Painful humour
Jul. 28th, 2011 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livVarious things swirling around in my mind at the moment, I'm not sure how coherent this will be. Can we start by taking it as read that you can make jokes about any topic, no matter how painful or horrific? This isn't about censorship; I'm assuming that most people don't especially aim to go around exercising their undisputed free speech right to be as offensive and hurtful as possible, but actually want to be decent human beings. You certainly have the right to joke about atrocities, the question I'm asking is whether it's a morally desirable thing to do.
There was a discussion on a locked journal where the theory was proposed that it's acceptable to mock more powerful people but not less powerful. Of course the obvious trouble with that is that it's not always easy to tell who has the most power, indeed this isn't something that can be ranked in a linear fashion. Atheists may crack racist jokes about Muslims, because in the world as a whole religious believers and particularly religious establishments have way more power than atheists, but in this country Muslims are a tiny minority of the population, most of them are from immigrant backgrounds, and they suffer a lot of discrimination and disadvantage compared to white, post-Christian secularists. Feminists may mock "menz" and "dudes" because they are using satire to challenge the patriarchal establishment, but they are also socially successful, attractive people bullying lonely, low status, socially outcast men.
There's also a really, really fine line between satirizing racism, and actually being racist. It's quite common to see humour which boils down to, this person is so racist that they would even say [extremely racist remark]. Sometimes this kind of thing gets referred to as "hipster racism" or "ironic racism". But the racially despised minorities are still getting subjected to a barrage of stereotyped, offensive portrayals even if the intention is to mock those who believe in such stereotypes. Another problem is that when someone is accused of racism they may defend themselves by claiming it was only a joke, or it was satire, and the accuser should get a thicker skin or a better sense of humour.
In the wake of the devastating terror attack in Norway, Twitter and many other parts of the internet were full of jokes about how white Nordic (ugh, that word!) Christian men would get collectively punished for the attack. The humour here derives from the fact that haha, no they wouldn't, because the attacker was white he would be treated as an individual whereas a Muslim or brown-skinned terrorist would be assumed to be representative of their religion and ethnicity. Obviously the people making these jokes were aiming at the media, particularly the US media, being in such a rush to blame Muslims for everything, they weren't aiming at Muslims. Still, I felt really uncomfortable about these jokes and I couldn't work out why until I read ranty cut-and-paste but apparently sincere blog comments blaming the attack on the "Zionists", because apparently somewhere in the terrorist's writings he says something positive about Israel. Suddenly the racist tendency to blame acts of violence on the perp's ethnic background just isn't funny any more; it really happens, and it is really scary.
There is also quite a lot of calling the terrorist a nutter or a lunatic or a crazed gunman, both from pro journalists and from individuals making comments. So although it's supposedly funny to postulate that he might be regarded as part of the group of white northern Europeans, it's perfectly serious and acceptable to treat him as part of the group of people with mental illnesses. This is a tricky one because it's clearly in no way a rational, reasonable act to shoot a hundred teenagers because you think the government is too generous to immigrants. I'm sure that most people who automatically class this as crazy don't literally believe that the one in four people with mental health issues are all part of an international terrorist conspiracy or regularly go around shooting children. But whether it's a figure of speech or simply speculating about medical causes for evil acts, this kind of thing contributes to stereotyping of people with mental illnesses as violent and dangerous, and causes a lot of harm.
My reactions to the discussions of the Norwegian attack reminded me of something else I experienced recently:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shweta_narayan linked to a satirical story about racism in SF. She compared it to her own satirical pieces where she presents a Dianna Wynne-Jones style Tough Guide to fantasy exoticism. The thing is that I had found Shweta's writing very funny, but when I went to read Lavie Tidhar's piece, I found it absolutely shocking and not amusing at all. I could convince myself that the Tough Guides are more clearly mocking racism in cliched fantasy, whereas The School reads as if it's mocking, well, Holocaust victims. But if I'm honest, I think it's that I'm conditioned to be more emotionally aware of the Holocaust and really don't deal well with jokes about gas chambers, whereas there are plenty of incidents in colonial history that were just as horrible, but I'm reasonably comfortable with laughing about the latter because they didn't happen to people I feel a personal connection with.
I'm certainly not saying that Narayan and Tidhar shouldn't have used humour to address these serious and even horrific issues. I'm just filing this as an example to remind me to be very careful about making jokes about stuff that readers may find intensely upsetting. Even if the target of the joke is the perpetrators of atrocities, not the victims, treating such subjects humorously could still do damage.
