> I'm giving all of this characterisation because I think it's very unlikely that most people on HN would have met or known well the sort of people that say these sort of things genuinely, and because most of what I see here on these topics is either genuine confusion or literally misguided anger that doesn't understand the people they are angry at.

Granted. However, even though we can never fully understand another person, we can still demand that nobody in the room calls for the elimination of another group of people, even as a "joke" or "expression of anger" or similar. That's basic defense of human rights, the acknowledgement that nobody deserves to be targeted for things they can't control. Because jokes are used by extremists to gauge the tone of the rest of the group, and, if the group is conducive, they magically aren't jokes anymore.

> For context, I agree with "Trans rights are human rights" as a slogan and disagree with "Kill all men" as a slogan.

Yes, I fully agree with this.

>Granted. However, even though we can never fully understand another person, we can still demand that nobody in the room calls for the elimination of another group of people, even as a "joke" or "expression of anger" or similar.

To clarify, I was explaining what the type of person who would write that believes and why they would write it, because that question was asked in the thread. I don't agree with the slogan, I am just able to explain the thought processes and background of those who do.

>Because jokes are used by extremists to gauge the tone of the rest of the group, and, if the group is conducive, they magically aren't jokes anymore.

I'm familiar with the concept you're discussing but I don't think it applies here. For one, it's not a joke - it's insincere, but not humorous. For another, I have known neo-Nazis (I have worked in deradicalisation, specifically exit programs for young men in neo-Nazi groups) who would do the whole "day of the rope" thing and claim they were joking but were actually chomping at the bit to enact it, and I would consider myself well-equipped to judge whether these "kill all men" people were "secretly serious" like those neo-Nazis are. Genuinely, they really weren't.

Or, to put it another way, out of the people I knew who would be willing to say or agree with the slogan "kill all men", if they were in a social situation where they had the opportunity to contribute to the slaughter of a group of men in a socially supported way, they would not contribute and would almost certainly actively resist if they weren't having some sort of nervous breakdown at being in such an unusual situation. The same is not true for neo-Nazis or theocratic Islamists or some other groups that I have interacted with who are calling for the death of people with contingent insincerity - outside of a few of the younger members of those groups, given a social situation which allowed them to act out said social murder they would do it, and they all know it, as does anyone who interacts with them for any length of time. That's why I don't think the analogy is valuable, because in a practical sense these people aren't actually engaging in domestic terrorism and don't have any power to enforce their beliefs even if they were sincere, and also because I am familiar with the dynamics of the phrase and the sort of people that say it and they would not actually support mass murder even in an imaginary social context which was specifically supportive of that.

> I would consider myself well-equipped to judge whether these "kill all men" people were "secretly serious" like those neo-Nazis are. Genuinely, they really weren't.

I know you have said you don't agree with it, so please don't take the following as me accusing you of excusing the slogan or agreeing with it, I'm trying to further conversation and am interested in your thoughts and really don't want to come off as accusatory.

Even if it is 100% definitely, totally, absolutely, meant as a joke should we be making allowances for that? Lately we have culturally been moving away from jokes that are about genders/races/identities being considered acceptable... or at least we have been for all identities other than "white" and "men", such as in this case where this whole group of people will listen to someone saying "kill all men" and just understand it is a joke and let it go by.

I actually do understand why someone who feels frustrated by certain things might make a joke like that, and I have nuance enough to understand that context and audience matters, and that often things said in jest are a way to emotionally deal with something without any desire to cause any sort of hurt (emotionally or physically) to the people being joked about.

For me at least though that sort of joke is frustrating and hurtful when I have had to listen to years to (an often overlapping set of) people talking about how men have a responsibility to speak up when their male friends make those sorts of jokes and tell them to stop. "Silence is Violence" and all that sort of thing.

I guess what I'm getting at is you may say that people upset about people saying it don't understand the people saying it, but I do. I do hang around these sorts of people, some of my good friends belong to the local socialist party and their social circles include these sorts of people. And it still does upset me, not so much because of what they are saying - although it isn't a great thing to say - it's the hypocrisy of it that upsets me. I have legitimately heard the exact same person have a little rant about how misogynistic the phrase "bi--- be crazy" and also make jokes about how "the straights aren't ok", etc.

