Comic Memes and Sexist Humor in India: Tools for Reinforcement of Female Body-Image Stereotypes

Memes have been described as communicative and aesthetic practices that serve cultural, social, political purposes on a digital platform. Several studies, in the last decade, have attempted to study this digital aesthetic knowledge production as a powerful tool for political, racial, and gender-related discourses. Most often this knowledge is produced through comic multi-media texts. Many theorists believe that, digital media reinforces inequality, marginalization and such other social issues through the audio-visual-textual medium as much as it establishes the counter-discourses for equality, body activism, racial activism and the like. Speed and lack of censorship can be the cardinal reasons for the popularity of these memes. Among the mass-influencing gender-related memes are those encouraging fat-talk and body-image stereotypes. In the Indian context, ‘Tag a Friend’ memes is one such widely circulated meme which communicates body-shaming messages through sexist humor. It mainly targets the fat/colored/transgender women. The current study examines these memes using multimodal discourse analysis methodology. The paper attempts to investigate the revival/reproduction potential of color-shaming and body-shaming stereotypes via comic memes through Shiffman’s memetic dimensions. The analysis establishes that memes can be a prominent site for the re-production of the problematic ideology of body/color shaming even in the 21st century.

Fear, anger, and desire: Affect and the interactional intricacies of rape humor on a live podcast

Aggressive, sexist humor is often understood as expressions of inner, misogynist attitudes. This article, however, investigates rape humor as a collective and interactive phenomenon. Drawing on an infamous Swedish podcast episode, we illuminate rape humor in terms of affect, desire, and repression (Butler 1987; Billig 1999), and as such, how taboo-breaking arouses both pleasure and fear among the participants. The analyses detail affective practices that both promote and discipline affects. The men in the group interpellate one of the participants as a clown, someone whose taboo-breaking they interactionally support and simultaneously distance themselves from. The article concludes that affects, like subject positions, are interpellated in interaction. Building on Wetherell's (2013) understanding of affect as both discursive and embodied, we suggest a reintroduction of repression/desire into a discursively oriented framework. (Affective practices, rape humor, desire, repression, taboo, misogynist masculinity, podcast)*

Is it really just a joke? Gender differences in perceptions of sexist humor

Benign violation theory suggests humor mocking normative values is funny if the humor is non-threatening. Research suggests sexism toward women (versus men) is particularly threatening due to inequalities in social power. In Study 1, we examined whether men and women differ in how amused and offended they were by sexist humor. We predicted men would perceive sexist humor as more funny and less offensive than women would. In Study 2, we examined whether perceptions of threat were related to perceptions of sexist jokes. We predicted women would perceive more threat than men from sexist humor, which would lead to lower amusement and greater perceived offensiveness. Across both studies, jokes targeting women were perceived to be less funny, more offensive, and more sexist than jokes targeting men. Additionally, greater perceptions of threat were related to greater perceptions of jokes as offensive and sexist. However, women were not more threatened than men by sexist jokes. While these findings were not entirely consistent with our hypotheses, our findings suggest disparagement humor targeting lower-status groups is perceived more negatively than disparagement humor targeting higher-status groups and these perceptions may be inextricably rooted in threat posed to lower-status groups.

Don’t laugh it off: Gender differences in perceptions of women’s responses to men’s use of sexist humor

Across two studies, we examined how the reaction of a woman who was targeted by potentially disparaging sexist jokes by a male joke-teller affected men’s and women’s perceptions of the jokes, the woman who was told the jokes, and the male joke-teller. Participants viewed videos in which a man told sexist jokes to a woman who responded with amusement, offense, ambiguity, or nonverbal disapproval. We found that the woman’s reaction to the sexist humor affected the perceptions of both the male joke-teller and the woman. Our results suggest that expressing nonverbal disapproval may be an effective way to produce negative perceptions of a man telling sexist jokes (Study 1) and may increase positive perceptions of a woman who confronts them (Study 2). Further, expressing verbal offense may be an increasingly acceptable way of confronting sexist jokes, perhaps due to recent cultural shifts in perceptions of confronting sexism more generally (Study 2). Our findings offer reason to be optimistic about changing norms with regard to confronting sexist humor.

