• AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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    7 hours ago

    This sticker feels more a joke at how trans people are so often spoken about, than a joke at cis people.

    But to try to answer your question more materially, sometimes I, an autistic person, make jokes along the lines of “neurotypical develop intense fixations on making excessive eye contact during conversation, and often become distressed if they are unable to”. That’s not much of a joke, but it’s enough to show what I mean. For me, part of the humour is that in reflecting the joke in a mirror, it highlights how the way that we talk about minority groups (such as autistic or trans people) is really weird and othering. This isn’t a “two wrongs make a right” thing, but more like using humor as a way to question societal norms.

    I think another aspect of these jokes is that they function as “ritual communication”, which is communication whose purpose is to build, maintain and shape communities, rather than actually communicating things between people. That’s probably a bad explanation because I’m not learned in communication studies, but basically, a big part of ritual communication is building bonds by people within the same group. So in the case of my autism joke, part of it is ritual communication that more or less says “you, my autistic friends who are the audience for this joke, are valid and valued as you are”. Something that’s coming to mind is the comedy trope of people saying “[bad thing], amirite?”. It’s not funny because there’s not a joke being told, but it can still serve a social function.