I think people in general, and myself especially, would be a lot more receptive to "oh it's just a joke" if those people hadn't spent a bunch of time policing what was said as part of comedy shows and stuff because as of right now it feels like a lot of people have decided that certain groups I am in are the only acceptable targets for this sort of thing, which is just... incredibly frustrating.

(2nd half)

>make jokes about how "the straights aren't ok", etc.

I think you may be misunderstanding what that means, although in this case you have correctly identified that this is a joke. It doesn't mean "not okay" as in they're not acceptable or they're bad, it means they're "not okay" in the same way you might say to someone "The situation in Russia is not okay" or "Thank you for your concern, I'm not okay at the moment". It's an expression that someone needs to check in on them, not that they're bad. You'll find it said when straight people are doing something really weird for frivolous reasons related to their sexuality, like starting wildfires using a gender reveal party. It's sort of like concern trolling (not really, but explaining actual jokes is not my strong suit), in that it's a ~false expression of concern. If it bothers you a lot, I'd advise you to laugh at it and do some thorough research to learn what sort of weird things queer people are doing (as in actually doing, not the fake nonsense propaganda like grooming children or whatever - go to queer sources and find what they're complaining about queer people doing). I guess something like "At least straight people aren't declaring a national crisis over the top shortage when they could go outside and find one by literally just talking" or "I think the degree of drama involved in your average lesbian break-up definitely means they need a check-in". Just make sure you're always approaching the topic with the understanding that the people you're talking to and joking about are currently having their children taken away from them in America or being beaten up by fascists around the world or being mass murdered in Chechnya etc for being queer, and for that reason it would once again be a very bad idea to use the hypocrisy argument, because it's very easy for them to dismiss it (and you) by pointing out that these situations are not actually the same and therefore there's no obligation to talk about or treat them the same way.

>if those people hadn't spent a bunch of time policing what was said as part of comedy shows and stuff because as of right now it feels like a lot of people have decided that certain groups I am in are the only acceptable targets for this sort of thing, which is just... incredibly frustrating.

Just because of statistics, I know there's at least one group of acceptable targets for comedy that you're not in, which is the capitalist class. You can make jokes about Beyonce running sweatshops or Barack Obama drone striking weddings and the people you're talking about aren't going to have an issue with it unless they're the sort of identity opportunists/morefemalecampguards people I don't have any time for (and I don't think anyone should have any time for).

More generally, good comedy is about punching up. It might make you laugh (I don't know you) to hear that really funny one about how feeding disabled homeless women into a wood chipper is cool, but most sane people are going to view it as mean-spirited. It's a lord having a big old laugh about how the peasants look like scarecrows during the famine - true, and very funny for the court, but unlikely to get a laugh from the peasants for really obvious reasons. You still have things in common with the people making jokes that punch up though, and there are people above both of you that you can both joke about. If it's too personally distressing to deal with jokes about you being white or straight or a man or cisgender or abled, you almost always have the option not to listen to them. Even if you're a diehard comedy fan, the vast majority of standup comics are not making jokes about how "straight cisgender white abled men suck amiright?" Guarantee it.

> It's an expression that someone needs to check in on them, not that they're bad

Trust me, in context it was an implication they are bad. I understand that it isn't always used that way, but in this case it definitely was an implication they are bad.

> it means they're "not okay" in the same way you might say to someone "The situation in Russia is not okay" or "Thank you for your concern, I'm not okay at the moment". It's an expression that someone needs to check in on them

I understand it is often used this way, but trust me in the group of people I know in real life it isn't always. Plus frankly even that usage could be seen as kind of patronizing, though again I want to stress that I am not personally offended by the joke itself

> If it's too personally distressing to deal with jokes about you being white or straight or a man or cisgender or abled, you almost always have the option not to listen to them. Even if you're a diehard comedy fan, the vast majority of standup comics are not making jokes about how "straight cisgender white abled men suck amiright?" Guarantee it.

I feel like you've really missed my point. I don't mind the jokes, they are (mostly) not a reflection of any genuine ill will, many of them are funny to me, etc. What is frustrating is how quickly people will assume ill will when jokes are made about certain groups of people and not others. The jokes themselves are fine.

