Cailín Walsh 🍀To be honest every time someone does one of those gender-swapped pics of a transphobic public figure to get a dunk in it just feels like more transphobia to me 🤷♀️
Your target certainly won’t care about it, if they see it at all, and yet I might see it and it certainly feels like some variation of “man pretending to be woman is funny and emasculating let’s all point and laugh” so good job way to be an ally there sport.
Oblomov@cailinkins I've wondered about that, for this and similar issues. The thing is, the whole reason why it's a dunk is because the _target_ is transphobic. It wouldn't work as such against someone who isn't, so it's a mockery of their hate by turning them into the target of their own (and their similarly-thinking people) hate.
@oblomov Being transphobic to transphobes doesn't suddenly make the transphobia okay. This is not much different than mocking awful people for their appearance, it seldom does any material harm to the target but it certainly catches other people in the crossfire.
@cailinkins I'm not sure the appearance thing would be the correct comparison. This would be more like mocking racists by showing their imaginary daughter in love with a Black man, or homophobes by depicting them walking hand in hand with an imaginary secret same-sex lover. It's only insulting for those holding those beliefs.
@cailinkins to make a comparison, I didn't get the impression that the gender-swapping Super Mario crown sweeping the meme world did much damage, because it wasn't satirizing on transphobic fears.
@oblomov That has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about and I'm honestly not sure why you think that doubling down and explaining to a trans woman why something she feels is transphobic isn't transphobic is going to achieve here.
@cailinkins sorry, that wasn't my intent. I'm trying to understand, comparing it with other forms of satire I've seen.
@oblomov I can appreciate it wasn't your intent but I guess maybe take a moment to reflect that it did not come off that way. That said I will say the whole "oh what if this homophobe was secretly gay???" style dunk also has the same problem. There is still an implication, whether intended or not, that there is a shamefulness to being gay.
@cailinkins oh yes I could definitely have phrased the previous response better. And (I think) I have it clear what the point is, but OTOH that's kind of the whole point of the satire, is it not? It's shameful _to them_. But what you say is, it's playing to a more or less latent sense of shamefulness for that _even outside of their circles_, as is undoubtedly the case for the “morally corupt => ugly” satire.
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@cailinkins
So, are they being satirized this way as a subversion of _their_ fears, or winking at a general social perception?
There are cases when it's quite clear which is which (e.g. the novaxer begging their doctor to get a jab after they got sick is obviously playing on the novaxer fear, while the awful => ugly is playing on the social misperception that aesthetics has anything to do with moral character), but indeed for transphobia, homophobia, or racism the doubt remains.
So, are they being satirized this way as a subversion of _their_ fears, or winking at a general social perception?
There are cases when it's quite clear which is which (e.g. the novaxer begging their doctor to get a jab after they got sick is obviously playing on the novaxer fear, while the awful => ugly is playing on the social misperception that aesthetics has anything to do with moral character), but indeed for transphobia, homophobia, or racism the doubt remains.
@cailinkins (at least until society becomes more strongly and openly accepting).
Thanks for the discussion, BTW, it was eye-opening for me. I had always assumed the “positive” interpretation (you may have noticed 8-D), I hadn't even considered that it could be much worse than that.
@oblomov Yeah ultimately my point is that if the dunk ends up making someone that the dunk is ostensibly supposed to be helping uncomfortable instead then maybe the dunk has failed in it's purpose. I don't think it helps either that these sorts of dunks are mostly performative as the intended target either will not see it or even if they do I doubt they'd care.
@cailinkins clear. And yes, it's important for the dunks to reach the target, otherwise it hardly even counts as satire. There was a famous case recently here in Italy where a government member came out openly in support of the Great Replacement theory. A famous satirical artist made a cartoon depicting his wife (another famous right-winger and sister of our fascist PM) in bed with a Black man.
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@cailinkins nobody even tangentially considered that this would be playing on a presumed shame to miscegenation, but the mocked people went off the deep end because of how offensive it was to them.
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