughs, period. They don't want to be told "That's not funny!" So they play where they will get those laughs.

You don't go to a Mormon church to perform Hedwig. You go where your audience is.

Of course, I'm of the mindset that with comedy, anything goes. But apparently that's no longer a popular attitude.

[ScottyDoesn'tKnow2]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 8:45pm

It depends. Some comedians like the challenge and think performing to crowds that need to be turned is the point of comedy since it's supposed to be an observation and commentary of the world. I'd actually argue comedy at the college circuit is raunchier and edgier than anything Seinfeld has ever done, and many more things were censored back in the "good old days" than they are now. It's just that comedians who are successful at it are skilled enough to know how to make that edginess resonate. People keep talking about this sanitation and how things are safer now but really it's not. Go to the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn and you'll see young comedians performing for the young "PC" crowd saying things and touching upon topics that are biting. The crowd reacts positively because the comedians understand the topics they are satirizing or poking fun of and understand that audiences are much diverse now. Anybody who thinks comedy has lost something now that it had before seems out of touch.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 8:48pm

What church should one go to perform Hedwig?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 8:50pm

"That's the thing, though."

Oh hork, the thing, as Seinfeld set it up, is false.  Seinfeld charges $200 for orchestra seats at shows in the hinterlands.  He has zero interests in college shows.

What people like Seinfeld don't want to do is HEAR from anybody that the time is passing when somebody from the 1% gets to make jokes at the expense of people who never had the advantages guys like Jerry had.  That nagging sense that they are dinosaurs is actually based in fact, and only Louis CK is unafraid to look at it directly, as he did many times on his FX series this season.

 

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 8:56pm

And it's all over a lazy gay joke!

[Kad]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 9:46pm

Yeah, anything goes in comedy, and has for a long time. But it turns out that a lot of people who have been the butt of jokes, as well as the butt of much larger institutional issues, don't really like that. And are now saying so, because they finally can. 

And it turns out the comedians who have been able to get away with with punching down for no particular reason other than easy laughs for decades... don't think that's so funny. Imagine that.

There are a lot of fantastic younger comedians out there who will probably never have a Seinfeld-level stardom, sure. But then again, someone like Seinfeld would have never been able to do something like make people finally pay attention to the allegations against Bill Cosby, like Hannibal Buress did.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 10:15pm

You're a gem, kad.  

People should be able to say whatever the hell they want to say, but I don't understand this notion that just because they can say it, they should say it.  Or the notion that if they do say it, that somehow makes it immune to consequences.  OR the notion that dismissing someone's opinion as "political correctness" is some kind of mulligan that automatically shuts down a discussion.  

Is this one old story about trannies (who never get angry about ANYTHING ever) ridiculous?  Sure.  But I don't think it speaks to a larger public menace of "political correctness" ruining comedy or art or college or life or whatever. The trannies (I learned from BWW I don't need to consider if that's even my word to use, because eff political correctness!)  didn't ask for this, this was a preemptive move by the administration. Like how nothing actually happened to Jerry on a college campus for him to have an opinon about college campuses, except for what Chris Rock told him. It's also like that liberal professor who was internet famous for a hot second when he boohooed about college campuses being a liberal hivemind that suppresses any "political incorrect" thought. But nothing had actually happened to him personally, save for a brief anecdote from his early days a teacher, when a conservative student challenged him.  

While this probably deserves its own thread, I've really been enjoying the sh:tshow that Gawker has become, over that godawful post about the CFO and the gay escort.  I've always had a love/hate relationship with that site's BS, but watching them go for nastiness for the sake of nastiness, and then doubling down on it, as though there was some kind of duty to queen and country to out seemingly harmless married straight dudes for no reason other than because they simply could, just really turned me off for good.

I bring this up because that whole brouhaha made me feel the same way that I feel when the anti-"PC Police" people go on and on about someone's right to celebrate when a comedian makes a roomful of people laugh because the gist of the joke is "Fags, amirite?" or "God, that woman is fat!" or "I wanna rape that bitch" or "I'd kill my son if he were gay" or [fill in whatever it is that you could live without]. If that's the hill you want to die on, super. But dial back your offense about your perception of my offense.   

Updated On: 7/26/15 at 10:15 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 10:22pm

Great pithy summation, kad.

You, too, Phyl.

[Kad]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 11:00pm

The fact is: no one is being silenced.

We are living in a world in which, thanks to the Internet, people who were previously without much of a voice now have one. We are living in a wider, more interconnected world, in which it's actually fairly easy to see the ripples something can make. We can see the effect of a casually bigoted joke. And most people just would like others to see that effect, and have it give them pause to think, "is this right to say? is a laugh, or applause, worth it?"

It's just- have consciousness of the world you're living in and the people you're sharing it with because you have no excuse not to anymore.