>Trust me, in context it was an implication they are bad. I understand that it isn't always used that way, but in this case it definitely was an implication they are bad.

As you noted, we're both in Australia, so there's no language or cultural differences here, so I know you're incorrect. The "not okay" in that phrase is the version of "not okay" in "I just got admitted to the psych ward, I'm not okay", it is not the version of "not okay" in "Terrorism is not okay". They are two different meanings, only one of them is the correct one for that saying.

>I understand it is often used this way, but trust me in the group of people I know in real life it isn't always. Plus frankly even that usage could be seen as kind of patronizing, though again I want to stress that I am not personally offended by the joke itself

It is insulting, patronising is exactly the right word. It's intended meaning is something like "There's something so wrong in straight culture, they need an intervention, look at this example" - it's faux concern. I wasn't explaining why it wasn't insulting, I was explaining why the meaning you were ascribing to it wasn't grammatically correct.

>I feel like you've really missed my point. I don't mind the jokes, they are (mostly) not a reflection of any genuine ill will, many of them are funny to me, etc. What is frustrating is how quickly people will assume ill will when jokes are made about certain groups of people and not others. The jokes themselves are fine.

Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly the jokes don't cause any harm to you, but similar jokes do cause harm to marginalised people. Your contention is because the grammatical format of the joke is the same and you're not offended by it when you're the object of it, marginalised people should not be offended when they are the object of it. I don't agree with that contention, it's a false equivalency (grammatical equality does not equal semantic equality), but I think I would just like to understand how you're thinking of it. You remember the lord joking about how the peasants look like scarecrows during the famine, and how that is an objectively true observation that the lord and the court find funny but the peasants don't find funny? Do you understand why even though it's true and clearly funny to the lord and his coterie, the peasants wouldn't find it funny? If the peasants joked about the lord looking like a tomato, would you consider that to be hypocritical?

> As you noted, we're both in Australia, so there's no language or cultural differences here, so I know you're incorrect. The "not okay" in that phrase is the version of "not okay" in "I just got admitted to the psych ward, I'm not okay", it is not the version of "not okay" in "Terrorism is not okay". They are two different meanings, only one of them is the correct one for that saying.

So two things. One "not okay" as in psych ward can still imply negative things, but secondly I am aware of the useage of it as a saying, I am referring to jokes people have made using the saying in such a way as to imply the other meaning of not OK, which in part are funny precisely because of the typical saying. I am getting very frustrated you refuse to believe that anyone may play on the standard meaning and that I must be mistaken.

> Your contention is because the grammatical format of the joke is the same and you're not offended by it when you're the object of it, marginalised people should not be offended when they are the object of it.

No that isn't my contention. My contention is that offense doesn't equate to harm. I find some of the jokes I am talking about offensive, but I also am capable of understanding the context in which many of them are said and that the people saying them aren't actually terrible prejudiced people. Some of them absolutely are, I've met some people who are definitely actively prejudiced but they are a minority.

> You remember the lord joking about how the peasants look like scarecrows during the famine, and how that is an objectively true observation that the lord and the court find funny but the peasants don't find funny? Do you understand why even though it's true and clearly funny to the lord and his coterie, the peasants wouldn't find it funny? If the peasants joked about the lord looking like a tomato, would you consider that to be hypocritical?

I feel like this is a false equivalency. The lord and his court are why the peasants look like scarecrows in the first place, because they will have taxed them and taken a large part of their crops and left them with little to eat. This is laughing at the misfortune of people while being the cause of the misfortune.

I also think there is a big difference between making a joke about the suffering that people actively are going through than there is about say, making a joke that references the stereotype that lesbian couples move in together quickly.

>I know you have said you don't agree with it, so please don't take the following as me accusing you of excusing the slogan or agreeing with it, I'm trying to further conversation and am interested in your thoughts and really don't want to come off as accusatory.

No problems, thank you for clarifying.

>Even if it is 100% definitely, totally, absolutely, meant as a joke should we be making allowances for that?