Anyway, yes, swirly and inconclusive post. BTW links to LJ may not work at the moment because the site is undergoing a really serious DDoS attack. It's probably targeted at dissident Russian bloggers, many of whom I expect do use humour to satirize the Russian political establishment. And that really is a free speech issue; they absolutely have the right to use LJ to express their political views, and that right is under attack by the DDoSers. I am a bit impatient with people who are whining about LJ's incompetence and lack of communication in this instance. I know LJ have had problems in the past – after all, that's why I moved here in the first place! But this isn't LJ's fault, it's the fault of seriously unpleasant orgs who are attacking the service as a way of attacking political writing they disagree with. (Also don't whine about Dreamwidth's incompetence when it can't connect to LJ to back up your journal or crosspost your entries; obviously if LJ is down then DW can't reach it, no matter how technically excellent DW may be!)
There was a discussion on a locked journal where the theory was proposed that it's acceptable to mock more powerful people but not less powerful. Of course the obvious trouble with that is that it's not always easy to tell who has the most power, indeed this isn't something that can be ranked in a linear fashion. Atheists may crack racist jokes about Muslims, because in the world as a whole religious believers and particularly religious establishments have way more power than atheists, but in this country Muslims are a tiny minority of the population, most of them are from immigrant backgrounds, and they suffer a lot of discrimination and disadvantage compared to white, post-Christian secularists. Feminists may mock "menz" and "dudes" because they are using satire to challenge the patriarchal establishment, but they are also socially successful, attractive people bullying lonely, low status, socially outcast men.
There's also a really, really fine line between satirizing racism, and actually being racist. It's quite common to see humour which boils down to, this person is so racist that they would even say [extremely racist remark]. Sometimes this kind of thing gets referred to as "hipster racism" or "ironic racism". But the racially despised minorities are still getting subjected to a barrage of stereotyped, offensive portrayals even if the intention is to mock those who believe in such stereotypes. Another problem is that when someone is accused of racism they may defend themselves by claiming it was only a joke, or it was satire, and the accuser should get a thicker skin or a better sense of humour.
In the wake of the devastating terror attack in Norway, Twitter and many other parts of the internet were full of jokes about how white Nordic (ugh, that word!) Christian men would get collectively punished for the attack. The humour here derives from the fact that haha, no they wouldn't, because the attacker was white he would be treated as an individual whereas a Muslim or brown-skinned terrorist would be assumed to be representative of their religion and ethnicity. Obviously the people making these jokes were aiming at the media, particularly the US media, being in such a rush to blame Muslims for everything, they weren't aiming at Muslims. Still, I felt really uncomfortable about these jokes and I couldn't work out why until I read ranty cut-and-paste but apparently sincere blog comments blaming the attack on the "Zionists", because apparently somewhere in the terrorist's writings he says something positive about Israel. Suddenly the racist tendency to blame acts of violence on the perp's ethnic background just isn't funny any more; it really happens, and it is really scary.
There is also quite a lot of calling the terrorist a nutter or a lunatic or a crazed gunman, both from pro journalists and from individuals making comments. So although it's supposedly funny to postulate that he might be regarded as part of the group of white northern Europeans, it's perfectly serious and acceptable to treat him as part of the group of people with mental illnesses. This is a tricky one because it's clearly in no way a rational, reasonable act to shoot a hundred teenagers because you think the government is too generous to immigrants. I'm sure that most people who automatically class this as crazy don't literally believe that the one in four people with mental health issues are all part of an international terrorist conspiracy or regularly go around shooting children. But whether it's a figure of speech or simply speculating about medical causes for evil acts, this kind of thing contributes to stereotyping of people with mental illnesses as violent and dangerous, and causes a lot of harm.
My reactions to the discussions of the Norwegian attack reminded me of something else I experienced recently:
shweta_narayan linked to a satirical story about racism in SF. She compared it to her own satirical pieces where she presents a Dianna Wynne-Jones style Tough Guide to fantasy exoticism. The thing is that I had found Shweta's writing very funny, but when I went to read Lavie Tidhar's piece, I found it absolutely shocking and not amusing at all. I could convince myself that the Tough Guides are more clearly mocking racism in cliched fantasy, whereas The School reads as if it's mocking, well, Holocaust victims. But if I'm honest, I think it's that I'm conditioned to be more emotionally aware of the Holocaust and really don't deal well with jokes about gas chambers, whereas there are plenty of incidents in colonial history that were just as horrible, but I'm reasonably comfortable with laughing about the latter because they didn't happen to people I feel a personal connection with. I'm certainly not saying that Narayan and Tidhar shouldn't have used humour to address these serious and even horrific issues. I'm just filing this as an example to remind me to be very careful about making jokes about stuff that readers may find intensely upsetting. Even if the target of the joke is the perpetrators of atrocities, not the victims, treating such subjects humorously could still do damage.
