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I'm trying to imagine the reverse situation with a female speaker playing on negative male stereotypes with a primarily-female audience. E.g.: X is my boyfrien

I'm trying to imagine the reverse situation with a female speaker playing on negative male stereotypes with a primarily-female audience. E.g.: X is my boyfriend: physically strong, just wants sex, doesn't do laundry, generally messy, checks out my friends Personally I wouldn't be offended if someone presented the slide above, and I have a hard time imagining that there'd be an uprising about it. To me this clearly indicates a double standard. So where should we draw the line on gender stereotypes, to be applied equally to both sexes? I can't answer that, but I think the above analogy shows that people are being hypersensitive.

sportanova 12y ago
Agreed, this was way overblown - making cheesy-sitcomy-girlfriend/boyfriend jokes shouldn't be treated like a triple homicide hate crime
mattzito 12y ago
There is a double standard to a limited degree- I can't remember the source of this, but a good explanation I saw described it thusly - it's the difference between "punching up" and "punching down". When a woman makes a joke about a male stereotype, it's "punching up", the classically lower status individual tweaking the nose of those in power. When a man makes fun of a female stereotype, it's punching down, or picking on someone. That doesn't necessarily make it right in either direction or represents a set of absolutes, of course, but it does explain the willingness of people to excuse a certain amount of one type of stereotyping and not another.
curun1r 12y ago
You'd still have to make it somewhat apply to both Maven and what you're comparing Maven to...Maven wouldn't "be physically strong," "just want sex" or "not do laundry." But you could say Maven, "does the heavy lifting," "screws me whenever possible" and "doesn't clean up after himself" (without my asking...have to type 'mvn clean') Without the dual meaning, it's not really an attempted joke.

sportanova 12y ago

Agreed, this was way overblown - making cheesy-sitcomy-girlfriend/boyfriend jokes shouldn't be treated like a triple homicide hate crime

mattzito 12y ago

There is a double standard to a limited degree- I can't remember the source of this, but a good explanation I saw described it thusly - it's the difference between "punching up" and "punching down". When a woman makes a joke about a male stereotype, it's "punching up", the classically lower status individual tweaking the nose of those in power. When a man makes fun of a female stereotype, it's punching down, or picking on someone. That doesn't necessarily make it right in either direction or represents a set of absolutes, of course, but it does explain the willingness of people to excuse a certain amount of one type of stereotyping and not another.

curun1r 12y ago

You'd still have to make it somewhat apply to both Maven and what you're comparing Maven to...Maven wouldn't "be physically strong," "just want sex" or "not do laundry." But you could say Maven, "does the heavy lifting," "screws me whenever possible" and "doesn't clean up after himself" (without my asking...have to type 'mvn clean') Without the dual meaning, it's not really an attempted joke.