AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Dysphoria, that's interesting... I used to be repulsed by my own body quite a bit, actually, until about two years ago when I finally just let myself get comfortable with it.
But as for if feeling like I was meant to be a boy...I don't know. I guess I'm kind of wondering how other people figure that out. Curiousity does play a big part in it, though, yeah. Sort of like a 'I'm not really uncomfortable being female, but would I feel more comfortable being male?', which is why I'm a little worried about people getting upset thinking I'm not taking it more seriously. Like girls pretending to be gay to attract attention. But, I guess you're right, the only people I have to worry about are the SJWs, aha.

But after sending that last post, I did do a lot of reading up on it for the past several hours and I feel better. I guess I mostly just needed a person/place to vent and organize my thoughts on the matter. I don't really have very many friends and I don't want to scare any of them with this sort of talk yet. So thanks for letting me do that~
And... I already know full well that if I do transition, it would be a huge step and it does scare me... So that's why I'd like to test the waters and see what it's like. I'll definitely give it even more thought, though, before trying anything.

Sorry for accidentally turning this into a therapy session, though, aha, I wasn't sure where else to ask this sort of thing.
For future reference, is there a more appropriate place to ask about things like this?

In my opinion this thread is an appropriate place for it - but because this is also a thread for discussion of taboo subjects you risk triggering a shouting/shit-slinging match because other people will probably want to butt in and voice their disagreements about body dysphoria and how it's "Just an exercise in attention seeking." etc. etc.

Confessions might be a more appropriate thread with more considered and polite feedback - but people can be dicks in there too.


On the dysphoria thing - it took me a long time to get anywhere near accepting my body and I've gone through all kinds of psychological turmoil and trauma trying to figure out who and what I am (I'm still not entirely sure most of the time).

All I can really say is that talking about it with other people helps - even if those people are strangers and you risk having to butt heads with a lot of jerks in the process. So keep talking about it if you feel the need to.

We do have a couple of members on the forum who are trans*, so if you wanted to you could try to talk to them about your feelings.

Moved from Things that piss you off - Mod

It was over sixty years ago, close to seventy, and I'm not really seeing the problem with the joke. It's not recent to be considered "too soon" and it was intended as levity.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2164

Everyone gets offended at things. That doesn't mean everyone should stop making jokes about those things. If you don't like the jokes being made then stop listening to the person and let the ones who enjoy the jokes have their own preferences.

For the record, I don't watch Game Grumps because I never found it funny and the way they played the games irritated me.

Yeah dudebro stop being upset at stuff that upsets you what are you a pussy-ass nerd lmao

It's fine if you're not offended at his joke Madican but c'mon son. I'm sure you can understand why it's a touchy topic and not prime joke material. There's no set measure for "too soon" or "too inappropriate". It's also fine to be offended.

Also, it sort of is too soon. There are still people alive who had to deal with what happened or people who those survivors. Many still feel the effects of what happened. It's naive to pretend no one cares about one of mankind's most horrific genocides when it isn't even a century old.

Just because it doesn't offend you doesn't mean it isn't offensive.

And the joke definitely is - it trivializes the deaths of millions. I still find humor in it, and I don't think it's bad enough to warrant any real countermeasures, but to pretend it's not offensive is stupid. If you don't understand that there are millions of people alive to whom the joke is justifiably offensive, maybe you just need to get off your wannabe intellectual objectivist high horse.

I never said it wasn't fine to be offended, because people can absolutely be offended by something. I said if someone is offended by the joke then they can stop supporting the person who did it. But labeling something as offensive is a form of censorship, something I'm against.

I linked the SMBC comic because I think it's spot-on. Someone can be offended by another person's action/joke/comment/writing, but saying it's offensive is immediately declaring that it should not exist at all because a certain category of people are hurt by it. The problem with that line of thinking is that people are offended by different things and if we censor everything that people consider to be offensive then there will be nothing left to talk about.

Why is it fine to make fun of the Iraq War but not World War 2? Why is it fine to make jokes about Kim Jong but not Hitler? Where is the "line" and who should be allowed to draw it?

Because making fun of awful events in human history is not just offensive, but is extremely upsetting and triggering for many people.

Refraining from and criticizing people who make jokes about tragic events isn't censorship; it's having some goddamn decency and empathy for others.

"Jokes" about war, genocide, and terrorism are always "too soon". Making lighthearted comments on them causes future generations to forget why they're awful.

Alright, let's go with that definition. That would mean things that should never have been made are a few Monty Python sketches, Catch-22, Tropic Thunder, The A-Team, Hogan's Heroes, MASH, Team America World Police, Dr. Strangelove, a bunch of video games too numerous to count (mostly FPS and RTS), Rambo, Kelly's Heroes, and so many more. And that's just mostly focusing on the "war" bit.

Comedy is a method of coping with and understanding something. You say future generations would forget why those events were awful if jokes were made, but I can say with certainty that if Cracked.com had never done its various war articles about hilarious things that happened I would never know a good chunk of what I do now. I read a joke, wonder about it, and perform my own research into the context. This leads me to see things I otherwise wouldn't have, the stuff no one talks about because it's overshadowed by the "big" events.

I was mainly referring to casual jokes like what Jon said. Making fun of people dying is never okay and yet I see it all the time and I don't understand why. Especially 9/11 jokes that are always "lol plane flew into building and it burned down lolol"

But whatever
this is why I don't get involved it debates. I'm way too fucking retarded for things like this and I learned a long time ago that sticking my neck in where it doesn't belong just makes things worse.