Anyway, yes, swirly and inconclusive post. BTW links to LJ may not work at the moment because the site is undergoing a really serious DDoS attack. It's probably targeted at dissident Russian bloggers, many of whom I expect do use humour to satirize the Russian political establishment. And that really is a free speech issue; they absolutely have the right to use LJ to express their political views, and that right is under attack by the DDoSers. I am a bit impatient with people who are whining about LJ's incompetence and lack of communication in this instance. I know LJ have had problems in the past – after all, that's why I moved here in the first place! But this isn't LJ's fault, it's the fault of seriously unpleasant orgs who are attacking the service as a way of attacking political writing they disagree with. (Also don't whine about Dreamwidth's incompetence when it can't connect to LJ to back up your journal or crosspost your entries; obviously if LJ is down then DW can't reach it, no matter how technically excellent DW may be!)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-28 12:25 pm (UTC)People like explanations. People like explanations which flatter and reassure them, yes, and allow them to engage in a variety of morally dubious activities with the feeling of a clean conscience (or even the feeling of righteousness), but people also like explanations which go some way towards explaining things.
[1] Some people call this "inductive reasoning" but I don't like that, because it confuses it with the process whereby you induce generalities from specifics. Sherlock Holmes calls the process "deduction".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-28 04:31 pm (UTC)I guess the problem is that his being mentally ill doesn't really constitute ; a really tiny minority of crazy people commit serious acts of violence. I don't think there's good evidence violent crime is in any way over-represented among mentally ill people compared to the general population; any such data is massively clouded by circular arguments that all serial killers are de facto insane.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-28 06:06 pm (UTC)Which then leads me to wonder if people aren't looking for explanations after all, but just throwing around nasty-sounding terms in order to engage in recreational condemnation without regard for who they might be hurting by doing so (see also "gay" as a generic insult). Or maybe a mixture of both.
Most of people people who would happily label serial killers or terrorists or dictators "insane" would probably not be keen on delivering a verdict of "not guilty due to insanity" at a trial. I don't know the stats on serial killers but I suspect that most of them weren't found legally insane; IIRC Shipman wasn't.
All that said, it is clear that a lot of people are excessively worried about that people with mental illnesses might be violent - however there are complications. It's clear, for example, that the stigma attaches more to some conditions than to others (this paper would be interesting as an example if they would let me read more than the first page) - whereas progress might be being made with regards to a variety of mood and anxiety disorders, things like schizophrenia still seem to have a severe - and increasing - image problem.
(Minor minor off-topic point; see also me getting in a twist between mathematical notions of (maximum) likelihood and plain-English "likely"; there's a certain style of argument that I see in some circles that I think is grounded in literary theory and continental philosophy - I get rather wound up by it for various reasons and have been itching to argue back with my own specialisms. But this is beside the point... there's also the point about multiple causation but I think this comment is long enough already).
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-01 10:21 am (UTC)The legal issue is a further complication, yes. For this kind of mass violence the defence pretty much has to plead insanity, because there's no possible way to deny that the accused committed the crime or that it was unintentional or there's some loophole whereby it was actually legal. So if they're going to mount a defence at all insanity is the obvious if not the only option. It's hard to get round the fact that that contributes to stigma against mental illness.
Thanks for linking that very relevant paper. The issue of stigma and perception of mental health certainly is complicated!
I'm afraid I don't understand your final paragraph. Are you saying that my comment about whether mental illness makes violent crime likely is not mathematically accurate? It's quite possible; I can follow arguments based on Bayesian probability but I'm not confident enough in my understanding of the principles to compose such arguments myself.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-01 10:46 am (UTC)1) basically in common usage, "probable" and "likely" mean more or less the same thing. A lot of the maths that gets used in the areas I work in uses "likelihood" to refer to a specific sort of probability - specifically, the conditional probability of the think you've just observed given the explanation you're hypothesising for it. If you've seen B, then P(B|A) is the likelihood.
2) Graded vs. absolute probable/likely. There's an absolute sense, suggesting a probability greater than 0.5. Under that sense, X and not-X can't both be probable. There's also - I think - a graded sense, meaning "substantially more probable/likely than some base rate" - although this could just be me having a strange idiolect. The maximum likelihood in a given situation can be pathetically low; for example in my line of work it is common to estimate the likelihood of a sentence (or the joint likelihood of a sentence plus annotations (e.g. part-of-speech tags)) given various assumptions. Consider the last sentence; if you (or your software) had made a list of sentences that I might conceivably utter, complete with probabilities that summed to 1, how much of that "1" would have been given over to precisely that sentence.
So: "a state of affairs under which that effect is likely"; basically that was an attempt at putting in plain English "P(B|A) is high", where "high" isn't necessarily absolutely high, just higher than other P(B|X) for various X.