It is not a joke, I think you may have missed me saying that earlier. It is insincere, but not a joke. I think maybe you're conceiving of every statement that someone doesn't literally mean as being only okay if it's a joke (assuming it's a harmful thing to say in the first place, like "kill all men"). Have you ever talked with a co-worker and said (or heard them say) something like "I wish I could punt my boss into the sun"? It's not a joke, the person expressing it really does hate their boss and it's not intended to get a laugh, but it is insincere. By "insincere", I mean that the person does not have any intent to follow through with the literal specific thing they actually said. People just don't always talk literally, without there being a requirement that it's for humourous purposes. People can say these things as jokes and expect a laugh, but that isn't most of the use. It is definitely not the use when it's being graffitied onto a wall.

>such as in this case where this whole group of people will listen to someone saying "kill all men" and just understand it is a joke and let it go by.

I don't think that's true unless you're in a very strong filter bubble. In population-representative company "kill all men" will always get pushback, it's never going to be just accepted. I mean, just think about it being said in a group that's half men, it would be incredibly uncommon and would definitely receive pushback if someone did say it. It's not like society has agreed that "kill all men" is a cool thing to say, that just hasn't happened. It's also worth noting that "kill all men" is way, way, way less common than either "kill your local rapist" or "all men are bad" or "men suck", all much less controversial and much more common. "Kill all men" is a super fringe thing. My professional experience is in Australia and maybe it's different where you are, I can't comment on that. But I am familiar with the phrase and know where it comes from, and that it's not some common thing that goes unremarked in company.

>For me at least though that sort of joke is frustrating and hurtful when I have had to listen to years to (an often overlapping set of) people talking about how men have a responsibility to speak up when their male friends make those sorts of jokes and tell them to stop. "Silence is Violence" and all that sort of thing.

Yeah I'm very familiar with those campaigns, and I understand the facial similarity you're drawing. Those campaigns exist because domestic violence against women exists with a social and cultural support structure that normalises that violence, and the theory behind the campaigns is that intercepting the support structure earlier might stop some amount of domestic violence against women before it ever happens, by stopping its justification in culture.

It's not the same thing as the "kill all men" example because while some women definitely have killed some men, broadly speaking almost no men are being killed by women, and the number isn't spiking or any other observation that should make us concerned that that may change.

The reason those domestic violence campaigns got approved isn't because governments decided that the hurt feelings of women were worth spending a lot of money to prevent - it wasn't about the jokes and frankly at the time basically no government would have cared about that. They got approved because firstly, domestic violence by men against women is very common and most people want it to stop, and because it has a significant cost to the government in terms of healthcare, funerals, legal processing, various support services that need funding for the victims, children need to go into the foster system, etc. And secondly, there were credible theories that predicted the levels of violence should decrease if men are joking about violence against women less.

>I do hang around these sorts of people, some of my good friends belong to the local socialist party and their social circles include these sorts of people.

If they are socialists and you want them to stop saying things like "kill all men", I think your best bet is going to be an argument along the lines of "Communism is about the interests of the broad masses, and half of the masses are men - it doesn't help the revolutionary cause to alienate oppressed men who can and should be on our side. No program to end chauvinism against women can succeed without broad support from all proletarians, including men. Trying to fix chauvinism against women doesn't separate the class, but the slogan 'kill all men' does." If they respond with "it's just a joke bro don't be so emotional" or some variant, note that communists have an obligation to be truthful, and that includes being precise in your language when there's a misunderstanding. I have used those arguments successfully to convince people of this and similar issues. If you've made that point in a reasonable way without being overly aggressive or dismissive towards the oppression of women (for example by not indicating that you understand that women are oppressed more deeply and in different specific ways than men) and they still aren't interested in stopping it long term., you should probably find other friends if it (understandably) really bothers you, or ignore it and move on if that isn't worth it to you. Even if the conversation doesn't end with "Wow I didn't think about it like that, you're very right" (almost no disagreements end like that after one conversation), if you stick with it there is a good chance that they do at least change their behaviour and maybe come around to understanding why it's not a good idea. I would strongly advise you to avoid any and all variants of "This is hypocritical", because they're not going to be persuasive as arguments. Hypocrisy is treating the same fundamental situation differently based on factors that are superficial, and it's very easy to note that violence against women by men and violence against men by women are not the same fundamental situation, so hypocrisy doesn't apply.