And if you are given an opportunity to see the effects the things you say at others' expense have, and still decide to go on as you've been doing, then... fine. You're allowed. You're an asshole, and will be called an asshole, but you're allowed.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 11:18pm

I agree with Namo: great posts, guys!

And now, because I have a thick skin, I'll ask my questions:

I looked up SJW and found it means "Social Justice Warrior". Sounds like a label I'd be proud to wear. Is it also supposed to be an insult?

If a man is normatively heterosexual except that he likes to wear women's underwear, is he no longer a "transvestite"? And if not, why has the term become offensive? (Surely we'll agree there's nothing wrong with his underwear choices.)

Finally, if gender refers to behavior and sex refers to biology, why do those who surgically and chemically alter their biology want to be called "transgendered" rather than "transsexual"? Is it just our general cultural discomfort with the syllable "sex"?

Let me be clear: I'm am very much in favor of letting every group self-label and I do not consider it a hardship to alter my vocabulary as the language changes. I'm merely curious about the above, not irate that I can't use a certain word.

And FWIW, my many years in academia suggest that reports of "Political Correctness" are greatly exaggerated. Yes, students learn that language matters (as any educated person should) and they may debate it fiercely; but tar-and-feathering was rare.

 

[Elfuhbuh]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 11:22pm

"SJW" is usually a snarky, sarcastic term used against people whom one believes to be "too PC." From what I've seen, it's generally supposed to be an insult.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 7/26/15 at 11:46pm

Thank you. For several posts I wondered what a "Single Jewish Woman" had to do with the topic.

[hork]

Posted: 7/27/15 at 12:05am

I'm gay, and I have no problem with that gay French king joke (other than it just not being a very good joke). This is what Seinfeld is talking about (I'm not sure how this thread evolved into me defending Jerry Seinfeld, a comedian I don't even particularly like, but there it is): it's getting harder to make certain kinds of jokes because people have grown so terrified of insulting certain socially disadvantaged segments of the populace (whether they actually are insulted or not). It's how this whole discussion came about, because NoName made a joke about trans women (not even a joke aimed at them, but merely one involving them) and folks instinctively took offense to it without actually thinking about what was being said.

And this whole Vagina Monologues brouhaha is clearly a symptom of that. As Phyllis said, it was a preemptive move. It wasn't even the result of any actual outrage, it came about solely because of a (completely misguided) fear of outrage.

Whether Seinfeld actually wants to play at colleges is irrelevant. He makes a valid point. Nobody's saying you should be able to say anything you want without consequences. But you've got to pick your battles. Learn to separate the stuff from the stuff. Everyone is the butt of some joke, somewhere. I'm a big fan of Family Guy, and I laugh at their gay jokes (and there are a lot of them) as much as I laugh at their jokes about blacks, Jews, women (well, not so much women ... they can get pretty crass), Latinos, Arabs, Russians, etc. If something's funny, it's funny. There's a difference between Michael Richards going off on a racist tirade and Jerry Seinfeld teasing gay men about their hand gestures. What's worrying is the seemingly increasing number of people who don't see the difference.

As a side note (and this requires me to defend Seinfeld yet again), I have a problem with Andy Kindler's (whoever that is) notion that it takes growing up in a racially divisive community to understand what racism is, rather than simply applying rational, critical thinking skills.

[acekatherineplumber2]

Posted: 7/27/15 at 12:31am

I really didn't want to add anything more to this thread, but unfortunately some of the stuff you are saying is making me quite uncomfortable. First off: "transgendered." There's nothing offensive about that word, but grammatically it makes no sense. The word is transgender. Transgender is not a verb; it is an adjective. You cannot have "transgendered." Not a big deal, but a little niggling issue that gets on my nerves a bit. Second: I really do not want to ever hear/see anybody use the word "tr*nny" ever again, and yes, I am censoring it because it makes me highly uncomfortable. It has a long history of transphobia, specifically transmisogyny, and to see a person using it so flippantly truthfully makes me feel unsafe! 

And Gaveston, I'll take a stab at one of your questions: "Finally, if gender refers to behavior and sex refers to biology, why do those who surgically and chemically alter their biology want to be called "transgendered" rather than "transsexual"? Is it just our general cultural discomfort with the syllable "sex"?"

First, gender doesn't refer to behavior--it refers to one's connate mental identity. There's no real reason, in my opinion, to distinguish between trans people who have undergone surgery and/or taken hormones and those who have not. So that's one reason I would think those who have had operations would not want to identify separately. Another thing is cis people often make "trans-ness" so focused on genitals and surgery and so on, which of course most trans folk find offensive, annoying and invasive. So not many people would be inclined to identify based on the state of their biology. And also, being trans is about gender. It's about your understanding of your own gender not aligning with the gender you were assigned at birth, so whether a person alters their body or not, it all has to do with their gender. 

I hope that all made sense and I didn't come off as snippy or anything...