A magazine recently invited essays
about “how we negotiate cultural expectations around what it's
acceptable to laugh about”.
Laughter is defined in dictionaries as a spontaneous physical outburst of sound and upper body movement in
response to something amusing. It may be spontaneous, but in today's social climate
you must control it anyway. Only acceptable laughter is welcome, and the rules are getting stricter about who can
laugh at whom about what. If you get them wrong you may find the consequences non-funny. You could be sued -- seriously.
So here are some tips to guide you through the Rules
of Laughter:
Do not laugh at anyone marginalized.
“Clowning” is marginal behaviour by definition, clowns being characters on
the margin -- but forget definitions. Don't even laugh at
your own feelings of marginalization. It may trigger someone. Others may see
themselves in you (or worse, to them, not see
themselves in you).
Do not laugh at anyone identified as
“BIPOC”. “Bi-” has nothing to do with seeing both sides
of things, especially the funny side. “BI” in this context
means single of attitude, which as a definition may seem
funny-peculiar but is not considered funny-humorous. (Grasping the difference is no joke.)
And by the way, never laugh at jokes considered to be "off-colour". Jokes have to be ON colour, but don't call them jokes, call them social commentary. Certainly they can't be funny if People Of Colour aren't laughing. So
people of no colour (PONC), whoever they might be, can't laugh either.
Do not laugh at any remark which may be
construed as political. Your laughter might be interpreted as happy
agreement, or shocked disbelief. Either may cause others to feel happy
or shocked in turn which might lead to a chain reaction of ...
reactions. So do NOT react to anything using spontaneous upper body sound and
movement.
Do not laugh at something if laughter
would make you sound Privileged. Remember that the slightest smile
may, in some circumstances, be taken as a blazingly lit-up billboard
of Supremacy. If this seems ridiculous, hide that thought.
“Ridere” is Latin for “to laugh”,
but there are many ridiculous things you're not allowed to laugh at it (see
above re. “triggering”). In fact, also do not use these Latin-ist
words: it may be construed as “privilege”, which has the same
Latin root as “private”, by the way ... and private jokes are politically unacceptable. They don't meet the "inclusion" rule.
Do not laugh at other people's
allyship, even if you find that ludicrous Frankenstein's monster of a
non-word a source of merriment. “Ludens” is Latin too
by the way, it means playing ... but sorry, I forgot: NO LATIN, no matter
how bons are those mots. (Better skip the French too, unless of course you identify as
Francophone.)
Do not
collapse into hysterical giggling at the stress of losing track of these rules. Don't even giggle silently
behind your hand. Do not whinny like a hysterical mare if you are
female (in the narrow sense of person with a uterus), and if male,
do not honk like a crazy loon (I mean, a loon experiencing mental
difference). And do not even think of cross-laughing, no
matter how shared you think everyone's craziness is.
Do not laugh at
anyone's gender, or lack thereof, for whatever they wish to engender with their genderisms,
it won't lead to the birth of mirth.
In summary, always keep a straight face ... er, a rainbow face. I didn't mean, you know ... straight ...