This message was too long, so I'll reply to this with the second half.

> Those campaigns exist because domestic violence against women exists with a social and cultural support structure that normalises that violence, and the theory behind the campaigns is that intercepting the support structure earlier might stop some amount of domestic violence against women before it ever happens, by stopping its justification in culture.

Yes I'm aware of the motivation, I am skeptical of the efficacy personally and I say that as someone who grew up a victim of domestic violence. In Australia in particular we also invest no resources in domestic violence against men, which has women perpetrators more than most people expect, but also doesn't help victims of DV who are in MLM relationships.

> It's not the same thing as the "kill all men" example because while some women definitely have killed some men, broadly speaking almost no men are being killed by women, and the number isn't spiking or any other observation that should make us concerned that that may change.

Look, "bit-- be crazy" is definitely not a call to violence. It's a form of commiseration and some venting. This is actually the hypocrisy - the assumption that everything said is coded hatred when said by or about certain people but not others. I'm not and never have claimed that the people saying "kill all men" meant it literally.

>Yes I'm aware of the motivation, I am skeptical of the efficacy personally and I say that as someone who grew up a victim of domestic violence. In Australia in particular we also invest no resources in domestic violence against men, which has women perpetrators more than most people expect, but also doesn't help victims of DV who are in MLM relationships.

I'm really sorry to hear you're a victim of domestic violence, and I appreciate you sharing that, I know that is an extremely difficult thing to do. It's actually not just Australia (I am also in Australia), in basically every country on Earth there is an absurdly small amount of resources dedicated to helping male victims of domestic violence, including both male victims of domestic violence by women and by men, when compared to the prevalence of that violence. Domestic violence against men, depending on the specific statistics used, is around half to a third as common as domestic violence against women - meanwhile, resources for male victims of domestic violence are more like 1/20th or less of the resources spent addressing domestic violence in general (which also need to be increased for women, as they're currently inadequate). It's a very important issue that does not receive enough attention, and unfortunately gets marred by associated with men who never mention it or care about the issue unless it's deployed in an argument to detract from the concerns of women. For what it's worth, I am a woman and care deeply about the issue, and have personally advocated to get DV support resources opened up to men as well, as well as including men on some of the poster campaigns we've done around domestic violence. It's an issue I find deeply frustrating to deal with because I generally encounter apathy from people in power.

I'm not sure how I feel about the efficacy of the specific campaigns around reducing "jokes". I certainly often feel like rates of domestic violence have not decreased, but there's obviously been a decrease in the "jokes" which is a self-evident good. I believe there is some research on this, but I'm not sure if there have been follow-up or efficacy studies since the campaigns. I'd be interested to know those results.

>Look, "bit-- be crazy" is definitely not a call to violence. It's a form of commiseration and some venting.

That's not true, it is misogyny. It's a reframing of a very old and violent trope that women are basically mentally unsound and don't need to be listened to. This attitude is the reason why many women suffered and suffer abuse in psychiatric care facilities, why fake medical conditions like hysteria were invented to pathologise normal reactions to oppressive conditions (and class as mental illnesses many physical illnesses which men refused to recognise). It is used that way today - "b*tches be crazy" as a saying means "Don't worry man, women are just like that [crazy]. Don't let it bother you." That is misogynistic.

>This is actually the hypocrisy - the assumption that everything said is coded hatred when said by or about certain people but not others. I'm not and never have claimed that the people saying "kill all men" meant it literally.

Someone who says "kill all men" definitely hates men. I've never claimed otherwise, and neither would the person saying "kill all men". There's no hypocrisy there - the issue people have with men saying misogynistic things isn't just that they hate women, many women hate men right back and are very capable of articulating what that means. The issue is that men have oppressed women and still do, and the misogynistic ideas they use to convey their positive feelings about that are important and valuable for the purpose of organising and normalising that oppression. Ideas are an important part of any group who believes anything, and men who believe in the inferiority of women and have harmed us throughout history and today use ideas to organise and support that activity.