What’s in a Tweet? Gender and sexism moderate reactions to antifat sexist humor on Twitter

The present study investigated whether antifat sexist humor (compared to antifat sexist statements or control statements), conveyed via Tweets, would impact perceptions of an overweight female target depicted in a workplace harassment scenario. We examined whether gender, antifat attitudes, and sexism would impact joke perceptions and moderate perceptions of the joke-relevant target. Participants (n = 451) were drawn from MTurk and completed the study online. They were randomly exposed to one of three tweet conditions and then read and responded to the harassment vignette, among filler vignettes, before completing sexism and antifat measures. Antifat attitudes unexpectedly shifted as a function of study prime and were thus not considered as a moderator. Results showed that men high in hostile sexism reported a greater likelihood of retweeting/favoriting antifat sexist jokes than men low on hostile sexism or women high in hostile sexism. Individuals high in hostile sexism in the joke condition found the behavior of the target less appropriate, and the behavior of the ostensible perpetrator more appropriate, than those in the control condition and those low on hostile sexism. Similar findings were obtained for benevolent sexism. Findings underscore the power of social media as a vehicle for disparagement humor and its consequences.

Sexist Humor and Sexual Aggression Against Women: When Sexist Men Act According to Their Own Values or Social Pressures

Exposure to sexist humor creates a context in which some men feel comfortable expressing aggressive tendencies toward women (i.e., self-reported rape proclivity). This is in part because this type of humor makes it easier for men who have antagonistic attitudes toward women to express their prejudice without fear of social reprisal. Besides, previous research has demonstrated the influence of motivational variables such as autonomy (initiation or regulation of intentional behavior based on free choice) and control (acting under external pressure) on aggression. We conducted two experiments to explore the hypothetical influence of priming autonomy and control motivations on the relation between sexist humor and the expression of sexually aggressive tendencies toward women. Study 1 ( N = 108) revealed that control-primed men with high (vs. low) scores in hostile sexism reported a higher rape proclivity when exposed to sexist (vs. neutral) humor. These results were partially replicated in Study 2 ( N = 132), assessing the accessibility of aggressive sexual thoughts. This research contributes to our understanding of the influence of sexist humor and motivational orientations in sexist men on the expression of aggressive sexual behaviors directed against women.

Nature and Perception of Sexist Humor at Great Zimbabwe University

For the majority of women, university represents a time of hopefulness and opportunities such that gendered incidences questioning their academic merit poses a serious setback. Sexist humor is one such incident which communicates a message that females are irrelevant and insignificant. This article discusses the nature and perceptions of sexist humor on University campuses. The views on how students on campus perceive sexist humor are crucial for understanding students’ response and offer a clear understanding of what justifies and normalizes sexist humor. The paper analyzes how the use of language can be connected to sexism and violence. Using a mixed methodology for data collection at Great Zimbabwe University, the paper attempts to link language, sexual violence, misogyny, and sexism as well as chronicle the overall pattern of exclusion and marginalization of women in higher education settings. The findings of the paper present evidence that the institutional and intellectual cultures of educational institutions are permeated with sexual and gender dynamics that have become embedded and naturalized in popular thought. Normalization of verbal harassment contributes to muting victimized women, thus perpetuating a culture in which violence against women becomes part of the social milieu. Thus, this study concludes that while one may consider higher education institutions in Africa as safer spaces for women, these are highly contested terrains as misogyny through sexist humor, among other hindrances, has created an obstacle for women’s equal participation in higher education.

“Boy’s Club:” Examining sexist humor on types of sexism and femininity ideology using two research approaches

The current study examined sexist humor and participants’ level of sexism and femininity ideology using two research approaches: (1) a quasi-experimental design in which participants were primed with sexist humor and (2) a correlational approach using content analysis to estimate exposure to sexist humor in media. It was hypothesized that exposure to sexist humor would influence viewer’s sexist views and femininity ideology. It was also hypothesized that the quasi-experimental design would yield confirmatory results of our initial hypothesis while the correlational design would not. Participants included 1,559 male and female college students who were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions (viewed sexist humor, viewed non-sexist humor, viewed no videos) and then answered questions related to sexism and femininity ideology followed by general demographic items and media viewing preferences. Results confirmed that the quasi-experimental design, in comparison to the correlational design, yielded more confirmatory results in that those exposed to sexist humor had higher scores on all outcome measures examined. Limitations of priming and content analysis are discussed as well as directions for future research.