Don't punch up OR down

I came across a concept that intrigued me. It was called "Don't punch down, punch up." The idea is that it is OK to make fun of classes of people who have power and privilege, but not classes of people who are oppressed.

This fits into the intersectional way of looking at the world, where people are primarily evaluated based on their membership in various classes. A gay white man dependent on a wheelchair is privileged on account of being white and male, and oppressed on account of being gay and in a wheelchair. So someone could poke fun at his whiteness and maleness, but not his gayness or physical disability. If it's an able-bodied straight black woman, you can make fun of the straightness and the able-bodiedness, I guess.

In this and many other posts, my main interest is in improving the world we live in. I'm all for a <goodlaugh>, but I'm not inclined to laugh at the expense of others -- even if they are rich white men. I considered myself a Quaker for a couple years when I was younger, and one of the founder's exhortations was, "Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one." I continue to like this concept when translated out of religious terms. It's not, "Answer the best you find in ordinary people, but ridicule rich white men, for they are the enemy".

Looking for and answering the best in every person is the right thing to do, just in terms of being a good human being. But I also think it's an excellent place to start in actually changing the world for the better.

Consider the two most prominent categories in the intersectional world, race and gender. Let's suppose that whites have a certain pride in being white and males have a certain pride in being male, since those are the categories they were born into (they had no choice) and people of both classes have naturally done many good things. The intersectionalist makes jokes about whites (ha ha), and jokes about men (ha ha). So they've alienated both whites and men, and who is left? Black women. One quarter of our 2x2 intersectional diagram. Not the way to build a coalition. Did those jokes have some compensating positive effect on the blacks and the women? It's hard for me to see it.

It's been suggested that one factor in the election of Donald Trump was that Fox News listened to the comedy shows with a liberal slant like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and reported (accurately) the jokes that were being made at the expense of middle Americans, who were not pleased to be ridiculed. They were white, but not a group of whites who viewed themselves as privileged, and not actually all that privileged. My intuition is that an energetic, intelligent black woman in a vibrant urban area has more privilege than a white man or woman of more modest energy and intelligence who grew up in a dysfunctional family and who lives in a depressed Rust Belt community -- and, sadly, that describes a lot of people. Intersectionalists might derive this result from some complicated formula, but I'm just going on intuition. The white coastal leftists who enjoy the Daily Show are certainly on average more privileged than that white man in the Rust Belt. If intersectionalists have come to understand that the Daily Show was actually punching down and declared that to be a bad idea, I haven't heard of it.

Donald Trump is a man who invites humorous criticism. I can't deny that I find some of it funny, but I tend to think it is not a good idea. It also has separable pieces. His orange hair, his down-turned mouth, his chubbiness, and his being physically out of shape fundamentally have nothing to do with anything important. Making fun of them is just taking cheap shots. A great many of his other attributes are very troublesome, but he shares many of those qualities with his base of supporters. Making fun of them is likely to alienate those supporters. Why not instead respectfully and earnestly explain your problems with the President? I would like to allow Trump supporters to come quietly to the conclusion that they made a mistake -- if only 5% of them did so, it could flip elections. Making fun of the man who they used to think highly of works against that purpose.

I've seen "punching up" described as a positive thing, and perhaps they have in mind energizing the base. My hunch is that it might amuse them, but in terms of action it will reinforce detached cynicism. It won't motivate them to organize or even to vote.

I had a very negative reaction to <WhiteFragility> . But I did allow that organizers letting off steam by privately bemoaning how fragile the whites were in some particular workshop was fine and understandable. Private exasperation at the behavior of any group, privileged or not privileged, seems fine.

Regardless of anything I say, I'm sure stand-up comedians will continue to ply their trade and make fun of people, and they will have audiences. I would urge the audiences to think of this as a separate sphere of life which is something like a guilty pleasure, but contrast it with a more everyday outlook where you try to engage the best in every person and make fun of no one.

Progressive coalitions need all the allies they can get. Instead of casting any class as the enemy, reach out to each person as an individual, listen to and respect their story, and try to persuade them of the justice of your cause.