What's the difference, though? The people who made/acted in all of those things mentioned above are no less human than we are? Is it the establishment that they're funny, therefore it's OK for them to make those movies/sketches?

Or is it less that all things are offensive to everyone forever, and more that certain things are offensive to you/individual people?

The holocaust/9-11 are fairly recent events in human history where terrible things happened, so yes, it's understandable that more people are going to have an emotional connection to it. Things like slavery, or the issues the Native Americans had to deal with from the Europeans coming over? They're much much farther back. Maybe you still have some evidence of those shenanigans in your family lineage even today, but it was still a relatively significant amount of time back in history. No one is alive today who remembers it. Then we can go as far back as pretty much everything ancient Rome did, or Egypt with slave labor. Are those things still offensive?

The line where it goes from "tragedy" to "comedy" is definitely muddled, and a little bit trivial. but it definitely exists.

EDIT: This isn't the taboo thread...

EDIT: NOW it's the taboo thread. Well now my earlier edit just seems silly.

THANKS OBAMA!

I don't
fucking care anymore

I've dropped out of this debate just leave me alone

Who said it was fine or not to make fun of these things? I don't care about that. All I'm saying is, clearly you can see why some people would call him out on that joke, right? You can see that some people don't like a joke that compares a very important genocide that affected them or their close ones, to a Cawadoody killstreak, yeah?
Sure, I agree that jokes like that (and movies like Team America and whathaveyou) are and should be protected by MY GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO SAY WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT AND DISREGARD ALL CONSEQUENCES TO WHAT I SAY (as long as it's not shit like comparing a black person to a monkey like happened not too long ago in Italy and France), but I think it's fine to call out these people if you're not fine with what they're doing too. Sure I don't like the people that go "This should be censored forever" but I don't like that some people go to the opposite end of the spectrum and go "Everything's fine forever! Dickwolves!" either.
It's all a matter of communicating on these issues so everyone can grow up in their opinions. Maybe the joke guys won't make these jokes anymore, or maybe the offended dudes won't be offended anymore, or maybe they'll just agree that they both have different point of views that can coexist, or maybe they'll still be at it in fiddy years. Who knows? But talking about it is the only way to make things evolve.
Comedy may help people remember and think about important events in History but it's not the only way to educate, and I don't think it's the best one as I assume (whoa! assumptions) most people who get exposed to an historical event through comedy alone will only remember the stuff that made them laugh. Not that learning about History can't be fun or be done with a light-hearted tone. Depends on the public, really, as it can surely help bring some events to a more "mainstream audience" instead of just historians and History nuts.
In the end in my opinion it's all a matter of different people! Different strokes and all that crappola. Different opinions make for great discussions.

And I agree with that. Offended people can say they're offended and let the person who made the joke know that. Discussion helps both people understand where they stand. Maybe it'll end with one person toning it down, dropping it entirely, or them choosing not to change because they don't see a reason why. Whatever the result, discourse happened.

My issue came from the various statements along the lines of "He should have known better" and "He's not famous enough to get away with this" as if the one who made the joke committed an unforgivable crime and profaned something sacred. The way they spoke it was as if they considered their being offended as being, or should be, universal instead of remembering that's their opinion.

While different opinions do make for great discussions, when those opinions are held to be law then there is no room for a discussion without being labeled. Ycobb's declaration of me being on a "wannabe intellectual objectivist high horse" is evidence of that. He doesn't want to discuss it because to him there is nothing to discuss and I'm just trying to stir up trouble for the sake of it, all because I don't adhere to his view. I'm an enemy, not a person.

The problem with offended vs. offensive is how they are dealt with in society.

If a person is offended and other people aren't, they're JUST an individual being offended. It's easier to trivialize the offense they take because the other people do not feel the same way and feel that their viewpoint is "more correct" by majority. It's technically more correct for people to say they are offended, because the other party will know for sure that they are singularly speaking of offense to their viewpoint, but it's also correct to say that the thing they object to is offensive:



So something offensive can be taken singularly or collectively. In other words, as long as something has offended one person, it has become "offensive" by definition, even if they're the only one to have taken offense.

However, when something is "offensive", we suddenly think there's this magical group of people that are backing up the other person's claim, and disregard the argument because "well, how do you know it's offensive?" because we assume it takes a group of people being offended to make something offensive, and we think the best way to support an opposing argument is a game of numbers (majority rules).

And truthfully, this connotation works the other way of course. There ARE people who say something is offensive with the intent to make their argument seem more impressive with these imaginary people they thought up and never talked to, but I think society as a whole assumes most people who use the term "offensive" to be in this category rather than the people who use it for a singular purpose (or to argue that there's AT LEAST one person offended, to combat the notion of "no one is offended by this").

The connotations society has about these two words is very odd. We often treat offended individuals as odd ones out, and something offensive as being bigger and filled with more strawmen than it actually is.

The thing the comic hits on is speaking for other people (either existing or non-existent people) to support your personal opinion/argument. Someone can say "It's offensive" and be wholly in the right as long as they don't start speaking for other people's offense ("middle America would never stand for this!"). THIS is the issue with speaking about things being offensive, but it's not the be all end all of arguments of things being offensive.